Canada’s senate used to be an important body of sober second thought. The upper chamber previously acted as a check on the House of Commons to ensure that elected officials didn’t acquire absolute power and overstep any political boundaries.
Unfortunately, the senate has become a pale imitation of its former self. Multiple accusations of scandal, wasteful spending and feeding at the public trough have destroyed its once-stellar reputation. It’s also largely turned into a rubber stamp for Parliament and permanent resting ground for patronage appointments.
Canada’s two newest senators, Charles Adler and Tracy Muggli, are proof of this.
They’ll be sitting as Independents because, in 2014, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eliminated the Liberal Senate caucus. However, this move was an essentially meaningless stunt when you look more closely at the make-up of the parliamentary groups in the Senate. The Independent Senate Group, the largest voting bloc in the Senate, is made up of Liberal appointees who often vote along party lines. The Progressive Senate Group, the third-largest bloc, is also made up mostly of Liberals who do the same. Even the second-largest group, the Canadian Senators Group, includes several loyal Liberals.
Will the two new Senators act differently? Don’t count on it.
Adler is a long-time radio and TV broadcaster. He currently writes a column for the Winnipeg Free Press. He used to lean Conservative and was critical of certain political ideas, policies and institutions – including, as it happens, the Senate.
Alas, he’s had a change of heart in the past few years. Adler is no longer a right-leaning thinker.
In a Nov. 5, 2019 piece for the Huffington Post, Adler wrote, “When did my heart move to the political centre? Truth is, it’s always been there. It’s the Conservative Party of Canada that moved far to the right of the centre – tolerance of people inside the party who are xenophobic, the Conservatives in the House of Commons speaking out against even having a discussion about Islamophobia. They left me in the dust.”
A Sept. 1, 2020 piece for Global News went even further. He apparently “stopped voting Conservative in 2015 because their campaign was bogged down in issues like Muslim women wearing face coverings and the barbaric practices hotline. It was clear to me that the party had decided that there was some gold to be mined in anti-Islamic feeling that became a larger factor in politics post-9/11.”
None of this is true, of course. It has about as much merit as Adler’s recent comment to the CBC after being appointed to the Senate. “I had such a hard time believing,” he said, “that a person who is a Liberal prime minister – and his critics would say too liberal – would even think about offering this to someone who has been for the most part a small ‘c’ conservative.” While Adler’s description of Trudeau was accurate, the suggestion that the PM and senior advisors would still think of him as a small “c” conservative after publicly leaving the movement nearly a decade ago is laughable.
The Liberals likely chose Adler because he’s a political centrist who’s been critical of the Conservatives and recent party leaders, including Pierre Poilievre. While that doesn’t specifically make him a Liberal or a patronage appointment, it would (mostly) fit within the rubber stamp category without too much effort.
Muggli, unlike Adler, isn’t well known. She’s a healthcare executive for St. Paul’s Hospital based in Saskatoon. She’s also “worked with and served on the boards of numerous organizations in the health and social services sector,” according to the CBC.
She certainly sounds like someone the Trudeau Liberals would gravitate toward for a senate appointment. But there’s more to this story than meets the eye.
It turns out Muggli ran for the federal Liberals in 2015 and 2019. She finished a distant third in the riding of Saskatoon-Grasswood on both occasions. (The Conservative candidate, Kevin Waugh, won both elections – and still serves the riding as an MP.) She’s also been a “a longtime donor to the party,” the CBC wrote, “according to publicly available contribution data.”
Hence, many political observers see this as a patronage appointment, with the person essentially serving as a rubber stamp for government decisions.
Trudeau’s senate picks were both poor choices. It’s led to a new conversation on an old topic that I and others have covered – should the Senate of Canada be reformed or scrapped?
Several options have been floated for senate reform.
The Reform Party of Canada proposed a Triple-E Senate model: equal, elected and effective. All Senators would be elected, and all 10 provinces would have received equal representation. Reform’s proposal never materialized because the Liberals and the old federal Progressive Conservatives opposed the idea of a Triple-E Senate. After all, appointing Senators to a legislature that simply rubber-stamped decisions worked in their political favour.
In 2014, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper sought a ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada. The court confirmed that any senate reform would require the approval of seven out of 10 provincial governments, representing 50 percent or more of the population. Harper dropped the matter after the ruling but decided to starve the senate in 2015 by refusing to make any new appointments.
The easiest solution is to stop spending taxpayer money and let it collapse. The House of Commons could then operate as a unicameral legislature – that is, consisting of only one chamber or house – like other sovereign states. Many Canadians would likely be content with such a system.
Will Trudeau and the Liberals scrap the senate? They should, but they won’t. Instead, they’ll welcome Adler and Muggli to the upper chamber and continue the farce of promoting the senate’s importance and the need for so-called Independent Senators.
Neither of those explanations is true, either.
Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.
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