Not exactly hands off, but closer
If, as t he c onspiracy theory had it, Stephen Harper’s habit of appointing every deviant, crook or crony he could find to the Senate was part of a master plan to so discredit the upper house as to make its reform inevitable, then what explains the improvised mess the Liberals are making of it?
At present the Senate’s standings include 22 vacancies, one fifth of the total. About as many are under police investigation after the expenses scandal. The rest could best be described as bewildered.
The Senate’s 29 Liberals are no longer a caucus, or at least no longer part of the Liberal parliamentary caucus, having been summarily expelled by the party leader two years ago. Rather than Senate Liberals, they are senators who are Liberals.
To reinforce this message of non- partisanship, the new government refuses to appoint a government Senate leader, leaving senators uncertain who will be responsible for introducing government legislation or answering f or it in question period. Instead, the prime minister has announced he will appoint a government Senate representative, a position of the Liberals’ invention whose role is unclear, notably in the matter of how it will differ from that of the government Senate leader.
Or rather, the prime minister will not make the appointment. Or not by himself. Or not overtly so. That is, he will rely upon the recommendations — or not: the recommendations are to be non-binding — of a five- person Independent Advisory Board on Senate Appointments. Mind you, three of the five would themselves be appointed by the prime minister — by what process? on whose advice? according to what criteria? — so decide for yourself how independent they are likely to be.
The other two are to be appointed by the government of the province the senator-to-be is to represent — or at least, they are to be “consulted” on these; or at least, in the “transitional” phase — mean- ing senators will not only be independent of party but independent of basic principles of federalism. Quite why the provinces should have a say in the composition of another level of government — are the feds to gain a reciprocal power to appoint provincial representatives? — has not been explained: the Liberal election platform spoke only of a “new, non- partisan, merit- based process.”
At any rate, by some al- chemy the advisory board, whose names we do not know, will come up with a list of five nominees for each post, whose names we will not know. How t hey will come up with these, or what list they will draw from — the government promises to include “an application process open to all Canadians” — remains a mystery, as does the government’s definition of “merit”: not only will nom- inees be chosen “with a view to achieving gender balance in the Senate,” but “priority consideration will be given to nominees who represent Aboriginal peoples and linguistic, minority and ethnic communities.” So while “all Canadians” can apply, a good number of them would appear to be ruled out from the start.
Why there should be five people on the advisory board might seem no less arbitrary, except that it is fewer than all of the people, which you’ll recall the Supreme Court of Canada ruled would disturb the “constitutional architecture.” If senators had a democratic mandate, the court worried, they might start thinking they had the legitimacy to exercise the powers the constitution assigned to them. Of course, the unelected, illegitimate senators we have now do not seem to have been much de- terred from doing the same: what the non-partisan, meritbased, federal- provincial senators will make of it we can only guess.
And we can keep guessing, since they will be taking their place alongside the 74 partisan senators ( at last count: two Conservatives have announced they will sit as independents) in the existing contingent. Of course, once they’re appointed, there’s presumably nothing to stop them from joining this or that caucus, whatever the prime minister might think.
Still, the Prime Minister’s Office is plainly determined that the Senate should be transformed into a non-partisan chamber of sober second thought, independent of government control: so much so, that it went so far as to replace the Senate speaker, Conservative senator Leo Housakos, with a Senate Liberal — sorry, senator- who- is- a- Liberal — George Furey.
“Truly, we are entering uncharted waters,” Furey told his colleagues on his first day in the job.
No kidding. With no one to introduce bills — the Government Senate Representative is to be drawn from among the new non-partisan appointees, with who knows what experience as a legislator — and no template to follow in such matters as a non- partisan question period, senators will be very much making it up as they go along. But then, so has the government.
Among the many questions the government has yet to address is: who asked for this? The vast majority of the public, when asked, say the Senate should either be elected or abolished. Almost no one merely wants a better quality of appointee. Granted, so long as these non- partisan senators do not defeat legislation passed by the scandalously partisan — ie elected — House of Commons, probably there’s no harm done. But that only illustrates how irrelevant this reform is.
Or to put the matter another way: there are three kinds of possible reforms to the Senate. There is what is desirable — namely, a democratically elected upper house, though this is famously difficult to do. There is what’s necessary — namely, to prevent the Senate from thwarting the democratic will of the people. This could be done by a mere change to the Senate’s own rules of order.
And there is what’s beside the point. Strange that the Liberals should be so focused upon the last.
The Prime Minister’s Office is plainly determined that the Senate should be transformed into a non-partisan chamber of sober second thought, independent of government control