[BRIEF NOTE] On how the Canadian Senate is inevitably partisan, no matter what Trudeau claims

[rfmcdonald]

This news story caught everyone's attention yesterday. The Liberal Party of Canada formally renounced its senators.

Justin Trudeau has expelled from his caucus every single Liberal member of the upper house and has declared there is no longer any such thing as a Liberal Senator.

The Liberal leader said the former members of the Liberal Senate caucus will sit as Independents, and they will have no formal ties to the Liberal parliamentary machinery apart from through their friendships.

Trudeau's decision will see some lifelong Liberals and key party operators and fundraisers removed from the party's caucus and forced outside its inner circles – a foundation-shaking decision in a business where power is derived from membership in a political club and the ability to access its best back rooms.

"The only way to be a part of the Liberal caucus is to be put there by the people of Canada," Trudeau said.

[. . .]

"The Senate was once referred to as a place of sober, second thought. A place that allows for reflective deliberation on legislation, in-depth studies into issues of import to the country, and, to a certain extent, provide a check and balance on the politically driven House of Commons.

"It has become obvious that the party structure within the Senate interferes with these responsibilities."

Trudeau proposed the Senate should be made non-partisan, to better serve Canadians. He suggested an "open, transparent, non-partisan process" that would see all senators named to the Red Chamber sit as Independents.

As interviews with senators over the course of the day made clear that these senators, formally independent as they may now be, are actually remaining aligned to the Liberal Party. This should be no surprise, as Wonkman's thorough analysis of the background of senators shows.

Far from being a house of independent experts, the best way to get appointed to the Senate is to run for office—even if unsuccessfully. 46.7% of appointees are former candidates for provincial, territorial or federal office.

Every Prime Minister (with the notable and singular exception of Paul Martin) has worked aggressively to appoint only loyal members of their own parties. (And even Paul Martin could only bring himself to appoint Progressive Conservatives, a party which thereafter existed only in the Senate.) If you aren’t prepared to swear loyalty to the government of the day, you will not even be considered for appointment.

On a personal note, this makes me deeply, deeply suspicious of claims to the effect that the Liberal senators have been “freed” by being booted out of the Conservative caucus. Of these 32 newly-minted “Liberpendants”, 43% have previously run for the party at the provincial or federal levels, and a further 25% have been on the Liberal payroll in unelected positions. But this aside, every single one of them was appointed by a Liberal PM, and the vast majority were appointed by Jean Chretien—who, as my research emphasizes, did not manage to appoint a single non-Liberal.

Not only did these appointments come disproportionately from a very small group of people who are unrepresentative of the whole of Canada (Liberal candidates and Liberal staffers), but even those who were chosen from outside this group were evidently chosen in large part because of their loyalty to the party. (After all, if you chose 75 people at random and made them into Senators—as Chretien did—what are the odds that 72 of them would be card-carrying Liberals, with a further 3 Independents?)

And how does someone in that position suddenly go “Independent”?

Is there anything truly progressive about this? If anything, by cutting formal ties between the Liberal Party and its senators, Trudeau has made the relationship more opaque and unaccountable.
Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning's new openness to tearing down the Senate if public opinion would like it is much more honest.