Tag Archives: Senate

Harper Tories evoking laughter and anger

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Published May 21, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record. 

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” — Retired House of Commons law clerk Rob Walsh, on the Mike Duffy/Nigel Wright Senate expenses uproar, CBC-TV, May 17.

Politicians don’t like it when people get really mad at them. Anger creates political damage. But they like it far less when people start laughing at them. Humour can destroy politicians and their careers. Witness former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, an honourable man who never recovered after Stephen Harper (with significant help from Mike Duffy, then a broadcaster) got the country laughing at him in the 2008 election.

Today, it seems to me, the Harper government is in peril of being dragged across that line between anger and laughter. The anger is real and it is not confined to the Ottawa bubble. It is everywhere. Just read the letters to the editor, listen to the hotline shows, follow the blogs and other traffic on the internet, or simply ask folks at Tims.

People are angry, and rightly so. A Conservative party that was elected to clean up the mess in Ottawa after the Liberal sponsorship scandal has made matters worse. A party that was supposed to be good managers, if nothing else, has managed to combine bureaucratic ineptitude, partisan insensitivity, bullying tactics and what York University political scientist Ian Greene calls the “arrogance of office” to turn Ottawa into a toxic waste dump, politically speaking.

Harper’s approach to problems is not to meet them head on and to fix them promptly, which is what astute prime ministers do. Rather he denies the problems exist, attacks the opposition or the media, runs ads, or prorogues Parliament, then deflects blame from himself by throwing someone else under the bus. In Harper’s Ottawa, the prime minister takes credit for everything good, but responsibility for nothing bad. To my recollection, the words, “It was my fault,” or “I was wrong,” have never passed his lips.

Now that Senators Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau, plus the Prime Minister’s Office chief of staff Nigel Wright, have joined discarded former ministers Bev Oda, Helena Guergis, Peter Penashue and John Duncan, it must be getting crowded under the Harper bus.

There is a certain dark humour in this. A prime minister who was elected on a promise to reform the Senate turns it into a cesspool of Conservative patronage. Every single senator he has appointed in seven years has been a Tory; each one has been required to swear fealty to the Harper program.

Although there are hordes of Conservatives out there who would jump at the chance to earn $132,000 a year, Harper found ones who either don’t know where they live or don’t understand the simple words, “principal residence.” They run up expenses like an out-of-control bullion train, ostensibly not grasping the fact that if they go forth to campaign for the Conservative party, they should not be claiming to be on Senate business. That’s called double-dipping and it is frowned on by the conflict-of-interest people, the Senate ethics committee and probably by Canada Revenue.

Mike Duffy got caught claiming a senatorial housing allowance to which he was not entitled and was ordered to repay $90,000. Did he pay it? Nope. Pleading poverty, he went to Nigel Wright in the Prime Minister’s Office, who wrote him a personal cheque for the $90,000.

By all accounts, Wright is a good (rich) man. He wanted to help poor “Duff.” He may also have wanted to make the Duffy problem go away before it did more damage to the Harper brand. But being wiser in the ways of business than of politics, he may not have understood the ethical implications when a senior figure in the Prime Minister’s Office makes a large gift to a parliamentarian whose support the prime minister counts on.

Back in 1982, Allan Fotheringham wrote a satirical book about the Trudeau Liberals entitled, Malice in Blunderland. I wish he hadn’t written it. We could use the title today for the Harper Tories.

The three problems with the Canadian senate

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Published Mar. 4, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record

The headline fairly leapt off the front page of the Toronto Star last week:

“Senate in crisis.”

A subhead, printed in black and red, declared: “PM backing off support of Wallin as swirling controversies over spending, shocking sexual assault allegations have upper chamber on the defensive.” A separate box invited Star readers to look inside for “in-depth coverage” in four additional stories.

Wow! Swirling controversies and shocking allegations! Senators on the defensive! One can picture the scene: wizened senators deployed strategically in the nave of the red chamber, muskets loaded as they prepare to defend their perks and constitutional prerogatives against an invading horde of accountants, auditors and mean-spirited abolitionists from the lower house. The upper house hasn’t seen such excitement since 1986 when Pierre Trudeau’s pal, Senator Jacques Hébert, staged a 21-day hunger strike in the Senate foyer to protest the elimination of federal funding for Katimavik, a youth program he had created.

