This afternoon, National Post's John Ivison and I interviewed Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his Langevin Block office on Parliament Hill. The first story out of that interview is online – PM cools election speculation; says budget will address deficit – and we'll have a second up later this evening and in tomorrow's newspapers focusing on his comments on the future for Canada's mission in Afghanistan. A full transcript of the interview should also be online later tonight.
In the meantime, here's our chit-chat about the Senate appointments. There are five vacancies right now in the Senate and Harper is expected to fill those shortly. When he does that, the Conservatives will have a plurality of Senate seats — 51 to the Liberals 49 — but with six Senators representing other parties or sitting as independents that often vote with the Liberals, Harper won't have a majority.
We asked him if he he will appoint more than five Senators, as he is allowed to do under the Constitution, in order to get that majority and eliminate any obstacles to Senate reform and other legislation in the Red Chamber. Here's that part of the exchange:
IVISON: Prime Minister, it seems there is not going to much for us to write about, unless there are Senate appointments in our near future. Are they coming, will there be more than five and will that have a big impact on your Senate reform plans?
HARPER: As you know, the government intends to fill the new vacancies in the Senate. I don’t think we’ve been secret about that, especially after the Liberals used their numbers in the Senate to block three important pieces of government legislation that were widely supported by the public – cracking down on grow-ops, dealing with the problem of auto-theft and also some consumer product safety legislation, which, I will say as an aside, you wrote a very good column on, so you do think once in a while! But this is important legislation and we quite frankly find it appalling that it was blocked. So we will be naming the five vacancies in the not too distant future. That will help – it will make us the largest party in the Senate but it doesn’t solve all of our problems because we still don’t have a majority. But it will make passage of these bills easier.
It will also give me some senators who will support the government’s Senate reform agenda, which is one of the many things stalled. If there’s any legislation that gets the most difficult ride of all in the Senate it’s Senate reform legislation. I’m optimistic that as we appoint more reform-minded senators, we’ll start to unblock the Senate.
AKIN: Just a quick note on John’s question, you’re going to appoint five and not more? You could appoint more.
HARPER: I have no plans to appoint..as you know the Constitution will allow an extra four or eight. That’s been used once. It would be an extraordinary act, so I would hope we would never get pushed to do that.
Hey, is it me or is your math wrong.
There are 105 Senate seats. After the 5 to be named in the near future, the standings will be 51 CPC, 49 Lib and 5 and not 6 independants.
For the current standings please see:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/senmemb/Senate/ps-e.htm
hawaii 5-0
The three bills dying in the Senate isn't quite accurate, and it should be noted that 17 crime-related bills were before committee and now have to start over from scratch:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/article1420573/
There's also the question that if the Conservatives don't have a majority in the Commons, why should they have a majority in the Senate?
http://thestar.blogs.com/politics/2010/01/senate-reform-two-questions.html
There's also the point (see above link) that the Senate shouldn't be a simple rubber stamp. Isn't it (in theory) supposed to the be the chamber of sober second thought?
“There's also the question that if the Conservatives don't have a majority in the Commons, why should they have a majority in the Senate? ”
But, but, but, if the Liberals can't even form a minority government, they should have a majority in the Senate?
Why are our senators affiliated with political parties anyways, are they not after all an arm of the Governor General? and as such shouldn't the GG should be asking the Lieutenant Governor Generals of the Provinces for names to the seats in question leaving the PM and PMO out of this responsibility altogether?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Senate suppose to be a check on Federal powers and as such, isn't the current diaspora of Senators failing miserably in there assigned roles as was seen in allowing the Gun Registry to supersede provincial authorities?
I'm a strong supporter of placing people with abilities in the upper house and be damned with the electoral process that's being championed by Harper and his affiliated political machinations
The senators are nominated by the prime minister of Canada. It took more than a decade of Liberal majority government to build up that lead for the the Liberals. Harper says that he wants to reform it. It took him less than 5 years of minority government to erase that deficit.
How about the election? He said he could not lead the country and he overturned his own government to have another election last year. I thought he was going to resign when he said that he could not lead the country.
It is his right to appoint them and there is no reason why he shouldn't. If the Fiberals were in power they would do the same thing and they have many times in the past.
If the senators were elected and they were questioning bills passed by Parliament, that is fine but when you have unelected Fiberal senators blocking bills passed by parliament then that is a problem and a mockery of democracy.