Given the events of Friday, I was particularly interested to read what the 28-year-old PIerre Elliott Trudeau had to say about our Senate in a presentation he gave in Paris, France in 1947:
“Our Senate is an odd mixture of the U.S. Senate and the British House of Lords, and, as it lacks the justification of either of these Chambers, it is perfectly useless. In my opinion, in a country of the federative type, the main justification for a second Chamber is safeguard the interests of federated countries. But, fearing autonomist pressures, the Fathers of Confederation created a system where whole regions, rather than provinces, were represented. But worst of all, senators are appointed for life [later changed to appointment until they reached the age of 75] by the central government, not elected by the provinces! In short, the Senate … was meant to serve as a bulwark against the tumultous waves of popular democracy. Whereas, in actual fact, this bulwark mainly ensures that 96 doddering old monks spend their working hours in blissful slumber, profiting handsomely at the public trough.”
I am quoting Trudeau as Max and Monique Nemni quote him in their book Trudeau Transformed: The Shaping of a Statesman, 1944-1965.
As prime minister, Trudeau would appoint 81 “doddering old monks” to the “useless” Senate and, as of January, 2012, five of those Senators are still serving and “profiting handsomely at the public trough.”
Also: If you’re curious to learn more about the Nemni book — here’s my interview (all-too-brief) with them. (I make an error in this interview — that’s live TV for you — that other biographers of Trudeau have also apparently made because the Nemnis correct the error in the book. The error? Trudeau did not, as I say in this interview as well as some who have written about Trudeau, study at the Sorbonne as a young ma. In fact: He never studied there but studied, instead, at Sciences Po while in post-war Paris.)