“In the old days, there probably would be a majority of Liberal Senators who would support government legislation, but we’re not living in that era anymore and that exercising this freedom is actually a very positive thing,” Liberal Senate Whip Jim Munson (Ottawa/Rideau Canal) told The Hill Times.
Sen. Munson said that it’s not “business as usual” and the Liberal Senate leadership will not whip any votes, which means the government will have to win each of the 27 Liberal Senators’ votes individually on every piece of legislation.
“It’s not business as usual. We’ll be looking at every piece of legislation carefully and individually. The government can present its legislation and can talk to individual Senators if they like and it’s up to individual Senators to vote the way they want to vote,” said Sen. Munson.
Another Liberal Senator told The Hill Times that several members of his caucus are upset with the way they have been treated by Mr. Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) since January 2014 when they were dropped from the national caucus without any consultation or advance notice. The government, this Senator said, should prepare for a “more studious” examination of legislation in the Upper Chamber.
“It’s fair to say that there’s frustration within the Liberal caucus, that we’re not in the loop at all,” the Liberal Senator said, who spoke to The Hill Times on condition of anonymity. “[Passage of legislation in the Senate] will not be easy and cannot be taken for granted because nobody owes him [Mr. Trudeau] anything. At the end of the day, [I’m not saying], they’re [government bills] going to be defeated much, but I think you can assume there’ll be more witnesses called, and more studious examination of the legislation.”
In the 105-member Red Chamber, there are 45 Conservative Senators, 27 Liberals, 11 Independents, and 22 vacant seats. Manitoba Liberal Senator Maria Chaput has also announced her retirement from the Senate effective March 1. Three more Senators including Quebec Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette, Toronto Liberal Sen. David Smith, and Quebec Conservative Sen. Michel Rivard are scheduled to retire this year. So, by the end of this year, 26 Senate seats will be vacant.
Mr. Trudeau booted all Liberal Senators from the national caucus in January 2014, which some Senators found “in poor taste” especially because they did not receive any advance warning. At the time the Senate was embroiled in the Senate expenses scandal.
Mr. Trudeau said he made the dramatic move, as a first step, to turn the Upper Chamber into a non-partisan legislative body and to revamp the appointment process in order to ensure the Senate would be an independent Chamber of sober second thought. Since then, the Liberal Senators have not been involved in party strategy or fundraising and although they were kicked out of caucus, they still identify themselves as Liberal Senators.
When the Liberals formed government in early November, some Liberal Senators were hoping that Mr. Trudeau would extend an olive branch and would appoint one of them to the position of the government Senate leader, one of the most powerful positions in the Red Chamber, which comes with additional salary, a higher profile, prestige, and control of the legislation in the Senate. But the government has announced that it will choose a government Senate representative, from one of the five newly-appointed Senators, expected to be appointed at the end of this month or early next month.
Currently, the Liberals are the third party in the Senate because Conservatives are in opposition and there’s no government caucus.
Since the Liberal Senate caucus is the third-place party in the Red Chamber, the Liberal Senators holding leadership positions don’t get any top-up salaries for their additional responsibilities on top of their regular salary. According to the Parliament of Canada Act, leadership top-up salaries are available only for the government caucus and the opposition caucus.
The government leader gets $80,100 in addition to the regular Senator’s salary of $142,400. Similarly, the opposition leader receives a salary boost of $38,100. Other Senate caucus positions for both the government and opposition—such as deputy leader, whip, deputy whip and caucus chair—also receive additional salaries.
“[Since January 2014,] anything that he [Mr. Trudeau] has done with our caucus is just sort of a kick in the groin or thrown out the door. So, why would anyone [with] this modus operandi assume that they’re going to be loved,” the Liberal Senator said, adding that if Mr. Trudeau intends to improve relations with Liberal Senators, he will have to make some “warm gestures.”
“Does he want to warm relations up or does he want to chill them even more? It’s up to him. It would be a wise move for him to make a few warm gestures,” said the Senator. “Warm vibes are warm vibes and he’ll have to figure out, if he wants to convey any. And if he doesn’t convey any, he can’t assume he will get warm vibes in response to cold vibes.”
Another Liberal Senator also said that since the Conservatives hold a majority of seats in the Senate and the Liberal Senators do not feel any obligation to support the government, the Trudeau government will face an uphill battle to pass legislation in the Red Chamber.
“He wants everybody to be independent and they’re being independent. The end result of that is, he’s going to get very little of his legislation passed because the majority are controlled by the Conservative Senators,” the second Liberal Senator told The Hill Times.
The Trudeau government will fill the vacant seats on the non-binding recommendations of the recently-appointed independent advisory board for Senate appointments headed by former deputy minister Huguette Labelle. The government is planning on appointing five Senators in the first phase—two in Ontario, two in Manitoba and one in Quebec—while the remaining seats will be filled later on in the year. For each vacant seat, the advisory board will recommend five names and Mr. Trudeau will have a final say who to appoint to the Red Chamber. The government Senate representative will be chosen from the first five Senators.
British Columbia Liberal Sen. Larry Campbell, in an interview with The Hill Times, said that he will make his decision on how to vote on each piece of legislation based on its merits. But he conceded that he was disappointed that Mr. Trudeau did not provide any advance notice to Liberal Senators before booting them out of the national caucus, however, he does not hold it against the government. Sen. Campbell said now that Liberal Senators are independent there’s no party pressure on them on how to vote.
Sen. Campbell described Mr. Trudeau’s decision to drop the Liberal Senators from the caucus as “brilliant,” but was disappointed with the way the decision was executed.
“I’m long over it. I was upset, yes, mainly about the way it happened. The decision was brilliant. If somebody is still worried about this, they need to get a life,” said Sen. Campbell. “It depends on what the bill is. It will be bill by bill. I would assume there will be many more bills that I’d view favourably than I did with the Conservatives. We are Liberals and if there are some that come that we don’t like, I’ll react to those.”
Manitoba Conservative Sen. Don Plett, who is also his party’s whip, said in an interview with The Hill Times, that his caucus will make decisions on every piece of legislation on a case-by-case basis and will not automatically vote against the government because it came from the Liberals.
“Hopefully, he [Mr. Trudeau] will govern in a responsible manner. And hopefully he will bring responsible, good legislation over to us. And if he brings good legislation over to us, we’ll be supportive of it,” said Sen. Plett. “If he doesn’t, we will give it the absolute thorough sober second thought that it deserves and who knows what we will do. We might amend legislation, we might pass it.”
Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Man.), parliamentary secretary to Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, N.B.), told The Hill Times that the government hopes the Senators will make a positive contribution to the legislative process. He said that if the Senators tried to unnecessarily delay the legislative process, Canadians will hold them to account and that it might become a public relations problem for a Chamber that has recently dealt with the Senate expenses scandal.
“They have a mandate that’s there as an institution and Canadians will be very disappointed if in fact they’re not able to fulfill that mandate,” Mr. Lamoureux said. “There’s this black cloud that’s been over the Senate for the last little while and I think that black cloud has drifted away and the Senate has an opportunity to demonstrate to Canadians that they’re there to improve [legislation] and they’re a positive contributor to the [legislative] process.”
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