INDEPENDENT SENATORS SEEK CHANGES TO HOW RED CHAMBER IS RUN
The Senate’s largest group wants changes to how the red chamber operates, but the Conservative Senate leader says it is little more than a power grab.
Senator Yuen Pau Woo, head of the Independent Senator’s Group (ISG), held a press conference Thursday, at the end of several days of meetings for the independent group. The ISG is now the biggest caucus in the chamber with 51 members. The Conservative Party has 24 senators, a new group called the Canadian Senators Group has 13, there are 12 non-affiliated senators and five vacant seats.
The government has an official representative in the Senate, but the Liberals cut official ties with its senators even before the party came to power in 2015. The last group of Liberal senators in the chamber recently disbanded. The Conservative senators are the only group still tied to a party in the House of Commons.
Woo said in the last session the chamber’s time was badly spent as procedural delays and tactics slowed down legislation.
“The problem is excessive, partisan gamesmanship, which all leads to an unproductive use of Senate time and resources,” he said.
He said those stalling tactics delayed legislation and prevented fulsome debate.
“We are not against the need for debate, thorough debate, exhaustive debate, but if you’re spending the time sitting in your office or the chamber waiting for the bells to stop, that is not a good use of time.”
Woo specifically called out Conservative senators for preventing legislation from moving forward. He said the ISG hopes to change senate procedures to put an end to delay tactics.
Woo also called for changes to the Parliament of Canada Act, which regulates the rules around both chambers. He said the section on the Senate still recognizes a government and opposition side, but the vast majority of senators no longer align with either.
“The overwhelming majority of senators are not part of either the government or the opposition,” he said.
The Liberal’s election platform called for such a change and Woo said he wants to see the government move ahead with it.
“We are looking forward to specific mention of this item in the speech from the throne,” said Woo.
Conservative Senator Don Plett, who is the leader of the opposition in the Senate, dismissed the suggestion his party had slowed down the process. He said all government legislation moved ahead based on a timetable he negotiated with the government’s representative, Senator Peter Harder.
“We voted on bills when we promised to vote on them,” he said. “We voted on every piece of legislation, as controversial as it might have been, we voted on it.”
Plett said Woo simply wants more power in the new senate. He said the group of independents nearly always vote with the Liberal party.
“Senator Woo wants to be an independent senator. He wants to be the leader of the government in the Senate and he wants to be the leader of the opposition in the Senate,” he said.
Plett also accused Woo of trying to change the funding levels of the different groups in the Senate.
Two private members bills — the JUST act, which was proposed by former interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose and required training on sexual assault law for new judges and a bill requiring Canadian law to align with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People — were both stalled in the senate during the last term.
Plett said before the senate changes that came through in recent years, they would negotiate on private member’s bills. He said Woo wasn’t at the negotiating table for some sessions, because the ISG didn’t deviate from the government’s view.
“Why would you negotiate with someone who is on your side in the first place?” Asked Plett.
He said making changes to how an institution that has run for more than a 150 years doesn’t make sense.
Along with the procedural issues, the senate will have to deal with Senator Lynn Beyak when the session resumes.
Beyak was suspended without pay in May for refusing to take down racist letters from her senate website about residential schools.
The suspension lifted automatically when the federal election began, but Beyak sent a letter to her colleagues asking them not to reimpose the sanction.
“I deeply respect the Senate and love working with my Senate colleagues. I pledge myself to uphold the highest standards of conduct and look forward to working hard for all of the people of Ontario and Canada,” she said in a letter to her colleagues.
Woo said Thursday he had seen Beyak’s response, but it would be up to the ethics committee to resolve the issue.