The Independent Senators Group finalized their first charter this past week, which puts in writing some of the processes and goals of their organization.  And while it's all well and good to have some formal processes, especially when it comes to how they want to organize themselves, reading through the document, it sounds more and more like the ISG is becoming a political caucus despite all of their protestations that they're not.  In many ways, they're already doing things that go beyond what some of the existing caucuses in the Senate do, which makes for an odd state of affairs.

The stated purpose of the ISG is to pool resources and expertise in order to coordinate their Chamber and committee work, and administration.  So far so good.  But it's also about coordinating collective action on reforming the Senate and its culture, rules and practices in order to turn the Chamber into a non-partisan body, which is where I start getting hives.  While I'm fine with them organizing themselves as an independent or non-partisan group, and indeed, a cross-bencher group that has a good third of the Chamber's make-up would be ideal.  Truly.  But turning the entire Senate into a non-partisan body is a problem, and entrenching that notion will become a problem for Parliament for a generation or more if allowed to continue unchecked.

Currently there are 47 members of the ISG out of 99 senators, with six vacancies still remaining.  The five new appointees who have been named in the last three weeks have not yet settled on whether or not they will join the ISG, though they are likely to, which would mean that they would need just one more member to have an absolute majority in the Senate, which is when we will need to beware about them ham-fistedly changing the rules to suit their agenda.  Whether they'll stay at that number is also an open question, as there are grumblings about unhappy members within the ISG currently, but those may be just rumours or grousing that intends to go nowhere, but it's talk nevertheless.  Currently I'm told that there are informal groupings within the ISG that have to do with things like gender equity or urban issues, and they discuss those issues together within the ISG's umbrella but don't feel they need to break away to form a formal caucus around those issues.  Whether that stays that way could depend on how things play out over the coming months.

This having been said, there are a couple of other places within the charter that raised my eyebrows, the first of which is the role that their secretariat plays.  The administrative arm of their organization, it is intended to provide a "variety of services to ISG Senators, relating to Senators' activities in the Senate Chamber and in committees, including but not limited to providing Legislative Briefing Notes and Procedural Notes, and organizing meetings and events."

Why I find this curious is that the conversations I've had with senators who have been part of political caucuses is that they don't and largely haven't in the past been given briefing or procedural notes on bills in a centralized capacity.  My understanding has been that senators sponsoring or acting as critics on a bill would brief the caucus, and provide any kind of materials that were requested, but it wasn't coming from the leader's office.  There is a caveat here that there was a greater degree of centralization among the Conservatives during the Harper years, but that was also in part because of the particular way in which the mass-appointment was made in late 2008, and the influx of a fifth of the Chamber without sufficient older members to properly mentor them and ease them into the operations of the Senate (as the system is optimized for) created a need to keep them in check, which went along with the party culture of discipline that they felt they needed to finally win a majority government, which they eventually did in 2011.  That, however, was more of an aberration in the Senate's history and shouldn't be taken as standard procedure.

Add to that, I'm also tickled by the fact that they also have a weekly meeting which they call ISG Commons, which is described in the Charter as "A second, informal, weekly meeting is scheduled so that Senators have the opportunity to have in-depth discussions about particular bills or other issues, for which the weekly ISG meeting does not allow."  While they insist that they don't come to group decisions, I also know that because it is an absolute impossibility for any one senator to be fully knowledgeable about every single bill that's before them, that they rely on the expertise of their fellow senators in order to come to positions which is just like things worked in political caucuses of the Senate (because remember, there was very little exercise of the whip, despite the tales to the contrary).  These ISG Commons meetings essentially confirm that they are a de facto political caucus.

But then comes the most problematic part of their charter, which is around partisanship.  In order to maintain their "brand identity" of independence, ISG members must stay away from any active political campaigning or fundraising, and they must notify the group in writing if they have a party membership.  Furthermore, the rules around ISG membership say that a Senator in their group:

does not have direct involvement in the activities of a recognized political party currently registered under the Canada Elections Act, including, but not limited to, publicly endorsing a recognized political party or its candidate(s), participating in the internal elections of a recognized political party, or helping to raise funds to support a recognized political party or one of its candidates.

The problems here are two-fold one of them is a Charter issue, that these rules impinge upon their members' freedom of association, and regulates what they can and can't do in their off-hours.  The other is the fact that this is a particularly blinkered view of politics, and is in fact destructive to our understanding of how politics should work.

The way our system is designed, more people need to be involved in getting party memberships, voting in nomination races, engaging in party policy conventions, and providing that grassroots activity that is the lifeblood of the system.  By deeming these activities to be unwelcome, it sends a broader message to the public that partisanship is a bad thing, which is simply not true, and is corrosive for civic engagement.  It encourages fewer people to get involved, not more, and that is a very real problem for democracy.