By the end of the week, the government had moved into damage control. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that all senators had met their residency requirements — this assurance being given before the facts were in — before the Senate had completed its review of members’ residency declarations. Next we will be told that the expense accounts of all 104 sitting senators are in perfect order, even if the accountants haven’t gotten around to checking all of them. The honour system prevails.
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There are three problems, of which the third is the most serious. The first is expense accounting fiddling. That happens in all organizations, and it strains credulity to be told the Senate, with its bloated spending and notoriously weak oversight, is immune.

The second is residency. The Constitution needs to be fixed, but until it is, senators are required to have their principal residences in the province they represent. If they can’t produce a health card, driver’s licence or income tax return from that province, they can theoretically be forced to forfeit their seat. Does such strict construction of the Constitution make sense these days? Not much, but it’s still the law.

It appears that 40 to 50 senators may be on thin ice on the residency issue. Harper’s assurance that they are all good to go is based on the declaration senators must make that they own at least $4,000 worth of property — a house or condo or conceivably just a garage — in the province they represent. Whether they actually live there is anyone’s guess, and that’s an issue the Senate is still trying to figure out. Until it does, the honour system will prevail.

The third and larger problem is the shabby way successive prime ministers have used the Senate. They do not scour the land in search of candidates who have ability, legislative experience or eagerness to serve. They limit their search to supporters, people who have money to donate or who have served the party loyally in the past and can be trusted to continue to serve it from the comfort of the upper house.

Harper is not the first PM to abuse the Senate this way, but he has become the most blatant offender. He appoints only Conservatives, and his insistence that they support the government in everything makes a mockery of senatorial review of government legislation and spending. His Tories control the lower house; now he has shackled the upper one.

But is the Senate in crisis, as the newspaper would have it? Not really — not any more than it has been over the years. It’s just getting a lot more attention.

The spotlight, however, makes this a very good time to get serious about a proposal that Conservative Senator Hugh Segal has been promoting for eight years. Segal, who would rank near the top of any list of most valuable senators, wants a national referendum on the future of the place: to reform it; keep it as it is; or abolish it. Yes, it’s time to ask the people.

Scandal shows rules for irrelevant senate outdated

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Published Feb. 25, 2013 in The Waterloo Region Record.

The Senate of Canada, that venerable and mostly irrelevant appendage, is much in the news of late.

Teapot tempests over residency rules and senators’ travel and living expenses are impeding a more important debate: do we need a senate and, if so, what do we want it to do?

I frankly don’t care where Senator Mike Duffy, a broadcast journalist before he went over to the dark side, calls home. He may be a resident of Prince Edward Island where he was born and where he keeps a summer cottage (at Cavendish). Or it may be Ontario where he has lived for 40-odd years, where he has a home (on the outskirts of Ottawa), where he pay taxes and has his driver’s licence, health card and his cardiologist (he has had serious heart problems).

Duffy regards himself as an Islander. Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepted him as such when he appointed him to represent P.E.I. (The Constitution requires senators to own $4,000 in “real property” in the province they represent. Duffy had that in P.E.I. as well as is in Ontario.)
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He came a cropper when it was revealed it had claimed his P.E.I. cottage as his principal residence and had collected $42,000-odd in an allowance for a secondary residence in Ottawa. It is clear Ottawa was, and is, his principal residence. Although it is also clear he should not have claimed the allowance — he says he will repay the money — I do have some sympathy.

What would have happened if he had declared his principal residence to be in Ontario? He could have avoided the living-allowance controversy — but he would have had to resign from the Senate because the Constitution, adopted 146 years ago, requires senators to “be resident in the province” for which they are appointed.

The residency rules make no sense the days. They are vestiges of an era when senators came to Ottawa once or twice a year by train, stayed in the capital until the session ended, then got on the train to go home again. Principal residence wasn’t an issue.

These days, a senator like Duffy can get on a plane in Charlottetown or Ottawa in morning, fly to the other place (working his smartphone as he goes), spend the day tending to public business, then fly back at the end of the day. It doesn’t matter where he calls his principal residence.

The Constitution is an impediment to modernization of many procedures, in the Senate and elsewhere. Senate reform is not going to happen any time soon, though. In the interval, a more flexible approach by the government and the Senate would let senators like Duffy and others choose the place they want to call home.

