What will Prime Minister Stephen Harper do about Senator Richard Neufeld, plucked 18 months ago out of B.C. Premier's Gordon Campbell cabinet by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to become a member of the Senate of Canada?
Harper has appointed 34 senators and, whenever has named them, Conservatives have been very clear that each and every one of them is committed to two basic tenets of Senate reform: There should be term limits of eight years for senators and, someday, senators should be elected. The government introduced legislation earlier this year towards those goals.
But yesterday, Neufeld told Senators:
I am not sure that an elected Senate is the way to go. Obviously there need to be a few changes, but I do not think the election of senators is the top thing on my mind….
I have heard some people say that the Senate is too partisan, that we have to elect senators so that we do not have a partisan Senate. My goodness! Take a look at the other place or at any other legislature. Are they not partisan? Of course not.
I think we work well here. Do we have differences of opinion? Of course we do, but if we cannot sit down and talk them out, sometimes we agree to disagree. That is democracy and I do not mind that kind of democracy.
If Canadians actually want an elected Senate, they need to be told both sides of the story. I do not think you can just continue to rant about how terrible the Senate is without telling people what the Senate does, what it has done and the good work that it does.
Wandering so far afield from bedrock Conservative Party policy would, one assumes, bring immediate excommunication from the Conservative caucus.
But Harper must balance his desire to continue with a plurality in the Senate versus his desire to send a message to any other Conservative senators who have some newly independent ideas about Senate reform.
The Conservative senate caucus numbers 51, more than any other party, but two seats shy of a majority of 53 in the 105-seat Senate. The Liberals have 49 senators; the Progressive Conservative have two, two others are independent and there is one vacancy.
If Neufeld is out, there are 50 in caucus to the Liberal 49, still a plurality, but, unlike the Conservatives in the House of Commons, not every Conservative senator walks the party line. Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, for example, has some of his own ideas about the government's legislative package, including Senate reform.
Dumping Neufeld, then, would likely send a message about caucus solidarity but it could imperil the government's ability to do what it wants the Senate to do: rubber-stamp the government's legislation.
We have asked the PMO for its thoughts on Senator Neufeld's new ideas and have been told that, perhaps later today, we will hear something about that from Harper's office.