Partisan politics by other means

Prime minister appoints small-l liberals to Senate

You don’ t have to be a card- carrying Liberal to be named as an independent senator, but it appears increasingly as if you have a better chance of becoming one if you are a prominent small-l liberal.

Only one of the six new senators appointed to represent Ontario in the Senate is a regular contributor to the Liberal Party of Canada — former Scotiabank vicechairman Sarabjit Marwah has donated $ 2,400 to the party since 2010.

But a pattern is emerging. The list of 15 senators appointed in the past week by the Trudeau government is sprinkled with human rights activists, women’s issues experts and social workers.

They may not be swiveleyed partisans, in the manner of appointees in days gone by. And they are a massive improvement on the Harper government’s habit of providing a second feast at the public trough for failed election candidates.

But stacking the Senate with fellow travellers is as sure to undermine its legitimacy as the previous tactic of providing a soft, erminecovered landing for hacks, flacks and bagmen.

The new appointees are, doubtless, men and women of ability and i ntegrity.

But t heir associations with organizations like the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and the Association of Black Social Workers do not suggest diverse political opinion.

Marwah is the only representative of the business c ommunity in t he new tranche and he’s a regular contributor to the Liberal party.

Senior Grits will splutter into their macchiato at the very idea political bias is at play, pointing out the latest list includes a former female head of the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs (Gwen Boniface) and the ex-head of the Ontario Securities Commission (Howard Wetston).

The case for the defence is that the recommendations are made by an independent advisory board and based on merit.

Yet t he appointments are still made by the prime minister and we have no idea who was rejected. More than 2,700 people applied to fill the 21 vacancies in the 105-seat upper house.

Further, t he advisory board itself has all the hallmarks of a politically homogeneous cabal — an elite band of Order of Canada recipients, academics, senior lawyers and charity workers.

The nominees were always going to mirror the appearance of those who nominated them.

The problem, of course, is how do you define political independence? No two people could ever agree on how it can be achieved. But reaching, or at least appearing to reach, that state of grace is crucial at this juncture in the Senate’s history.

The British House of Lords has already gone down this road. The existence of unaligned “crossbenchers” has changed the character of debates in the upper house.

Crossbenchers act like a jury, sitting in judgment of the arguments made by opposing sides and have an important influence on the tone and even outcome of debates.

The Senate is entering a brave new post- Westminster world where the idea of a clear delineation between government and opposition becomes a thing of the past.

By the time Justin Trudeau has finished, the independent senators will hold 44 seats, outnumbering the 40 Conservatives and 21 independent Liberals.

As Sen. Stephen Greene and researcher Christopher Reed wrote recently, the death of the Westminster system should not be mourned.

“No l onger operating under the adversarial system of government versus opposition … the Senate can better fulfil the role the Fathers of Confederation intended” — that is, a chamber removed from the electoral process and the short- term focus of the political arena.

But that works only if the appointment process is seen as being beyond reproach.

After two batches of senatorial appointments, the concern is that we are about to see the continuation of partisan politics by other means.

MIRROR THE APPEARANCE OF THOSE WHO NOMINATED THEM.