The Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Marc Gold, has recently proposed a motion that would temporarily amend the rules of the Chamber so that on Thursday evenings, either at 6 PM or the end of government orders (meaning government business, as opposed to other Senate business like private members’ legislation or Senate public bills), the Senate rises at that time. Normally, the Senate would simply work until they’re through the Order Paper for the day, and if it’s a very busy period and they have to go to midnight, so be it. It’s rare that it happens, but it does, particularly as the Christmas or summer breaks approach. That Gold is making this particular move troubles me, because it’s just one more in a series of decisions where it seems like he’s doing his best to ensure that the Senate does as little as possible outside of very prescribed hours.
When this motion came up for a vote last week, two “non-affiliated” senators, Mary Jane MCCallum and Marilou McPhedran objected saying that any agreement that Gold made with the leaders of the other caucuses in the Senate wasn’t floated by them, and this directly affected their work because they were invested in things outside of government orders. This follows a long series of complaints from certain “non-affiliated” senators who complain that they aren’t being included in decisions made by leadership in the Senate because they’re not part of a caucus. This is an argument I don’t have a lot of time for because they made the choice not to sit in an established caucus group, for whatever the reason, and if they can’t play nice and work well with others, the Senate doesn’t owe them to consult on every issue, particularly given that they already have enormous powers under the established rules.
Nevertheless, in the face of this challenge, Gold insisted that this was about Senators’ ability to get home on Thursday nights.
“The purposes are to address a real challenge for those of you—not me personally, who has it easy because I’m two hours by car from Montreal—to get home in a timely fashion because of the decreasing number of flights available and the increasing challenges and unpredictability of those flights,” Gold told the Senate. “Therefore, it was proposed around the leadership table to find an equitable way to at least give some predictability to those of you who have to make those arrangements and often find yourselves stuck, with no ability to get home, with all of the costs, personal and financial, that may accrue.”
This is actually mystifying because if they need to leave, nothing is preventing them. There has never been an issue where the Senate chamber had to end its workday because senators needed to catch flights. They can simply leave when they need to, and if there is something coming up on the Order Paper that they want to speak to, it takes virtually no effort to have someone stand up when the item is called and adjourn the debate in their name. It happens all of the time. Yes, flights continue to be a mess in many parts of the country since the re-opening from the height of the pandemic, but again, nothing about that necessitates a rule change, temporary or permanent.
When the Chamber is sitting, there is nothing that dictates that all senators must attend it at all times. Yes, there are public attendance records for the Senate to ensure that they are present and, on the job, (following scandals in the early nineties of one senator in particular who lived in Mexico “for health reasons” but showed up once a year to fulfil his constitutional obligation), but this doesn’t mean being in the chamber at all hours. That’s preposterous, and indicative of a weird sort of presenteeism that is getting worse in the Senate. It’s important to remember that it sits for far fewer hours in a day than the House of Commons because its function is not to be the kind of talk shop that the Commons is, but to handle business that needs to be handled in a plenary setting before everyone goes to their committees where the real work happens. Of course, this presenteeism has also been accompanied by the wrong-headed notion that these senators also need to make speeches at second reading for every bill that crosses their desks, which is a bad habit that they’ve picked up from the House of Commons, and which ironically adds more hours to the time spent in the Senate Chamber for no good reason.
While Gold’s motion is and of itself unnecessary, it does send a signal when you also factor in the fact that he has consistently refused to sit more than a day or two more than the House of Commons after it rises for breaks, even though it would be in the best interests of the Senate to sit later. The old notion that the Senate sits until their work is done no longer applies in the “new” “independent” Senate. If anything, this is playing into the harmful stereotypes that they sit as little as possible, and that they are constantly on vacation, particularly because there isn’t the expectation of constituency work for senators the way there is for MPs. Yes, some senators do forms of constituency work, such as hold meetings with stakeholders and community groups, but it’s nothing like an MP’s constituency office. The impression that they can’t wait to get out of Ottawa, where their “real work” happens, as soon as possible confirms that suspicion in the general public, bolstered by a pundit class that is forever happy to use the Senate as a punching bag. It would be great if Gold could realize that “we’re independent now” isn’t a selling feature for the public, and that he keeps undermining the reputation for good work that the Senate has enjoyed.
