Senate independents to elect leader
OTTAWA • The senator at the helm of an increasinglypowerful—and growing— group of Senate independents has confirmed it will hold a formal leadership election this September.
The diplomatic allynamed“leadership renewal process” was drafted by a small “task force” of senators and adopted by consensus by the Independent Senators Group (ISG), Sen. Elaine McCoy said in an interview with the National Post.
A nomination period for prospective leaders will be open from Sept. 4 to Sept. 22. The election will take place the week of Sept. 25 by secret ballot. The leader will need to reach a threshold of 60-per-cent support.
After the leader (or “facilitator,” as the group has been calling the role) is elected, a deputy will be chosen by the group. A leadership hand-off will take place by mid-October.
McCoy has maintained a leadership position since the group was formally struck a year ago. She said she hasn’t yet decided whether she will throw her name in for leadership and will consider it over the summer.
Remaining positions will be appointed by the new leader: the “scroll manager,” who helps organize chamber proceedings on behalf of the group; and a deputy scroll manager and a “liaison,” who takes the temperature of how other groups are voting but, McCoy emphasized, who should not be permitted to whip votes from independents. Those positions are currently filled by senators Ratna Omidvar, Marc Gold and Frances Lankin, respectively.
It has been a dramatic year of change in the Senate. For decades the chamber had a bipartisan system where Liberals and Conservatives competed as government and opposition. While a few independents sat in the Senate, there was no organized structure for giving them as much sway as partisans on the floor or in committees.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ousted Liberal senators from his caucus in 2013, ostensibly to encourage more independence. When he came into power in 2015 he implemented a new system of Senate appointments that used a third-party advisory board to recommend Senate applicants to his office.
Most of the new appointees and existing independents have joined the ISG. There are still 38 Tory senators, but the ISG has 35 members and expects to recruit more when seven currently-vacant seats are filled. There are 18 Senate Liberals and seven more senators sit as “non-affiliated,” lone independents outside the group, including Sen. Stephen Greene, who was recently ousted from the Conservative caucus when he accepted a dinner invitation from Trudeau.
The ISG has been formally accepted into the system with changes to the Senate’s procedural rules that adjusted the definition of a “caucus.” Next week, similar changes are expected to be made to administrative rules. It now participates in weekly leaders’ meetings, daily scroll meetings, speakers’ consultations and state visits.
The group was approved for an annual budget of $722,000 (still less than what Liberals and Conservatives receive) and formed a “secretariat” of eight staff, soon to be nine, who act in support roles on common procedural issues but who do not conduct individual research for senators, McCoy said.
The ISG holds what are essentially weekly caucus meetings, chaired by Sen. Raymonde Gagné, at which bill sponsors and partisan representatives brief independents on their positions. They are not supposed to request votes but instead must “drum up business” from individual senators outside the meetings, said McCoy.
The ISG only votes in a bloc on matters of Senate modernization, when “collective positions” are adopted on administrative matters that benefit all independents and the “transformation of the Senate to a modern institution,” said McCoy. She added a collective position is sometimes taken when the group agrees “enough time” has been spent on bills. In other words, the group doesn’t require senators to vote together on supporting the legislation or not, but agrees to collectively block others’ attempts — usually opposition attempts — to prevent such votes from even happening.
Independents now have more seats on Senate committees and decide who sits where by consensus. There is an ISG “team leader” on each committee, McCoy said. An existing committee agreement expires Oct. 31, or at prorogation of parliament if that happens first, which will allow the group to negotiate chairmanship for some committees.
Rapid change in the Senate is not uncontroversial. The Trudeau government has faced more difficulty in getting unamended legislation passed, and its representative in the Senate, Sen. Peter Harder, has no government caucus to whip votes from. Cabinet ministers have started calling independent senators individually to plead their case on bills.
According to figures compiled by the ISG, in the year ending May 31, the Senate amended 20 per cent of the government laws that made it to royal assent. That’s staggeringly more than the about four-per-cent rate for the past few decades. It is likely to rise.
Meanwhile, Conservatives — the only group that still sits in a caucus with MPs — are concerned the role of “official opposition” is being unduly demolished in favour of filling the Senate to the brim with liberal-minded people who Tories suggest won’t disagree with Trudeau legislation. They are worried the procedural tool belt for opposing legislation is being stripped.
But independents are charging ahead. The ISG’s aspirational principles are transparency, fairness, proportionality, equality, honesty, collaboration and distributed leadership.