Prime Minister Mark Carney has been very busy “flooding the zone” in the last week or so — and as a result, Canadians might have missed a seemingly minor but significant shift he just announced.
Carney has taken a step towards taming one of the last, if imperfect, sources of accountability for his government as it implements an increasingly pro-corporate agenda: the Senate.
Please, don’t tune out just because I mentioned the Senate. I’m aware that that chamber of “sober second thought” has a lot of issues — to the point that many Canadians, not necessarily wrongly, think the unelected body shouldn’t exist at all.
But as long as it does exist, it currently serves as the only place where there’s still any interrogation of Carney’s legislative agenda.
Now, as a result of changes he just announced to regress the Senate to a time before former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s attempts at reform, Carney appears primed to stack the Senate with people who will rubber stamp his agenda.
Okay wait, but what did Carney undo?
To fully understand what Carney just did, you have to understand the changes Trudeau implemented when it comes to Senate appointments.
Most of you probably already know this, but if you — like me — had a gym teacher sub in to teach your civics class, you might need a refresher.
The Senate is an unelected — appointed — body made up of people who serve until, at most, the mandatory retirement age of 75.
All federal legislation that becomes law in Canada is debated, voted on, studied in a committee, then voted on again. All along the way, the legislation can have its kinks ironed out and unintended consequences scrubbed from it. If it makes it through all of that, the legislation then goes to the other chamber and does the whole dance over again (Senate bills go through the Senate first, House bills go through the House first).
After working its way through both chambers, it receives royal assent and becomes the law of the land.
Now, the Senate would probably get in hot water if it — an unelected, appointed body — regularly, fundamentally changed legislation that elected representatives crafted. But still, it does slow down the process — allowing time for more consideration — and sometimes does amend laws when concerns are raised.
However, when the Senate is made up of a yes men (and women) who get their cushy gig as a partisan “thank you” from a prime minister, they’re far more likely to just rubber stamp whatever that prime minister sends their way. That’s not great, and it’s very much how things worked before Trudeau’s era.
Enter Trudeau. The former prime minister tried to make the Senate more independent.
First, he ejected senators from the Liberal caucus. Then, after becoming prime minister, he set up an “independent and non-partisan” advisory board for appointments to the Senate. Canadians could apply to be appointed as senators, and the board would provide recommendations to the prime minister.
The goal here was to move away from a Senate that was stacked with sycophants to the prime minister who appointed them. While Trudeau still appointed some longtime Liberals, such as former Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner, applicants to the Senate were asked to demonstrate they can bring a perspective that is “non-partisan.”
“The reason non-partisanship and merit-based criteria were emphasized under Trudeau is because at the time, too many people were being appointed to the Senate solely on the basis of their political partisanship,” Supriya Dwivedi, a former senior adviser to Trudeau, told me over text.
“The point of the changes made to the Senate under Trudeau was to restore some semblance of public trust in an institution that was increasingly seen as a place for political cronies to end up when they tired of the private sector or couldn’t win an election as an MP.”
Okay, so what did Carney do?
But with his announcement this week, Carney has dialled back the clock on these Senate reforms — opening the door to a return to “grubby patronage and strategic politicking,” as political science professor Emmett Macfarlane, who advised Trudeau’s office on their Senate reforms, wrote in a Substack article.
See, in between announcing pipeline proposals, MOUs, massive military purchases and heading to NATO, Carney also shared he’s making “modifications to the Senate appointment process.”
In light of all that other stuff Carney flooded the zone with, it’s hard to imagine anyone would have time to care about Senate appointment processes.
But we should — because it could remove the last remaining layer of accountability his government faces.
In his press release, Carney announced his government is “expanding the criteria for new applicants to the Senate.”
“Recruitment of candidates with enhanced focus and expertise in key Canadian strategic industries, regulatory frameworks, and emerging social and economic affairs will be an added focus,” his release read.
“The government is also removing the non-partisanship criterion for Senate appointments.”
His wording is strange. The Senate website already established that “past political activities would not disqualify an applicant” — they just had to demonstrate they could work in a non-partisan way.
To some onlookers, in the context of who Carney immediately turned around and said he’d be appointing to the Senate, the meaning of that sentence is clear.
“In other words, the Carney government is opening the door to more partisan appointments in the future,” Macfarlane wrote.
Carney then immediately announced the names of four new Senators, two of whom reflected this new direction.
One of those men is Tom Pitfield, a deeply partisan choice given the man just served as the prime minister’s principal secretary and worked to get Carney elected. The other is Richard Martel — who was, until this announcement, a Quebec Conservative MP.
Martel’s leap over to the Senate means his seat will be up for grabs in an upcoming byelection — and given how narrowly the Conservatives won the riding in the last election, there’s a non-zero chance the Liberals (or the Bloc Québécois) could snag it.
Why would Carney want to stack the Senate?
With Carney opening the door to handing out Senate seats as a political reward, he could also be knocking down one of the last remaining barriers to accountability his government faces.
After crafting a majority government through floor-crossers, Carney immediately also moved to give the Liberals a majority on the House of Commons committees. In short, that means the Liberal majority can force through whatever legislation it wants at every stage of the process.
Plus the government can, thanks to its majority, invoke closure or time allocation to shut down debates in the House of Commons and force a vote (which they’d win, given they have more than 50 per cent of the votes now).
That development meant there has only been one place left where legislation can be slowed down and given real scrutiny: the Senate.
For example, as Althia Raj reported for the Toronto Star, the immigration bill C-12 barely got any study in the House, despite civil society groups warning of significant risks the legislation posed to refugees and migrants. No amendments were recommended.
It wasn’t until the bill was studied in the Senate that parliamentarians were, according to Raj’s reporting, “floored at what they now understood the bill could be doing.”
The Senate committee recommended amendments, but were ignored. The bill became law in late March, an outcome Amnesty International Canada described as “devastating.”
The Senate has also had significant, heated debate over Carney’s bill C-4, which — in the same bill that gave most Canadians an income tax cut and eliminated the carbon tax — made it so, when it comes to Canadians’ personal information, federal political parties were only subject to privacy rules they establish for themselves.
The changes were widely supported in the House. As Raj noted in another piece, “The only people raising a stink about it are Canada’s independent, non-partisan senators — the kind Prime Minister Mark Carney seems unsure he wants to reappoint.”
The Senate’s proposed amendments were rejected in the House, and the bill became law in March.
While the Senate has proven unsuccessful in many of its bids to fix concerning legislation the Carney government has pushed, it’s the only space where there’s still real room for Parliamentarians to try.
With his changes to the Senate, Carney appears poised to tear down this final remaining obstacle — a sole source of real accountability — when it comes to his agenda that’s otherwise steamrolling into law.
“In going back to the old way of turning the Senate into a revolving door for political cronies where there is no sober second thought to speak of, PM Carney has effectively removed a layer of potential checks and balances on his agenda,” Dwivedi said.
There are 105 Senators. Carney just appointed four of them, and there are still six vacant seats he gets to fill. In the press release announcing his new approach to Senate appointments, Carney’s office also noted “five more” vacancies are anticipated “by the end of the year.”
If Carney stacks these seats with people who will simply rubber stamp his ideas, then what accountability is left for Canadians? Who stands even slightly in the way of Carney and whatever agenda he chooses to implement?
The answer, in practice, is no one.
What would he do with that power?
