Cabinet and Senate: Ongoing bad behaviour is stability, of a sort

I don't have much to observe about today's developments in federal politics, except to say that I am profoundly unsurprised, unlike the madly twittering press corps. Harper's favorite cabinet ministers, such as Baird and Clement, got prime posts. Harper's incompetent and contemptuous ministers who were nonetheless defended by his administration, like Oda, got to stay put. Young up-and-comers from regions where the Conservatives won lots of seats, like Alexander and Adams, were left out of cabinet, but will probably become parliamentary secretaries. And defeated Senators who ran for Parliament but were rejected by voters were tucked nicely back into their Senate sinecures, despite assurances that they had no intention of returning to the upper chamber. Oh, and the invisible minister of her day, Josee Verner, will be joining them.

I can't work up outrage over this. It's entirely consistent with Harper's approach to politics over the past 5 years. And 40% of voters (the ones who gave him a majority) don't give a care. This is stability, of a sort. It's just stability of unpleasant and blatantly partisan behaviour.

What does upset me is the thought of how many editorials might run tomorrow denouncing the Senate appointments, all from newspaper editorial boards who endorsed Harper's re-election, knowing full well that this is how he operates.

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Partisan mailouts redux

I don't post here nearly as often as I once did, largely because there is very little that is subtle about the current state of Canadian politics that inspires me to thoughtful commentary. It's far more common these days, to me at least, to see blatant abuses of power, flat-out lies and shifts in policy that are informed by little other than the whims of the Prime Minister. But, since the topic of today's post was a hobby-horse for me a while ago, I'll give it a whirl!

Remember the really offensive 10-per-cent mailers that we used to get, sent by Conservative MPs using taxpayer dollars to engage in vicious attacks on the Liberals and the NDP under the guise of "informational material"? The House of Commons voted a while ago to ban this delightful practice. And now it's back, courtesy of the body of sober second thought, the Senate, as this Star article points out. Conservative Senators have been engaging in precisely the same tactics to attack Liberal and Conservative MPs. I suppose the main difference here is that in the Senate, the Conservatives almost have the numbers to block an effort to vote out this practice.

Charming.

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Filibuster

At some point, and I'm not sure if that point will come, the Democrats are going to have to decide if they really believe in their agenda. If they do, they're going to have to sell it hard to the voting population. Because if they do that, the threat of a filibuster will not scare them into craven submission. They will meet the challenge head on, confident that the Republican party will pay in the ballot box in the midterm elections for making Congress non-functional.

In the last 30 years (it goes back further than that, but it illustrates my point), the Republican party has never held 60 Senate seats. And yet their legislation got passed. The same applies to the Democrats. The filibuster is a scare tactic, and one that should not be treated as if it can be undertaken lightly. Unless the Democrats think their legislation is so weak that it could be brought down in a "Mister Smith goes to Washington" scenario, they need to strap on a set of spines, and get down to the business of governing, and pillory the Republicans in the press for daring to flout the will of the American people.

If not, they might as well hand the keys to the White House back to Dick Cheney.

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Senate salaries - and other trivialities that Peter Stoffer is studying

There's a lot of idiocy to comment on these days in Canadian political life, and I'm too busy with work to deal with it all. But Nova Scotia NDP MP Peter Stoffer's "revelation" of what 27 new Conservative Senate appointees will cost in salaries and expenses if they serve their full term falls firmly in the category of pot-calling-the-kettle-black on the "wasting taxpayer dollars" front. All Senators - Liberal, Conservative, NDP - are paid out of taxpayer dollars. As are MPs. As are their staffs. As is the entire freaking bureaucracy. This is not news. And until we have Senate reform that is accepted by both the federal government and the provinces, I'd rather that the upper house not sit completely vacant, unable to carry out its responsibilities or represent the provinces it is supposed to serve. Moreover, assuming that days spent sitting in the upper chamber is the only thing that Senators do as part of their jobs is a classic example of setting up a straw-man argument.

