Want your Senate to answer to you or be ‘independent’?

Canadians are sensitive to the corruptive power of hot patriotic rhetoric in American politics. We’re unmoved by flag-waving braggarts. Instead, we’re soft on a sedative: the proposition that our decision-makers serve us best, ever more intelligently, when we’re not in their face.

An extra measure of independence for legislators and public executives is presented to us as time-tested good housekeeping—a virtue that sets Canada above the more tactile and demanding politics to the south.

The Americans inherited the slave industry and we embedded in our political culture a British constitution of limited democracy and the good citizen’s general willingness to go along. 

Yet, any morning, in every public institution, from the PMO down to every crown agency and regional government outpost, those who hold power are reminded in little, unpleasant ways that they hold that power at our pleasure. Their unease about their professional mortality is palliated directly by obsessive market surveys, focus groups, and waves of fetching press gallery spinners, bureaucratic neologisms, and incomprehensible ‘accountability’ data dumps.

Also, there’s the confusing verbiage of our constitutional monarchy—a magical system of government that hides in every legal statute who exactly is the boss. On the outside, popular public intellectuals also write papers shoring up the credibility of independent decision-making and the impossibility of improving on the democratic reforms secured in the 1980s.

 A House Undivided: Making Senate Independence Work by former Senators Michael Kirby and Hugh Segal is a classic, bringing nuts-and-bolts authenticity to the task of trying to organize Justin Trudeau’s new Senate of 105 un-elected, free-thinkers into a workable legislative assembly.  

There will be, they proposed to the Public Policy Form, weekly Senate caucuses of the four regional power blocks that formed British North America back in 1867. To give Justin Trudeau greater latitude in guessing who would best represent these regions, the age limit of 30 and the property minimum of $4,000 for Senate appointments will be eliminated. Necessarily, the PM’s freshman Senate existentialists will need to meet regularly “in conference” to sort out their differences with the less sober, rather harried elected politicians from the people’s House of Commons.

(The Senate’s own reform committee outdid Kirby and Segal by recommending that the Senate allow their debates to be televised. Idle masochistic Canadians surely can’t be satisfied watching only unaccountable US Senators indifferent in what they think.)

Some sandboxes should be for the children or sent to the museum of civilization.

Trying to make a Canadian law-making institution less offensive by reforming its appointment procedures and business practices is, at best, a sincere waste of time.

Placing our upper house beyond electoral redress by the people has not, as Victorian authoritarians told us, led to more “sober second-thought.” The Senate is illegitimate today because, time and again, we’ve seen that informed adults voting are superior guarantors of durable progress than organizations of aloof worthies.

Yes, too much democracy—via plebiscites, recall of legislators, and too frequent elections—could drive us into a ditch. And with that concern very much in mind, the US constitution evolved a democratic balance: elections every two years for the “people’s assembly” and every six years for its Senate. They accepted that scrambling for money and voter approval shouldn’t go on constantly. They didn’t go so far, however, as to eliminate elections for the US Senate altogether.

Michael Kirby and Hugh Segal were superior Canadian senators. And they are listened to in Ottawa today. Lyndon Johnson, Ted Kennedy, Robert Taft, and Evert Dirksen, however, made political history, and did so, in large part, because they could win big elections and scare presidents.

Either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected shortly; and neither will be subdued by The Guardian or The Globe or the UN. To govern, however, the winner must regularly secure majorities and super-majorities in a separately elected US Senate.

Will Justin Trudeau’s government ever be subdued or driven off course by the Senators Justin Trudeau appoints to the Senate? Against that test, our $90-million-plus Senate is more bling-bling than a check on the awesome power of the PMO.

Democracy’s catch-22: for an effective Senate to be “independent” of the PM of the day, its Senators must first be empowered by being elected and, along with the PM, obliged to answer regularly to the people.

Have fun by playing politics with the Senate

Prime Minister:

We who scurry for attention have chosen to cast your every grudging utterance as another grudging investment in your year-long re-election campaign. Accordingly, this Aide memoir is tailored to excite your dark side — a missive to a predator.

Let’s start with a little flattery.

Along with your designated threat Justin Trudeau, we note that you like the company of suburban Canadians far more than you like the company of exceptional Canadians in Ottawa. This preference, even as a long-serving prime minister, has offended active and retired Guardians of Canadian Harmony. However, not being agreeable — actually, being sarcastic — makes you more interesting and can make your detractors less lovable at the same time.

Your toss-away shrug last week about normal Canadians not pestering you to pick "their" next sixteen senators was inspired. With perfect economy, you disrespected the Senate’s new Speaker, Liberal and New Democrat premiers, constitutional experts on the timeless wisdom of Canada’s founding deal-makers, and those pundits who insist that Canada’s flawless democracy was completed, in full, a generation ago, by Justin’s father.

(Even Toronto’s rebellious National Post sided with the status quo, editorializing: Fill the Senate seats, Mr. Harper)

Being mean when playing politics is forgivable, if you’re having fun — and upsetting the other side. Canada’s laughable unelected Senate shouldn’t be your dark cloud, but theirs.

Your campaign’s humorless advisors may feel that your outburst was an irreverent distraction. You clearly know better. Simply repeating for the next eleven months “I fixed the economy, stupid” is a stupefying prospect. That will do nothing to encourage anyone to see you differently. And, besides, venturing off the economy occasionally should, in fact, raise new, lucrative questions about the center of gravity of your exotic opponent.

First, a picky caveat on message crafting:

(You don’t have to retire as a Senate reformer merely because the Supreme Court didn’t support your legislative attempt to democratize an expensive aristocratic affectation, but your next moves — below — must pay attention to the court’s decision, if not the arguments of those politicians who are hiding behind it.)

