Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau overturned 150 years of Canadian parliamentary tradition when he abandoned the liberal senators, appointed the independents to the Upper House and generally stripped the place of the partisan elements.
The experiment produced mixed criticism, with some elderly senators, those who were there long before Trudeau, arguing that the Senate is now irrelevant, slower, less organized and more expensive.
Some of Trudeau’s appointed say that the reforms have helped the Red Chamber to change the page about the experience close to the death of the expense scandal, which they hold was fed by the worst partisan impulses. The defenders of the new regime say that supporters are subject to a model that is better to leave in the dump of history.
The Senate has been more active in the modification of government bills and these changes are not motivated by the policy of the party or electoral fortune: they are the best interests of the country, the reformers say.
As the debate continues internally on whether the last 10 years of change has been worth it, Prime Minister Mark Carney has said almost nothing about his vision for the upper house.
The houseIs the renovated Senate of Trudeau working? This is what the senators say
This week in the camera: six senators argue if the review of the Red Chamber of Justin Trudeau is working. Carleton’s professor Jonathan Malloy evaluates the representation of the Senate and the leader of the Government Representatives Chamber, Steven Mackinnon, explains the new Federal Government’s strategy when dealing with the Senate.
According to the current model, an external panel recommends possible senators, but the decision still depends on the prime minister.
Most of Trudeau’s first selections were strictly non -partisan, but, as the surveys showed that their party was heading to an almost safe defeat, it was increasingly appointed liberals to the camera.
Carney has already discarded the Trudeau Carbon Tax, introduced the legislation to avoid the regulations of the Trudeau era, repaired the relations once in mass with the provinces and adopted a different approach to the commercial war. Everything that some senators wonder if the non -partisan thrust in the Red Chamber will be the next domination to fall.
In an interview with CBC Radio’s The houseThe leader of the House of Representatives, Steve Mackinnon, said that in fact there may be more changes.
“I think the Senate is largely a job in progress,” he said.
“We continue to work constructively with the Senate in its current configuration and, as it can evolve. I know many senators, the various groups in the Senate and others continue to offer some constructive thoughts about it.”
When asked if Carney will appoint the liberals, Mackinnon said that the prime minister will appoint the senators who “are in tune with the whims of public opinion, in tune with the wishes of the Canadians and in tune with the government’s agenda as reflected in the electoral results.”
Carney is interested in senators who “widely understand what the government tries to achieve,” Mackinnon said.
As for whether he has heard of efforts to relive a liberal caucus of the Senate, Mackinnon said: “I have not been part of any of those discussions.”
The Alberta Senator, Paula Simons, is a member of the group of independent senators, the largest in the camera and one composed mainly of designated people in Trudeau (she is one of them, named in 2018).
Simons said he knows that conservatives would discard Trudeau’s reforms at the first chance. What worries you most are those liberals that are also against changes.
“There is a bit of rumbling on putting a liberal Caucus again. And I unalterably oppose that,” he said.
When the last Liberal Caucus dissolved, some of its members regrouped as the progressive Senate group, which now includes senators who were never liberals.
“Describing that tortilla, whether liberal or conservative, I think it would be a betrayal of everything we have achieved in the last decade,” said Simons.
“I think that the Senate’s reputation has improved greatly as a result of these changes. I think the way we can improve legislation has also increased ten times. It would be nonsense and a waste to reverse that.”
Even so, she said there has been a rejection of some named Trudeau.
The debates of the Senate are now longer, the audiences of the committees present more witnesses and there are more amendments to the legislation that ever, he said.
Not to mention that independent senators cannot be whipped to vote in a certain way. All that makes the legislative process more difficult to navigate.
“Party liberals don’t like the new independent Senate because they can’t control it so easily,” he said.
Marc Gold, the last government representative of Trudeau in the Senate who briefly served under Carney before retiring, said his advice for the new prime minister is to keep the Senate as it is.
“The evolution of the Senate to a less partisan complementary institution is something good. I think it is a success, and I certainly hope it continues,” Gold said.
On the other side of the division, the Senator of Quebec Leo Hozakos, the leader of the conservative Senate Caucus, welcomes the idea of injecting some partisanship.
He said that, under the current model, the camera is less influential.
“The place has become, unfortunately, an echo chamber,” he said.
Harakos said the old Senate was more honest, when the members were more transparent about their political inclinations.
Many of Trudeau’s independent are of liberal mentality and their voting history suggests that they often align with the government, said Holakos.
“Look how often the government has taken into account,” he said. “Look at the frequency with which they have asked difficult questions at the time when the government needed … their feet remained in the fire.”
Simons sees things differently.
“It is really difficult for people who have been raised in a partisan environment, whether conservative, liberals or new Democrats, understanding that it is actually possible to be a political actor without a team flag,” he said.
“It is not my job to defend a political party.”
The Saskatchewan senator, Pamela Wallin, is a member of the group of Canadian senators, which is composed of non -partisan senators, including some who, like her, previously sat as conservatives.
She said that the current process has produced some senators who are political neophytes, who are not familiar with the traditional role of the Senate.
“I don’t care if someone belongs to a political party … I think people need to be better educated about what is being registered,” he said.
“Our work is to be an arbitrator of legislation and laws presented by the House of Commons. It is not a place where we can all assemble our individual hobbies.”
That is a reference to the proliferation of public laws of the Senate, legislation introduced by the senators themselves.
These bills often have no hope to pass through both cameras, while they still take time and resources to classify.
There is data to support Wallin’s statement that there are more of these bills than before Trudeau’s reforms.
During the last mandate of Stephen Harper, 56 public bills of the Senate were presented and nine of them were approved, according to a CBC news review of parliamentary data.
In comparison, the final session of Trudeau saw 92 invoices introduced for a shorter period of time. Only 12 of them passed, a worst success rate.
In the first weeks of this new Parliament, more than 32 of these bills have already been introduced, some of them a resurgence of those who died in the order of the Order.
Wallin said these bills often reflect the “personal interests of senators or the interests they have shared throughout life.”
She wants the Senate to adopt a “return to the basics” approach.
“Our work is a second sober thought,” he said.
Wallin is also asking for a better regional representation in the Senate, which can be a complicated proposal given constitutional realities. A change in the allocation of seats would require that fundamental document, a politically unpleasant idea.
Even so, Alberta separatists are agitated by change, calling the current breakdown very unfair.
Harakos said that depriving some parts of the country of significant representation must be addressed.
In BC, for example, almost six million people in the province are represented by only six senators.
PEI, in comparison, has four senators for approximately 180,000 people, an allocation formula that goes back to the confederation.
“The west of Canada has a legitimate beef. They are not quite represented in the upper chamber,” said Holakos. “It is probably the biggest problem that must be addressed.”
But the government is not interested in that rate of exchange, Mackinnon said.
“I don’t see space on the public agenda for constitutional discussions,” he said.
