Is PMO Directing Destruction of Opposition in Parliamentary Chamber?

Conservative senator accuses Trudeau of trying to 'destroy' opposition in the Senate
In apparent breach of Senate rules, Denise Batters films partisan video inside upper chamber

By Chris Rands, CBC News Posted: Dec 21, 2016 6:06 PM ET Last Updated: Dec 21, 2016 8:56 PM ET

Conservative Denise Batters posted a YouTube video Dec. 21, 2016, accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of trying to eliminate opposition in the Senate.

Conservative Denise Batters posted a YouTube video Dec. 21, 2016, accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of trying to eliminate opposition in the Senate.



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In a video posted to YouTube Tuesday that may violate Senate rules, Conservative Senator Denise Batters accuses Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office of trying to eliminate opposition in the upper chamber.

In her 65-second video, Batters refers to Trudeau's controversial past comments about communist China and Cuba's late dictator, Fidel Castro.

"We know that Prime Minister Trudeau is a fan of communist China's efficiency, and that he called Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, a Trudeau family friend, a 'remarkable leader,'"Batters says.

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"Opposition in the Senate might be inconvenient for the Trudeau government, but we have a critical role to play in protecting Canadian democracy: to hold the government accountable and to voice minority and regional views not represented in the majority Liberal government in the House of Commons."

Standing on the opposition side of the Senate chamber and speaking directly into the camera, Batters says she is concerned that Senator Peter Harder, the government's representative in the Senate, wants to do away with an organized official opposition, as she gestures to the empty chairs behind her.

"This is Canada, a free, democratic country. We must not allow the Trudeau government to destroy the opposition in a democratic chamber of Parliament, emptying these opposition benches forever."

Harder's office said he had no comment on the video.

Batters, who was picked by Stephen Harper to represent Saskatchewan in the Senate, is known as a strong defender of her party.
The Conservative opposition in the Senate have viewed Trudeau's appointments of Independent senators with great suspicion.
The Conservatives have sparred with the Independents over membership in Senate committees, which are the prime vehicle for examining legislation.

Cameras rarely allowed in the Senate

Filming in the Senate is strictly controlled by the Speaker, and the red chamber remains off-limits to all cameras while in session. Debates can only be heard on an audio webcast.

When asked about filming a partisan message inside the Senate chamber, Batters said in a statement, "The Senate is a partisan, political institution. I have previously made exactly these same comments during debate and in question period in the Senate chamber.

"I followed the appropriate approval process for senators to use the Senate chamber, and I chose that locale to illustrate the visual of a Senate chamber with no opposition."

Senate Speaker George Furey's office said in a statement, "Senator Batters had requested the use of the Senate chamber for the purposes of recording a video on a different topic. In general, the Senate chamber is not used for the filming of partisan videos when the Senate is not in session."

In response to that statement, a spokeswoman for Batters said that while arranging for the video to be shot in the chamber "no one asked the topic of Senator Batters' video, nor was the information offered."

The Senate is expected to open the red chamber to television cameras when it moves in the coming months to a temporary location to allow for decade-long renovations to Centre Block. The temporary location in Ottawa's former train station is being designed to allow for live broadcasting of the Senate's proceedings.
Senate Opposition Leader Claude Carignan was not available to comment.

Senator Harder on a year of change for the Senate

 Senator Harder on a year of change for the Senate  


    www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senator-harder-on-a-year-of-change-for-the-senate-1.3908089

Senators divided on question of whether they should be part of political parties

National Post

Senators divided on question of whether they should be part of political parties

Marie-Danielle Smith | November 30, 2016 7:08 PM ET
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/senators-divided-on-question-of-whether-they-should-be-part-of-political-part
OTTAWA — 
 As a modernization committee debates the future of the Senate with no conclusion in sight, the leader of the Senate Liberals argued Wednesday that senators shouldn’t be discouraged from banding together along partisan lines.

“We are being encouraged to transform the Senate by eliminating the usual features of the Westminster parliamentary model,” said Sen. Joseph Day, who leads a group of senators that aligns itself with the Liberal Party but does not represent the government or sit with Liberal MPs in a caucus.

