While there’s very little positive that can be said about Stephen Harper’s post-election senate appointments, it’s also very telling about the state of political reporting and discourse in Canada that the entire debate seems to be taking place in a historical vacuum.
Let’s put this whole debate in perspective. We’ve had a Conservative government since 2006. In that entire five years, the Harper government has expended a modicum of political energy pushing the provinces to hold elections in order to fill Senate vacancies. Only Alberta has done so, and we did it in spite of open defiance from the Chretien Liberals.
Jean Chretien, hailed among Liberals as a “man of the people,” openly scorned Albertans for our Senate votes.
To his discredit, Ed Stelmach has seemed rather lukewarm to the elected Senate concept. At the same time, all of our sister provinces have had ample time to debate and vote on whether or not they wanted to participate in Senate reform from the bottom up. All of those legislatures chose not to participate in the process, even if it meant rejecting the wishes of the citizenry on the issue.
For the record, most of our much needed Senate reforms can be achieved without opening the Constitution, an idea that seems to strike fear into the hearts of Canadian politicians.
It is only recalcitrant politicians who have stood in the way of Senate reform, not the Canadian public. After all, if you can reform the institution of marriage within a few short years of the debate entering the public arena, you can reform the Senate.
Another inescapable fact is the Senate’s refusal to enact even the simplest of reforms themselves.
Since Harper’s first Senate appointment and recommendation that Senate terms be limited to eight years, Liberal senators have used their committee clout to block this simple piece of reform legislation. It needs to be noted that Harper has not asked for previously sitting senators to give up their offices (and power, and pensions) after eight years, but only newly appointed senators.
It requires a substantial abandonment of the capacity for critical thought to bring up Harper’s Reform Party past when commenting on recent Senate appointments when it has been the ongoing pattern of Liberal senators to engage in active obstruction of any reforms even in the face of fairly broad public sentiment for such reform.
Last week’s Senate appointments also reflected Harper’s election victory and the desire to get on with governing.
If he had failed to fill those seats before the resumption of Parliament, the Senate committees chaired and controlled by Liberal senators would have remained under the control of those same Liberal Party apparatchiks.
It’s not a stretch by any means to imagine that virtually all the legislation forwarded to the Senate by the Harper government would have faced a logjam rivalling the Revelstoke Dam.
To believe any different is as unrealistic as believing the Maple Leafs are merely a trade or two away from being Stanley Cup contenders.
The last thing to consider is really simple. It was decades of the kind of raw patronage of the type shown by Harper just this past week that fueled Canadians’ appetites for Senate reform.
Canadians don’t like the current system, myself included. But, in the face of obstinate obstructionism, was there any other choice available to the prime minister?
Not a single province stepped up to the plate and offered up a publicly approved senator-in-waiting for the PM to consider. In five years, none even held referenda on the matter. Who should he have chosen?
The existing Liberals in the Senate have obstructed not only legislative efforts at incremental reform, but have also held up legislation passed by the minority Conservative government of the past five years. Should this have been influential in the Harper decision and appointments?
Having won a solid majority, would it have been a disservice to the country to hogtie this majority with a recalcitrant and deeply embedded opposition within the Senate? Would it have been a disservice given that this very senatorial opposition could have easily acted to extend the minority government Canadians only recently rejected?
Does anyone believe a Liberal or NDP prime minister would have done different?
Did the Harper Senate appointments stink? You bet. But, there was nothing unethical or illegal about them, and frankly, the only Canadians with a legitimate beef about them are we conservatives.
Now it’s time for the reform to get moving. Or else.
Bill Greenwood is a local freelance columnist.