Canadian Press, which wrote the non-story, at least isn't wasting taxpayer dollars by writing it. CBC, which decided to cover this non-announcement and waste time on it, did. So did Peter Stoffer, who clearly thinks this is how his time as a Member of Parliament (and the time of his taxpayer-paid staff) should be spent, also wasted taxpayer dollars preparing this media release.

If you want Senate reform, that's fine. But let's not pretend that whatever configuration a revamped upper house assumes will not also entail the spending of taxpayer dollars on salaries and expenses.

And let's also not pretend - even among NDP voters - that until the House of Commons moves to some sort of proportional representation system, that there aren't large swaths of the population that are extremely relieved that the Senate can slow down legislation rammed through a "majority" government elected with 39-43% of the popular vote.

ETA: In other conversations, I've been having, it's been pointed out to me that the NDP isn't in favour of Senate reform, but of complete abolition of the upper house. In that case, I will retract /some/ of what I've said about hypocrisy - but only in so far as it pertains to the cost savings of complete abolition. But let me make two other points here. First, I think the Senate serves useful functions. It does initiate legislation, and it does provide an important corrective to the wording/phrasing of bills. This is particularly important because often legislation is rushed through the House to serve highly partisan aims. Without having a reformed electoral system for the House of Commons, it's also the only check that we have on the false majority governments of the day. And I, for one, would be quite concerned about eliminating the upper house without reforming the lower one.

But my bigger concern is the way that Stoffer has chosen to go after the Senate. If the NDP has principled objections to the role of the Senate or the manner of its appointment, it should tackle them directly. Using the "government is too expensive" line feeds into a very nasty discourse, usually used by the right wing, about trying to eliminate all sorts of government programs and salaries/benefits for public officials. While the NDP may take issue with how certain spending is conducted, I don't think they'd be happy to see public health care eliminated on the basis of what doctors (or even better, nurses) will earn in their lifetime. Nor would they argue in favour of its abolition on the basis of what 27 Conservative citizens of Alberta could potentially cost the health care system over their lifetimes.

Or perhaps they would. But it's a dangerous tactic to start down the path of "government officials/programs are too expensive" argument. Therein lies building massive public support for deep cuts to most of the social programs that the NDP holds dear (as they should!)

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Just another reason to think Paul Martin Jr was a tool

I'm sure that someone else has pointed this out already, but it bears repeating. If Paul Martin wasn't such a dithering idiot, Stephen Harper wouldn't have a full 18 Senate seats that he could stack this month. Several of those vacancies are holdovers from the Martin years.

Yet another reason to blame Paul Martin for the current mess that is our federal politics!

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Harper and the Senate - or - The Principles of an Amoeba

Assuming that this story in the Ottawa Citizenis correct, Stephen Harper is set to appoint 18 Senators before Christmas. This is precisely the sort of act that those opposed to proroguing Parliament had feared.

It's also, in case you're keeping score, yet another instance of Harper being willing to completely ignore his stated political principles. Proroguing Parliament meant that his bill to change the Senate died on the order paper. So... rather than attempting to change the way Senators are appointed and limit their terms, he'll just appoint a large new bunch the old-fashioned way, and during a period where the confidence of the House of Commons in his government is in doubt.

Will anyone care? Probably not enough...

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Senate Reform and Unilateralism - or - Lessons from the Three Little Pigs

In re-introducing his Senate Reform Bill, Stephen Harper has hinted that if the Liberal-dominated Senate again tries to block his proposed reforms - an elected Senate which serves 8-year terms - he will support Jack Layton's proposal that the Senate be abolished altogether.

Nice try, Stephen (aka the Big Bad Wolf), but the Senators, senile though you think they may be, are no fools on this front. They are well aware that as much as you may huff and puff, your threats cannot be backed up with force, and the Upper House cannot be blown down so easily. Another Prime Minister, bolder and better versed in constitutional affairs than the current occupant of that office, also once tried to change the shape of the Senate unilaterally. His name was Pierre Trudeau, and in 1978-1979, his Bill C-60 would have transformed the Senate into the House of the Federation, a body which would have been jointly elected by the House of Commons and the provincial legislatures. But it was not to be, as the Supreme Court ruled (in Reference Re Legislative Authority of Parliament to Alter or Replace the Senate (1980) 1 S.C.R. 54) that the federal government cannot alone alter the fundamental nature of the Senate.

