Email exposes clash in Senate
Independents, Tories at odds over delayed vote
OTTAWA• With little time remaining to pass government legislation before summer, Independents and Conservatives are clashing in the upper house.
Tensions came to a head this past weekend with a nonpartisan senator copying all Senate staff on a saltily- worded, midnight- hour email to a Tory colleague — a scuffle that appears emblematic of rising frustrations in a more independent Senate.
Sen. Frances Lankin accused Sen. Leo Housakos of playing “partisan games” and giving a“blatant misrepresentation” of facts to the press after Housakos accused the government of blocking his motion to study a recent Bombardier bailout.
Housakos moved Thursday to have the Senate’s transport committee conduct a two- month study on the as- yet- unreleased terms of the Liberal government’s recent $ 373- million loan to Bombardier.
Lankin supported t he idea. But she and other Independents — who are soon to hold a majority — voted in favour of an adjournment motion from the government deputy in the Senate, Diane Bellemare, postponing debate until this week.
Housakos issued a press release Friday accusing the government of blocking his motion for partisan reasons, and accused Trudeau Independents of the same in an interview with online outlet the National Observer.
“Really Leo?” began an email from Lankin, copied to all Senate staff, which landed in inboxes at about 12: 20 a.m. Saturday.
“As you know I spoke to your motion and indicated I support having a Senate Committee examine t he Bombardier deal. However to suggest the government blocked your motion is such a blatant mis representation of what happened as to be truly shocking,” she wrote.
She called it “galling” that Housakos would want to bring the motion to a vote before senators had a chance to speak to it this week, “given all the times your caucus has insisted on adjourning debates.” Lankin said it was a “stunt” to score political points and that’s the kind of thing that makes Canadians “cynical about politicians and our democratic institutions.”
Reached Monday, Lankin said the email was meant to be “internal” and “I really don’t have any comment,” but “really, everything I have to say is in the email.”
Independent Sen. André Pratte sent an email to senators Monday afternoon indicating he plans to amend the Housakos motion so it includes review of other government loans.
Pratte said the Housakos motion ignored a similar loan of $350 million to Bombardier by the Harper government in 2008.
“Why should Parliament limit itself to examining the Liberal government loan?”
Housakos fired back, “the public is outraged and concerned with this specific loan. Thus ( it) requires a narrower and more timely action.”
Housakos told the National Post senators were given ample notice of his motion and said the idea senators simply wanted more debating time is “BS,” characterizing the newest Senate appointees as “lapdogs for the Trudeau government” and “complete lackeys.”
“It’s appalling that not a single member of the Trudeau Independent senators, not one stood up to put an end to that adjournment,” he said, accusing Independents of “voting consistently in support” of whatever Liberal government representatives do. “
This is the kind of stuff t hat happens in North Korea,” he added.
The Post reported last week the government representative in the Senate, Sen. Peter Harder, was accusing Conservatives of being “obstructionist” and unduly delaying government bills with such tactics as adjournment votes.
Two bills are at third reading in the Senate — C- 4, a labour bill, and C- 6, a citizenship bill. The latter has been delayed due to Conservative filibuster, but a tentative deal will see it passed before Easter.
The Senate has amended C- 6, so it must be voted on again in the House of Commons before going to royal assent. That has yet to happen for another bill, C-7 (the RCMP union bill), which the Senate sent back to the Commons last June.