SENATE CHANGES BURIED IN BILL
More pay for some leaders in Red Chamber
• Changes that would formally recognize new caucus groups in the Senate, give their leaders bigger salaries, and more say in how the Red Chamber is run are buried in the Liberals' budget implementation bill after previous efforts to change the rules didn't get through Parliament.
Currently, the Senate's rules only recognize two organized groups in the chamber: the government and the opposition. But the Senate has changed dramatically since the Trudeau Liberals came to power with 60 Senators appointed through a new non-partisan process who don't identify as either government or opposition.
The Senate now has four separate groups: the Independent Senators Group (ISG), the Progressive Senators Group, the Canadian Senators Group and the Conservatives. The Conservatives are the only group still connected to a party in the House of Commons.
Despite being the largest group, the ISG doesn't consider itself the government, with a handful of Senators instead acting in that role to bring legislation through the chamber.
Government House Leader MP Mark Holland said the budget implementation bill cements the changes the government wanted to make to a more non-partisan Senate.
“There are a variety of different Senate groups, potentially new Senate groupings in the future. So this act allows the recognition of the new configuration of the Senate as more and more independent Senators are appointed,” he said.
Sen. Raymonde Saint-germain, the facilitator of the ISG, effectively the group's leader, said she welcomes the long-overdue changes.
“The act reflects the reality of the contemporary Senate and gives tools and powers to every recognized group in addition to those of the government and the opposition,” she said in an email Wednesday.
“Currently, 80 per cent of senators are independent, but without these changes, the rules reflect a time when the Senate was comprised of close to 100 per cent of senators who were members of two political caucuses.”
The legislation comes with a cost.
In addition to a senator's base pay of approximately $160,000, the new legislation offers the other caucus leaders top-ups. The leader of the largest group, at this point the Independent Senators Group, would get a $42,000 raise and the leaders of smaller caucus groups would each get a $21,000 boost.
Currently, only the government's representative and the leader of the opposition get a top-up of just over $42,000.
The new bill would also ensure the different Senate groups are consulted when the government makes appointments such as a new auditor general and ethics officer.
The proposed changes were first considered in the last Parliament as part of their own piece of legislation, which passed the Senate, but died on the order paper when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the election last summer.
Holland said considering the financial implications it makes sense to include these changes as part of the budget bill and it's more efficient. He said he's confident the new version of the Senate is here to stay and these changes just recognize that.
“It would take a very, very long time to begin appointing senators under a more partisan model to undo it, and I also don't think that's reflective of what Canadians would want to see.”
The only officially partisan group in the Senate are the Conservatives, who are down to 16 members. The Independent Group has 41, the progressives 14, the Canadian Senators 12 and there are 15 vacant seats.
Conservative Sen. Don Plett was not available Wednesday due to a series of votes in the chamber, but he spoke on the original bill last spring and said while he was generally supportive, he rejected the idea the bill would make the Senate any less partisan.
“The ISG loves to tell everyone it is not partisan, but this is simply not true. Over and over again, they have proven this by supporting government legislation. This is hardly surprising given that they were appointed by a Liberal government that shares their liberal views,” he said.
“This bill does not make the Senate more independent. The Senate has always been independent. Prime Minister Trudeau did not make it any more or less so. The Senate gets its independence from the fact that senators are appointed and not elected.”