Proposal: during your visits outside of Alberta, where Senators are already elected, try playing with these statements:

*I’m short 16 representatives in the PMO Senate, where you have none. And I’m still offering my vacancies to you.

*I’d prefer that the PMO Senate was immediately turned into the People’s Senate, but I’d settle for second best. I’ll appoint automatically any qualified individual formally submitted to me by the Premier and Cabinet of your province.

*Hopefully, they’ll consult at least with their legislatures. I’ll leave it to you to judge the transparency and representativeness of whatever process they use.

*Informal, indirect Senate nominations are as far as we can go without arousing 19th-century interests in this country. However, what I’m suggesting would at least place our two feet in the 20t^h century, if not the 21st.

Despite the court’s Pollyanna regard for the architecture of the BNA Act of 1867, the court didn’t criticize or disallow Alberta’s impudent practice of consulting with Albertans directly on who they’d like to represent them in the Senate, and it didn’t instruct you to not tease, annoy, or embarrass the other provincial governments and politicians generally who don’t want to replace status quo.

Yes, all those front-row law students are right, Prime Minister, you can’t force Canadians to be aggressive democrats or change the Senate permanently without formally amending the Constitution, with the provinces. 

And, as with other controversial initiatives, future governments can reverse what you accomplish with individual premiers.

That’s the beautiful part.

Can you imagine your opponents insisting that the premiers of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, B.C., and Manitoba daren’t nominate senators? My goodness, your offer could be popular and then might temp normal Canadians to go further.  For heaven’s sake, we could — in your lifetime — end up making the Senate their institution.

Surely, you’re not afraid of Justin Trudeau’s campaign to save the PMO Senate by appointing a Blue Ribbon nominations advisory committee?

Senate Reform: The Value of Attracting Ambitious Politicians

Canadian opposition parties and pundits both favor allowing government backbenchers greater freedom to vote against government bills and speak up against government policies. They like the idea of letting the Prime Minister and his Party’s debt-holders in the House of Commons act as if they were free agents in public. At the same time, they don’t want things to get out of hand; they’re heavily invested in the proposition that the constitutional division of powers between the President and separate Houses of Congress is the source of America’s terrible political gridlock.

Consequently, they are squeamish about creating an elected Canadian Senate. An assembly of politicians elected in province-wide elections would be tricky. They’d answer to their own voters, they’d have their own following, and they wouldn’t be Senators because they had once caught the eye of a prime minister.

By being elected, they’d shift attention and, eventually, some concrete power from the House of Commons. The place would be emboldened—and, at the same time, corrupted—by electoral legitimacy and political ambition.

Setting aside the possibility that Canada’s federation is so small and so united that it doesn’t need even a rainy-day reserve of political authority in its national capital, would it be a nuisance to have a separate arena of politicians with futures as well as pasts?

Is it really for the better that Canada’s Senate is composed mainly of individuals with illustrious resumes rather than one with a few with illustrious ambitions?

Jonathan Bernstein recalls that the US Senate is often effective as well as powerful because many of its leaders have the audacity—and the means—to pursue the presidency:

“In fact, as the political scientist Nelson W. Polsby used to argue, much of the way the Senate works can be seen in terms of the number of senators who act with at least one eye on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s a well-known cliché that when senators look in the mirror, they see a president – and it’s a cliché well-rooted in fact. I counted at least 28 senators from the 99th Senate (1985-1986) who at some point either actively ran for the presidency, were vice-presidential nominees, or who came close to a White House run. If we add V.P. short-listers, my count for the 104th Senate (1995-1996) reaches 31 national candidates or almost-candidates.”

In Canada’s national politics, leadership change is a cramped bipolar trap.

You’ll succeed Stephen Harper by being a competent team player in his Cabinet or by being an effective opposition leader in the House of Commons. The only other way that would work is to leave Ottawa and come back a few elections later, after a being a celebrity lawyer or banker.

Has Twitter saved pack journalism?

American columnist Michael Kinsley famously insisted that if you have the patience of a birder, you might hear a politician tell the truth. "A gaffe” he explained, “is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." While celebrating the aggressive, “mojo” press coverage of the scandal surrounding the Canadian Senate and Stephen Harper’s office, Toronto Star columnist Edward Greenspon

penned a noteworthy gaffe about his own profession:

“Then there’s the odd galvanizing role played by social media, particularly Twitter. The gallery vacillates between pack mentality and institutional incoherence. The Harper government was skilled at dividing and conquering. Increasingly, though, a group of Ottawa reporters gather every evening on Twitter, bucking one another up by sharing their journalistic humour, biases and insight. That they may well reinforce pack prejudices is beside the immediate point. Their virtual salon is reminiscent of the old days, when gallery members worked at close quarters in the famed Hot Room on the Hill and then hit the press club bar.”

Twenty-four/seven "news" and the amateurish presence of the social media long ago killed the 3-martini lunch and the 5 o’clock debrief at the Ottawa Press Club. Communication professionals and hacks wondered whether the “pack” might die, and whether a multitude of journalistic voices would send conflicting messages across our troubled lands.

Greenspon apparently believes that “institutional incoherence” in a free press is a bad thing and that pack prejudice today is beside the point. So, he’s simply thrilled by the palpable esprit de corps amongst his old colleagues in Ottawa today.

Twitter has become a tool to reassure, to say the same thing in ever more clever ways, to form a working consensus on what’s happening, in real time—getting done what used to demand soul-destroying nights at the Club and exhausting days on a campaign plane. This is progress?