The case of Saskatchewan Senator Pamela Wallin is different. I have known Pam for years, and I have no idea where she lives. I don’t even know how to figure that out. She owns a condo in Toronto, which is rented out. She owns another condo in New York, which may or may not be rented. Her hometown is Wadena, Sask., where she is co-owner (with her sister) of a house in town; she also has a cottage at Fishing Lake outside town.

Among her several residential options, Wallin chooses the house in Wadena as her principal residence. That seems fair enough. Instead of maintaining a second home in Ottawa, she stays in a hotel there. Her hotel expenses are covered by the Senate.

Her travel costs between Ottawa and Wadena are not excessive. But she claimed a whopping $321,027 for “other” travel in Canada and beyond in a two-year period. Some of that would be travel on behalf of the Conservative party because Wallin is in demand as a speaker at fundraisers.

The issue to my mind is not how much Wallin spends on party-related travel. It is why the Tory party is not picking up those bills instead of sticking the taxpayer with them.

Senate remains Harper’s bugbear

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Published Feb. 11, 2013, in The Waterloo Region Record.

A case can be made that the prime minister of Canada, when armed with a majority, is more powerful politically than the president of the United States.

As long as he keeps his caucus on side, he can do pretty much anything he wants. He can amend laws and suspend regulations. Unlike the president, he does not have to beg and wheedle for the support of legislators. He can force the adoption of unpopular measures, as Brian Mulroney did with free trade and the goods and services tax. If he feels like it, he can use his power of prorogation to send MPs home until he feels like calling them back.

Being prime minister is not a bad gig — until it comes to doing something about the Senate. Ah yes, the Senate.

The Senate is Stephen Harper’s personal bugbear. He has wanted to do something, something meaningful, about the Senate since his Reform party days. He has tried. My, how he’s tried! Since becoming prime minister in 2006, he has made four or, depending on how you count these things, five attempts to reform the upper house. All to no avail.

His frustration became apparent early in his tenure. “This party’s preference is to see a reformed and elected Senate, but the Senate must change,” he told the Commons in 2007. “If the Senate cannot be elected, then it should be abolished. Those are the choices.”

Six years on, the Senate has not been reformed. It is not elected. It has not changed. It has not been abolished. It still stands, an irksome reminder that even great power is not absolute.
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Early on, Harper refused to replace retiring senators. Perhaps he thought if he ignored the place and let the numbers run down, the Senate would come to embrace his passion for reform.

When that didn’t happen, he reversed course, stuffing the red chamber with every living, breathing Conservative he could find (58 at last count). He asked two things of his appointees. First, they agree to serve for a limit of eight years (keeping alive his hope of eventually overhauling the place). Second, they agree to pass anything the Tories put before them (so much for a chamber of sober second thought). Not surprisingly perhaps, some of the Harper 58 — comfy in their $132,300-a-year sinecures — are balking at retiring prematurely or doing whatever they are told with no questions asked.

Also not surprisingly, in his haste to pack the place with compliant Tories, Harper made a few gaffes due to poor staff work or to misjudgment on his own part. Senators are required to legally reside in the province they represent. Mike Duffy hasn’t been a Prince Edward Island resident in decades; he keeps a summer place there, but to my knowledge he’s lived in Ottawa for roughly 40 years.

And anyone who pays attention to aboriginal politics could have warned Harper that Patrick Brazeau was trouble even before Harper hand-picked him in 2008. He was facing an allegation of sexual harassment at the time and now is charged with sexual assault and is being investigated for spending irregularities. Prime ministers can’t fire senators; all Harper could do was to suspend Brazeau from the Tory caucus. Some punishment!

The Brazeau and Duffy episodes are distractions to a prime minister who still wants to do something about the Senate. His Senate Reform Act is still technically before Parliament, but is going nowhere. There’s resistance in the Senate, opposition among the provinces, and impediments created by the Constitution.

Parliament, acting alone, may set term limits for senators, but more fundamental changes — such as the powers of senators and the number and distribution of seats — would require constitutional amendments. The government has asked the Supreme Court for its advice, referring six questions to it. One asks the court to tell it what hoops the government would have to jump through to abolish the Senate.

Don’t expect an early or easy answer.