{"id":293080,"date":"2016-02-16T16:52:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T21:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/2016\/02\/the-senates-very-canadian-threat-were-going-to-do-our-job\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T15:25:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T19:25:30","slug":"the-senates-very-canadian-threat-were-going-to-do-our-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2016\/02\/the-senates-very-canadian-threat-were-going-to-do-our-job\/","title":{"rendered":"The Senate’s very Canadian threat — ‘We’re going to do our job!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Hill Times reported<\/a> that Prime Minister Trudeau might find himself having to wrestle the butthurt <\/a>Senate to pass legislation. Reporter Abbas Rana summarized the prime minister\u2019s challenge thusly: \u201c…the government does not have a Senate caucus, the majority Conservatives are in opposition and Senate Liberals still feel jilted after being unceremoniously booted out of the national Liberal caucus in 2014\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In the second grade, my class was given the honour of writing to then-Prime Minister Mulroney, with the promise that each of us would receive a response. Mademoiselle Sly, already quite aged then and surely dead now, took me aside on the day we were to write the letters. \u201cYour handwriting is unacceptable,\u201d she told me. \u201cYou will not be writing a letter.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so I didn\u2019t. And a child in his formative years was therefore primed to one day identify with the word \u201cfractious.\u201d So it didn\u2019t surprise me that when I read the above-mentioned story yesterday, that was the word that came to mind.<\/p>\n

The irritability displayed by some of those whom former Prime Minister Harper called \u201csenators who happen to be Liberals\u201d is of a distinctly Canadian variety: take us seriously and court us, or else we’ll do our jobs!<\/p>\n

Senator Munson, quoted in the article, says that the incidentally-Liberal senators will be \u201clooking very closely at every piece of legislation carefully and individually.\u201d A colleague of mine commented that he enjoyed that the threat amounted to \u201cWe won\u2019t block legislation, we\u2019ll just work harder to make sure it is good.\u201d A typically passive-constructive Canadianism.<\/p>\n

Others echoed Mr. Munson, with one (bravely anonymous senator) suggesting that because \u201cnobody owes him\u201d — that is, the Prime Minister — legislation will be properly vetted, with \u201cmore witnesses called, and more studious examination of the legislation.\u201d Quelle horreur! One might imagine a similar sort of situation, a dysfunctional relationship in which one paramour says to the other: \u201cDon\u2019t you dare threaten to leave me, or else I\u2019ll be a better partner!\u201d<\/p>\n

On balance, the \u201cthreats\u201d made by named and unnamed senators amount to an indication and a warning: first, an indication that some erstwhile Liberal senators are (still) upset at being summarily dismissed from the Liberal caucus in 2014, and second, a warning that therefore they will punish the Prime Minister by helping him create the sort of Senate that he has said he wants. After all, Mr. Trudeau has repeatedly stressed the need for a non-partisan body that would operate as a genuine chamber for sober second-thought, consistent with the intentions of some of those who designed it in the first place.<\/p>\n

Of course, the Senate\u2019s very Canadian threat might simultaneously produce a problem for both the government and the Red Chamber, one reminiscent of Wilde\u2019s quip that \u201cwhen the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.\u201d<\/a> If each party in this bizarre squabble gets what it ostensibly wants — \u201cpunishment\u201d for Mr. Trudeau for the cranky senators and a thoughtful, active, non-partisan body for the Prime Minister — then we might quickly see Canadians, with their contemporary, Americanized democratic sensibilities, irked by an unelected body delaying or fundamentally altering or killing legislation sent to them by their elected counterparts in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

It is of special significance that all of this is occurring against the backdrop of Canadians\u2019 growing disdain for the Senate. In the wake of several scandals — Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau, Harb — the legitimacy of the institution, in the eyes of citizens, has been even further diminished (not that there was much left to diminish). So in this case, while nobody stands to win, the Senate is drawing dead in an especially unfortunate way.<\/p>\n

Best case, this whole affair spawns a Canadian version of the popular American political melodrama House of Cards<\/i>, starring, presumably, Gordon Pinsent (in which, perhaps, Quentin Durgens, M.P. finds himself chosen to be first minister). But it\u2019s far more likely that both the government and the Senate each find themselves embarrassed when this gambit leads to a situation that Canadians find odious: an overactive (partisan or not) Senate. Then, a distinctly Canadian threat will have earned the Senate the dubious distinction of having ensured that every party in this silly mess ends up licking the fuzzy end of the lollipop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Hill Times reported that Prime Minister Trudeau might find himself having to wrestle the butthurt Senate to pass legislation. Reporter Abbas Rana summarized the prime minister\u2019s challenge thusly: \u201c…the government does not have a Senate caucus, the majority Conservatives are in opposition and Senate Liberals still feel jilted after being unceremoniously booted out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":913,"featured_media":293078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[9212,8670],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-293080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-democratie","tag-senate-fr"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Senate's very Canadian threat -- 'We're going to do our job!'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2016\/02\/the-senates-very-canadian-threat-were-going-to-do-our-job\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Senate's very Canadian threat -- 'We're going to do our job!'\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday The Hill Times reported that Prime Minister Trudeau might find himself having to wrestle the butthurt Senate to pass legislation. Reporter Abbas Rana summarized the prime minister\u2019s challenge thusly: \u201c…the government does not have a Senate caucus, the majority Conservatives are in opposition and Senate Liberals still feel jilted after being unceremoniously booted out […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2016\/02\/the-senates-very-canadian-threat-were-going-to-do-our-job\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Policy Options\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/IRPP.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-02-16T21:52:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-08-28T19:25:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/WordPress-Image-senate-article-1920x672.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"672\" 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