It has long been an outstanding question as to just how much the Government Leader in the Senate err, "government representative," Senator Peter Harder, meets with Cabinet ministers.  Usually when asked, Harder is evasive, but we got confirmation that last week, he attended the Cabinet retreat in London, Ontario, where he briefed ministers on the state of legislative progress in the Senate, and especially on the expected plans for how the cannabis legalization bill would proceed in the Upper Chamber in the face of some reluctant Conservatives.

It shouldn't be this way.  If this were a normally functioning parliament, Harder would be a cabinet minister and he would meet with Cabinet to ensure that not only there would be proper coordination of how to get the government's agenda through the Senate, but he would also be the proper conduit by which the Senate could hold government to account, and to shepherd government bills through the Senate especially those introduced in the Upper Chamber (of which there has been an absolute dearth).  But in Trudeau's rush to make the Senate "more independent," he did not make Harder a minister but did make him a Privy Councillor in order that he could attend cabinet meetings if necessary and Harder has styled himself in this half-pregnant fashion of being "non-affiliated" while also being the government's "representative," which is a complete farce on its face.

As for how often Harder meets with cabinet, well, he won't say.  At an April 14, 2016 meeting of the Senate's internal economy committee, Harder was arguing for a bigger budget and offered this explanation:

"I am invited, as is appropriate, to cabinet committees.  Obviously, appropriate would be interpreted as where the work of the Senate is important and the voices of the Senate's concerns are important to be conveyed directly.  I have already attended such committees and look forward to continuing as appropriate and as invited."

After a couple of tries, Harder eventually got his $1.5 million budget, but when asked in Senate Question Period by Conservative Senator Denise Batters that November how often Harder had met with cabinet committees between that meeting and her question, Harder would only respond "As appropriate and as invited."  And he repeated that response three times.

So now we know that Harder has attended this particular Cabinet retreat, but I find what was reported about his discussions to be a bit troubling.  According to the CBC report, Harder talked about not only which bills he anticipated being able to pass before the summer recess, but he also helped to "identify which senators might need to be further lobbied to secure their votes."

This sends up a warning flag for me because the issue of ministers lobbying individual senators is a very fraught notion, but one of the inevitable pieces of fallout from Trudeau's decision to expel the Liberal senators from his caucus.  Normally these discussions would happen in the caucus room, which while not public, could at least happen with the caucus so that there were witnesses to the discussion and some sense of transparency within the party.  But by moving to a system where ministers have to lobby individual senators and make them promises in exchange for support for bills they want to get passed, there is far less transparency of any sort, and nobody knows what kind of horse-trading or deal-making gets done.  That should be concerning.

There has also been some whispered talk about whether Harder would employ time allocation to get the cannabis bill through in time a tool at his disposal that he has not yet used because it would require him getting enough votes to do so, and not leading a caucus, he doesn't have any that he can readily count on.  Of course, as we have seen repeatedly since Harder took the role as "government representative" that he's not been keen to negotiate with the other caucus groups as to agreeing on timelines for debates on bills, which is one of the biggest reasons why there has been a bit of a slowdown in bills passing the Senate to date.  (One of the other reasons, of course, is that the Commons has been slow in passing bills and then send them to the Senate at the end of a session with the expectation that they pass quickly, which senators are less inclined to do).

It may be time for Harder to start employing time allocation to get bills passed in particular the cannabis bill but that still requires him to negotiate with enough other senators to get the votes necessary to get it passed in a timeline that they can live with.  Which…means he might as well do the negotiating that he's apparently loathe to do now.  (And on a related note, time allocation can only be invoked on government bills, and not private members' bills like the national anthem bill, which the Conservative senators have continued to successfully stall for months).  Such negotiation would be in the usual course of the duties of a Leader of the Government in the Senate, which also means that Harder might actually start to justify the $1.5 million office budget that he's getting (for which nobody can quite figure out why, or what all of his staff are doing).

It's been apparent for some time that Harder should be acting in the manner befitting his position, which means being a member of cabinet, shepherding legislation, and negotiating with the other caucus groups to ensure that government bills are getting through.  That he's taken this hands-off approach and trying instead to set about transforming the Senate in his own particular image, free of the constraints of Westminster tradition, isn't working, and is setting up bad precedents for the future of the Chamber.  For that reason, we should applaud this move of attending the Cabinet retreat as a good step, but it's one that needs to be carried to its conclusion.  Harder should become the Government Leader in both name and practice.