Any changes to the Senate are going to require the consent of the provincial legislatures - and right now a number of key players, Ontario and Quebec at the forefront, are strenuously opposed to Harper's reforms. All of Harper's bluster (and that of Jack Layton about a national referendum) is mere posturing at this point. I rather suspect that Harper is aware that pushing this issue beyond legislative attempts to bully the Senate will entail proposing much broader-ranging constitutional reforms if Ontario and Quebec are going to consider changing this key central body. I don't think he has the stomach for that.

For the record, I'm not fundamentally opposed to reforming the Senate, per se. But I don't think that this should be a matter of a half-assed legislative bill. The Senate was originally created to be a counter-point to the House of Commons that provided a greater voice for regions. While the House seats are (more-or-less) divided on the basis of representation by population, the Senate is regionally weighted - with about 24 seats per region (plus 6 for Nfld and one for each territory). This regional weighting does not pose a major problem for provinces that are underrepresented by population, because as an appointed body with more limited powers, it is not seen as having the same "democratic legitimacy" as the House. And, generally speaking, it does not act as if this were the case. The Senate provides an important function of legislative review, but very rarely blocks a bill altogether.

An elected Senate, on the other hand, would rightly feel more empowered to block legislation and play a more decisive role in the legislative process. The question that must be faced squarely by Canadians when deciding whether to reform this body is whether they like the idea of an institution whose membership is determined by region rather than by rep-by-pop having this much power. This is talking about a major shift in terms of how Canada is governed, and the extent to which regions are given a more explicit voice in federal institutions. This is not a change to be imposed lightly, and provinces such as Ontario (and the Senators who held up the first version of this bill) are right to raise a red flag about this issue.

On a related note, it appears that the House of Commons bill to increase the number of seats allocated to Ontario, BC and Alberta is also being reintroduced. For my thoughts on this bill, see this earlier post. I'm curious - does anyone else think that Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament in September, and then reintroduce a whole whack of bills is proving to be a frightful waste of Parliament's resources? Frankly, I am shocked and appalled at this frivolous use of taxpayer dollars, to have bills being re-debated and hours of the MP's and Senator's time wasted so that Harper could engage in his bit of Parliamentary gamesmanship (/close dripping sarcasm tag>). Someone who has derided Parliamentary waste in the past should be more careful about opening himself up to the same criticism.

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Venerable institutions with lifetime appointments

It's the Christmas season, my marking is done for the term, and I'm really not all that engaged with the news cycle, hence the paucity of posts here. This post serves two purposes - one personal and one political.

First, for those who read this blog for my keen political insights, there is a piece in today's Globe indicating that Harper's proposed Senate reforms are popular with voters. So are kittens and puppies, but you don't see them making the top 10 list for voter priorities. I will eventually get around to a more detailed post on this, but essentially I see this is a rather half-baked sop to the old Triple-E Senate proposals of the early Reform Party days. However, it lacks full implementation of even a single one of the "E"'s, with no change in seat distribution, no mandatory implementation of the referendum results, and no guarantee that this will make the Senate a more effective body. It's also a complete cop-out as far as Parliamentary reform goes, since the House of Commons is in much more dire need of an overhaul, and ideally the two Houses should be revamped as part of a package deal. Frankly, that's the only way that you have a hope of getting the provincial governments on side. By and large, I don't think that voters will care one bit whether this proposal goes through or not.

And speaking of venerable institutions where members get lifetime appointments, I am extremely happy to report that I've taken one major step in that direction. Of course, by the time I'm in my fifties, lifetime tenure may have gone the way of the dodo in Canada, but for the time being, I'm now on that track. The fine folks at the University of Guelph have decided to hire me in their history department, and so I'm heading back to Ontario next summer. It's a happy Christmas indeed in our household.

I may or may not have more to post over the holiday season, but if I don't, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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