This time last year, the question of what to do about the Senate was at the forefront of Canadian political discourse.
The trial of Sen. Mike Duffy — who faced criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery related to his allegedly improper expense claims — had become a major headache for the Conservatives, as they sought re-election. Auditor General Michael Ferguson released a scathing report into past and present senators’ expense claims, revealing that more than $975,000 had been improperly charged to the taxpayer over a two-year period. Prime minister Stephen Harper continued to deny he knew anything about his chief of staff forking over $90,000 to Duffy, while Sen. Nancy Ruth was busy confirming the worst stereotypes about senators’ sense of entitlement, complaining about the quality of airline food (“ice-cold Camembert and broken crackers“), while attempting to shrug off complaints about Senate attitudes.
It was against this backdrop of naked partisanship, shameless indulgence and unabashed dairy snobbery that the very existence of the red chamber was brought into question. On the campaign trail, New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair pledged that if he became prime minister, he would abolish the Senate at once (though how he would do that was, and remains, unclear). Harper, on the other hand, stopped appointing new senators, while the Liberals under Justin Trudeau landed somewhere in the middle, offering a mushy promise to bring “real change” to the upper chamber through a new appointment process that would be “open, transparent and non-partisan.”
Ten months into the Liberals’ mandate, the once-critical question of how to bring meaningful reform to the Senate has faded behind flashy photo-ops and the prime minister’s high-profile appearances on the world stage. At home, however, the Senate is operating by the same rules that allowed Duffy to file housing expenses for his Ottawa home while claiming a cottage in Prince Edward Island as his primary residence — the exact scenario that kicked off the expense scandal in the first place. Indeed, Duffy has already claimed $1,691.59 for living expenses this quarter — expenses he says the Senate has approved.
Existing senators are still divided along partisan lines (although Liberals were declared to be henceforth “independent” by Trudeau’s decree in 2014) and remain largely unaccountable to the public for the duration of their mandate. The overall usefulness of the Senate as a chamber of “sober second thought“ is no more obvious now than a year ago.
The Liberals have remained true to their promise to assemble an independent board to fill Senate vacancies: even new senators were appointed in March. The process of soliciting applications from the public — from which the government will soon fill 20 more vacant seats — was a rather muted affair, announced through a press release, with candidates given four weeks to apply.
Despite its pledge of openness and transparency, the government has not disclosed how many people applied, nor has it given any indication that this venture into diversifying Senate candidates managed to permeate beyond the circle of Canadian policy wonks who make a habit of reading government press releases and news reports about the red chamber.
The Liberals have indicated they will fill those 20 seats with independent voices by the end of year, but it is unclear how the impartiality of the candidates will be assessed, and how well the Senate will function with a majority of its members unaccountable to a party leader. We only know that 284 people were “considered” and 25 names forwarded to Trudeau for the seven seats filled in March. None were interviewed or personally screened. The lucky few were selected based on “nominations, reference letters, resumes or biographies and personal statements.”
If the government actually intends to win back respect for the Senate, while returning the chamber to the elevated status it once claimed, it seems odd it would fill it with people who have been chosen without even an interview or face-to-face meeting.
The Senate will remain a place where unelected senators have the power to kill legislation from elected members of the House of Commons, only now many of them will not be accountable to any leader or party. They may still bill taxpayers for living expenses in Ottawa, while pretending their “primary” residence is elsewhere, and turn up their noses at cold cheese and broken crackers. Indeed, the new Senate still looks very much like the old, even if the new appointees choose to call themselves “independent.”
National Post