Trudeau reaps what he sowed with Senate

This week, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau scrambled to douse trade fires and Kevin O’Leary tossed a final wrench into the Tory leadership, a lesser-known figure, Sen. Peter Harder, embarked on a herculean political mission: a western tour aimed at helping get Canada’s Senate working the way the government wants it to. Which is to say, passing Liberal legislation.

Eloquent press releases from Harder’s Ottawa office explained that the government’s representative in the Senate had been telling Albertans how the new-look Red Chamber, most of whose inhabitants are independent, could thus return to its “traditional role as a voice for Canada’s regions” rather than act like a partisan sandbox. It could finally, truly, become a chamber of sober second thought. Wouldn’t that be grand?

Perhaps it would, if: a) everyone were buying the premise; and b) this new independence did not also have the effect of making the Senate even less accountable than it was prior to 2014.

That was the year Justin Trudeau, then leader of the third party, dumped all Liberal senators from the Liberal caucus. He also pledged to appoint only independents in future. In 2017, he is reaping the political fallout.

There is only one organized party caucus in the Red Chamber: the Tories. With 39 senators, they aren’t a majority, but it doesn’t matter. As members of Rona Ambrose’s Conservative caucus, working with their MP counterparts, they’ve stalled or stymied some Liberal legislation, such as Bill C-4, which amended the rules around unionization (the Tories — surprise! — prefer those rules to be more businessfriendly). They’ve used what Sen. Harder terms “obstruction” to slow the progress of Bill C-16 on transgender rights. Other agenda items have been delayed too, such as a bill on the final wording of the lyrics to O Canada.

In contrast to the Tory senators, the Chamber’s 42 independents and 18 independent “Liberals” (there are also six vacancies) answer to no one. “It’s a delicate, diplomatic, political dance (Harder) has to waltz every time there is a bill before us,” says independent Liberal Sen. Jim Munson. “The price of independence is there are no guarantees.”

Harder has been left trying to right this chaos. Facing a Sisyphean future, he recently produced a discussion paper proposing ways to prod senators into moving government business along.

“The Opposition in the Senate has taken advantage of the power vacuum left by the elimination of a government caucus,” his paper lamented. “Rather than occupy the vacuum with substance and policy, it has too often filled it with time-wasting. Without a government caucus to counter the Opposition’s obstruction, the Conservative Party of Canada practically has free rein to delay, delay, and delay further.” Yup. That’s right. “The evolving Senate must reconcile its practices and procedures with its increasing independence,” he continued.

Must it? Says who? Well, tradition. By convention, “government legislation, mandated by Canadians who cast ballots, must be studied and dealt with in a timely fashion,” former Tory senator Hugh Segal wrote in the Citizen.

This isn’t the first time a government holding elected power has faced a Senate whose majority membership was not of that party. What’s different today is that every senator except the Tories is beholden to no one.

Conservative senators are at least minimally accountable, because the party they believe in must win seats in the other chamber. Misbehaviour can damage the party’s chances. It’s why Ambrose removed Sen. Lynn Beyak from the Senate Aboriginal people’s committee, having had enough of the senator’s offside views on indigenous issues.

Conservative Sen. Bob Runciman believes success in the newly anarchic Senate will depend on Harder’s ability to build relationships in all camps. “At the end of the day, they have a majority government,” he notes. “Government legislation will ultimately carry the day.” If Harder can persuade everyone to play nice, that is. No pressure.

“The Senate is independent,” Trudeau recently told a reporter who asked his views on Beyak.

You bet it is. And less democratic too. Now we all must live with it.

Christina Spencer is the Citizen’s editorial pages editor.