Thanks a lot, Mike Duffy. You too, Pamela Wallin. When both of you were appointed to the Senate, formerly two of the top journalists in the profession, it lent hope to the rest us. After decades of slaving over keyboards and pushing deadlines, maybe, just maybe, there might be a dividend at the end of it all.
After mucking it up as much as you did, I expect the next time a journalist is appointed to the Senate, their primary residence will be the Canadian colony on Mars. It'll make for a hell of an expense claim.
That's probably why Don Martin, the former National Post columnist who took up Duffy's job as top dog political reporter for CTV, got so riled up. On June 3, his editorial had so much vitriol that the network pulled it after just one airing, and never put it on the website. Something about legal worries and "fakery," the National Post noted.
Maybe Martin realized he will never get appointed to the Senate, either.
For all the well-deserved Senate bashing, the house of sober second thought has, on occasion, done some good. I had the opportunity to discuss this in January 2005, upon the retirement of the late Herb Sparrow, dean of the Senate.
You become dean basically by being appointed very early in life, relatively speaking, and then living longer than your compatriots. Sparrow had been appointed by Lester B. Pearson in February, 1968, at the time the youngest Senator ever. (Pearson! Not Trudeau, Clark, Mulroney, Turner, Campbell, Chretien or Martin, but Pearson!) This meant he would spend 37 years in the august chamber - a number Senator Patrick Brazeau could have bested, but likely won't.
A personal friend of Col. Harland Sanders ("Col. Sanders"), Sparrow opened and operated the third Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Canada. He also farmed. Therefore he knew a bit about food and where it came from. He would go on to do extensive work on soil conservation, spending 10 years on the Senate report Soil at Risk. That report had a substantial impact on how farming is done today. Why do you think farmers use air seeders now instead of drills? Soil conservation practices heralded by that report have changed farming completely, allowing for much, much larger farms, higher production, and all but an end to dustbowls.
As a fried chicken salesman, he also knew about hunger. Very early in his career, the North Battleford senator was part of a committee tackling poverty in Canada. Indeed, that committee went so far as to formally define what the poverty line is in Canada. The intrepid young senator in 1969 wanted to see just what poverty truly meant. "I spent a full week on skid row in Vancouver, living with people there," he recalled, saying he spent 24 hours a day on skid row during that time in 1969.
That led to a long-held belief that Canada needs a guaranteed annual income for all people. While that is somewhat accomplished by varying programs like welfare, child benefits and the like, he wanted to see a guarantee solidified.
Sparrow was one of only two senators to vote against the Charlottetown Accord, making him an outcast on the hill.
"They knew I was my own man," he said of those on Parliament Hill. But when asked how many parliamentarians out there could truly say the same of themselves, the senator paused. A very long pause. Finally he said, "Few. Few. I want to qualify that. There's quite a few that would take strong stands in committee," he says, adding that many battles are fought in caucus as well. But when the final vote comes, most vote the party line.
Getting back to that hunger thing - Sparrow was the man responsible for what he called a "feeding program" for young, poor children. He never wanted any publicity about it, but the senator was personally responsible for thousands of kids over the years getting a nutritious breakfast before school. The thinking went that you can't focus on your studies if your stomach is growling.
Other senators today may have been busy stuffing their own faces, but the late Senator Herb Sparrow did all he could to see that hungry children were fed. That's the type of person we need in the Senate. If we can't find those people, then maybe it's time to get rid of it.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
