Tories can jump on Senate issue

Senator Mike Duffy laid the Conservative party low. His acquittal on all 31 of the charges against him has also handed it a possible ladder to resurrection, however.

Don’t l augh: The Conservatives have a sterling opportunity now to reinvent themselves as the party of accountability, with a populist crusade for Senate abolition in the vanguard.

First, your guffaws; let’s deal with them. You note correctly that Stephen Harper’s PMO sparked the Mike Duffy mess and nursed it lovingly into a big, history-bending bonfire; that Justice Charles Vaillancourt’s ruling last Thursday excoriated the then-PM’s men, and women, for what he termed “mind- boggling” behaviour; and that their machinations, though apparently not criminal, convey the sickly-sweet stench of rampant decay. Yes.

But consider the implications of Duffy’s acquittal for the Chamber itself, in light of the findings of Auditor General Michael Ferguson in June of 2015 — an investigation that foreshadowed l ast week’s big news by demonstrating, essentially, that Duffy was merely one among many who were taking advantage of loose oversight and vague rules.

“As a group, senators are responsible for governing themselves and how the Senate f unctions,” reads the audit’s catchiest line, to my ear at least. “They design their own rules, choose whether to enforce those rules, and determine what, if any, information will be publicly disclosed.”

Has the Senate as a whole been exonerated? Not a bit. If anything, Duffy’s acquittal casts it in worse light than before. Will the reforms introduced thus far by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — specifically his arms- length process to select non- partisan eminent persons, seven of whom were appointed l ast month — provide a permanent fix? It would be nice to think so. Realism suggests otherwise.

This is not to impugn the calibre of the seven new independent senators named thus far. On the contrary, the new process seems to be working as billed, to the extent that none of the seven — including Peter Harder, the government’s point man in the transition and now in the Senate — are Liberal hacks.

But the fact remains that, once named, every new Senator — and there are 18 further vacancies, with many more looming in the years ahead — has a guaranteed gig until death or age 75, whichever comes first. Tory senators remain nominally representatives of the Conservative party and, thus, accountable to its leader.

Former Liberal Senators, and even more so the newly named independents, are accountable to no one — not even the PM who put them in the job. Moreover, we have now seen just how difficult it is — let’s call it impossible, in practical terms — to have a sitting senator removed.

Because Senators are human and humans are flawed, and because of the structural lack of accountability in having non- elected, appointed legislators enjoying legally protected lifelong sinecures, it stands to reason there will at some point in future be another cacophonous spending scandal involving senators. It may be brewing already.

The argument against outright abolition — and it is persuasive — has been that it’s practically impossible, given the Supreme Court’s declaration two years ago Monday: “The implementation of consultative elections and senatorial term limits requires consent of the Senate, the House of Commons, and the legislative assemblies of at least seven provinces representing, in the aggregate, half the population of all the provinces … The abolition of the Senate requires t he unanimous consent of the Senate, the House of Commons, and the legislative assemblies of all Canadian provinces.”

Hence the spectre of another constitutional round, along the lines of Meech Lake and Charlottetown, knowing such talks would be divisive, difficult, prot racted, distracting and expensive in terms of poli t i cal oxygen, and arguably dangerous to national unity. This is why the Liberals promised only reform within the confines of what’s possible without constitutional talks. It’s why Harper ditched the last of his Senate- reform aspirations two years ago. It’s why the New Democratic Party’s “roll up the Red Carpet” campaign, launched in the wake of the Duffy scandal, lacked heft.

But here’s the nub: If there is a pathway to abolition — one that forces the hands of provincial legislators, making a consensus practically achievable — it is via a national referendum in which the vote goes massively in favour of abolition. It’s difficult to foresee circumstances, even absent another big spending scandal, in which the outcome wouldn’t be upwards of 90 per cent for scrapping the place and turning it into a museum.

For the Tories, committing now to holding such a referendum would have three advantages. First, it would provide a focal point for rebranding in the wake of last year’s bruising defeat. Second, it would rally diehard supporters who still remember the Reform Party’s grassroots outrage at spending and power without accountability. Third, it would put the party in a tactical position to beat the Liberals about the head and neck when, as seems sadly inevitable, the first spending-and-entitlements scandal of the newly reformed Red Chamber gets rolling.