Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the first crew of senators named by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau appointed seven new senators last week, to a general lack of excitement. Ottawa’s pundits, perhaps still worn out by the thrill of the prime minister’s visit to Washington, and busy speculating on the contents of Tuesday’s budget, have been almost universally silent.
In a way, it’s not a surprise. It’s been a long time since the Senate offered anything but bad news. People are sick of hearing about Mike Duffy and the dubious means senators employed to nickel and dime the taxpayer, which was raked over once again yesterday in a report by former Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie. They’re ready for the Senate to return to the boring, overpriced, near-irrelevant slumber chamber it’s been for most of its existence.
Still, you’d think there would be at least a smidgen of curiosity about the latest appointees. They’re the first by the new prime minister, the first in three years (since former prime minister Harper gave up in disgust and quit appointing anyone at all), the first under the Liberals’ heralded new arm’s-length advisory council, the first to be appointed entirely as independents, and the opening wave in the Liberals’ proclaimed plan to de-partisan the benighted second chamber.
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Surveying the names on the Liberal list of appointees, two thoughts spring to mind. 1. The Liberals appear to have concluded that the best way to escape the sort of Senate controversy that engulfed the Tories is to make the process as boring as humanly possible. 2. Having achieved that, they’ve used public ennui to appoint exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint.
To get the apathy ball rolling, Trudeau’s government announced in January it had appointed a three-member committee to advise it on potential appointees. It had three permanent members: a federal bureaucrat and two academics, plus “ad hoc” members from provinces with vacancies. The first ad hoc advisers included another bureaucrat, the head of a native women’s group, the head of a Quebec doctor’s organization, an athlete, a singer and the head of a charity.
It duly sent some names to Ottawa, from which Trudeau picked his chosen seven: the head of his transition team, a former Ontario NDP cabinet minister, an academic, an “expert on migration and diversity”, a Paralympic athlete, a federalist journalist from Quebec and the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools.
Since the Liberals claim all new senators have to be non-partisan, we’ll have to assume all these people assured the prime minister of their independence, though, looking at the list, it’s not hard to guess they skew pretty much to the left. Not a lot of closet Tories in that group. As my colleague John Robson put it, the list is so predictable of a Liberal government it might have been selected by an affirmative action random-elite-candidate-generator.
And what else would you expect? Examine the membership of the advisory committee and you notice it’s heavy with people paid from the public purse, or dependent on government for grace and favour. Who else would they put forward but Canadians who reflect their own background: public servants, academics, friendly faces, administrators, reliable interest groups and members of other Liberal-friendly operations. They don’t reflect Canada so much as they reflect the Liberals’ view of Canada: people like them; people you see in the salons of Ottawa, people who will be sympathetic to Liberal aspirations and the Liberal way of doing things. Even if, under Trudeau’s directive, they have to promise not to call themselves Liberals.
James Cowan, the leader of Senate Liberals, understands the dynamics at work. Senate Liberals used to be Liberal senators, until Trudeau decreed that there are no more Liberal senators, and thus they must identify themselves as Senate Liberals. In much the same manner, Cowan says, there’s nothing to stop him wooing the new “Independent” senators into working with his Liberal members. “I will certainly be inviting them to come and have a look at the way we do business and see if it appeals to them,” he told the Globe and Mail.
To be fair to the Liberals, it would be difficult for any government to find 105 Canadians who have the experience, expertise and understanding of Ottawa’s ways demanded for Senate membership, yet have developed no views on how the country should be run, or which side of the political divide attracts their sympathy. But no other prime minister before Trudeau claimed the ability to do it. His “independents” may not hold a party membership, but that’s not the only measure of independence. Would it have been too much to include just one new senator who doesn’t see government as the answer to every problem? An entrepreneur? Someone who’s been required to meet a payroll or risked their own money on an idea?
Evidently so.
National Post