So much for those days of Reformer Stephen Harper supporting a triple-E Senate.
Those days - and such visions of Preston Manning - have long been stamped out by the need to cling to power at any costs.
Today’s Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper - the prime minister who has appointed the most Canadian Senators in history - must say and do whatever is necessary before the Oct. 19 federal vote to distance himself from the Patrick Brazeau, Pamela Wallin and certainly Mike Duffy.
This is not to say that what Harper has done is necessarily a bad thing.
Standing beside Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in the Cumberland Gallery of the Saskatchewan legislature late last month, Harper announced that he would no longer be making Senate appointments. This way, the Senate would eventually die on the vine.
It has been a notion advocated by the popular Premier Brad Wall for a couple of years now. Of course, Wall, as a provincial premier, has nothing to lose by making such bold and politically popular pronouncements.
Most right-thinking people in this country recognize the Senate’s useless and its status as a haven for political has-beens and wannabes. Most have long ago concluded that there would be no loss to the country’s well-being if the Senate - at least in its current format - was gone.
Most of us can’t think of the last time we’ve ever needed to contact an MLA or MP. But an un-elected Senator appointed to do the bidding of the party in power? Really, when was the last time anyone in Saskatchewan needed the services of David Tkachuk or Pana Merchant? And when was the last time any of these partisan appointments act in a way that was in the interest of anyone other than themselves and their respective parties?
Moreover, even political intellectuals - the same ones bemoaning that what Harper is now doing is unconstitutional - recognize the Supreme Court ruling that it would take the consent of all 10 provinces to abolish the Senate. They also recognize opening up the Senate to constitutional debate would produce more problems than solutions.
But while the both Harper and Wall may have tapped into a hugely popular sentiment and while Harper’s strategists may think they have found a great talking point to Senate criticism leading up to the Oct. 19th federal vote, this is not necessarily the political stroke of genius Harper fans are portraying it to be.
First, there still are the 31 charges against Duffy, including multiple counts of fraud and breach of trust in relation to his senate expenses. It was Harper who appointed Duffy. It was Duffy who campaigned hard for Harper in that last campaign.
And it was Harper’s former trusted chief of staff Nigel Wright who (allegedly, without Harper’s knowledge) stroked the personal cheque to pay for Duffy’s allegedly illegal expense claims.
Second, the 59 Senate appointments by Harper in less than a decade exceed every other prime minster including Robert Borden (57) Brian Mulroney (55), John A. Macdonald (53) and John Diefenbaker (36). Evidently, when it comes to herding Senators to the trough, Conservative prime ministers have even less to be proud of than Liberal prime ministers.
Third, if Harper was serious about abolition the Senate, there are far more effective ways a prime minister could do it.
Even if one believes a re-elected Harper would never make another Senator appointment - a stretch, given his penchant for Senate and all other forms of patronage - it would take until 2045 until Harper’s last Saskatchewan appointment and youngest Senator Denise Batters reached the automatic 75-year-old retirement age.
Were Harper serious, he could have cut the Senators’ budgets, salaries and travel so Senators would be more inclined to retire on their own.
He didn’t, because Harper’s Senate reform is only about his own political problems in the coming election.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