Freedom of assembly is a Charter right, Day said, and should prevent any attempts to reform the Senate in a way that forbids partisan organization. And if the government has a representative in the chamber to present its legislation —

 Sen. Peter Harder, sworn-in in March — then Day argued the official opposition should be represented officially as well.

Not everyone agrees with that idea. Some, including Harder, are aiming for a Senate with no political party caucuses, made up of independents. 

But as the committee met Wednesday, Day argued Harder’s motives seem unclear.

“He is speaking on behalf of the government and encouraging us to model ourselves in the image the government is creating for us,” Day said. “If we agree to go down that road, whose interests will we be serving?”

He argued the vision articulated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he was in opposition could in fact make it harder for the Senate to act as a check on power because senators may not be organized enough to present arguments against a bill.

But Day doesn’t want to see the Senate infected by the hyper-partisanship of the House of Commons either, and argued that Conservative senators should sever their caucus ties with their Commons counterparts.

The committee is meeting during a time of upheaval in the Senate; Trudeau’s Liberals in the House have severed official ties with their former caucus mates in the Senate, and 21 recently-named independent senators, along with seven appointed in March, upset a status quo where almost all senators were either Conservative or Liberal — and either in government or in opposition, depending on who held the balance of power in the House of Commons.

There was some debate among committee members over what the formal role of the opposition in the Senate should be. Some senators, like Conservative Sen. Stephen Greene, think Harder and two others who act as government representatives (they call themselves the G3) should be matched by a trio of official opposition representatives (“the O3,” suggested Liberal Sen. Art Eggleton).

Still, Sen. Diane Bellemare, one of the G3, replied that this is a period of transition for the Senate and that it is the public who want to see a more nonpartisan Senate, or at least one that doesn’t need political parties to function.

The co-ordinator of the independents’ group, Sen. Elaine McCoy, said that senators “can’t rely simply on the official opposition for all of us to do our jobs as scrutineers.”

As the longest-serving senator, Anne Cools, pointed out, none of this has been debated on the Senate floor itself, only in committee. And heading into December, senators remain nowhere near agreement on what the Senate should look like, though the chamber’s makeup has already changed dramatically.
Email: mdsmith@postmedia.com |

SENATE OF CANADA MUST READ

The Senate – An Essential House of Parliament

    http://www.revparl.ca/37/1/37n1e_14_kinsella.pdf

Why is the Senate of Canada so essential?

  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-senate-canada-so-essential-alexis-david-fafard

Toronto Star

Liberals are expected to appoint 20 new senators within weeks

Justin Trudeau’s independent Senate gamble will be put to the test once independent senators outnumber Conservatives and Liberals.

By Alex BoutilierOttawa Bureau Reporter

 

Tues., Sept. 20, 2016https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/09/21/liberals-are-expected-to-appoint-20-new-senators-within-weeks.html

 

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to name 20 new “non-affiliated” or “independent” senators in a matter of weeks.

The government had pledged to fill the remaining Senate vacancies, including six for Ontario, by the end of the year. But a source familiar with the process said the Liberals want to move quickly to fill those 20 seats.

The move would mean that, for the first time in the Senate’s history, non-affiliated senators will outnumber their Conservative or Independent Liberal counterparts with a plurality of seats. And it will also put to the test Trudeau’s gamble to make the upper chamber more respectable in the eyes of Canadians.


Peter Harder, the Liberal government’s representative in the Senate, expects recommendations from an arm’s-length advisory board on Senate appointments to land on the prime minister’s desk within weeks.


“I think the new senators will give an added impetus of change or reform and renewal to the institution,” Harder said in an interview Monday.

 

“This is a change in progress. The modernization of this institution to make it an independent, non-partisan, accountable, transparent and complimentary body is a work in progress. And we’re looking for opportunities to work with all senators to achieve that objective.”


Against the backdrop of the Senate expense scandal in January 2014, Trudeau, then in opposition, announced that Liberal senators would no longer be welcome to caucus with their House of Commons colleagues.


After the Liberals took power two years later, Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef put in place a new arm’s-length system to appoint senators, rather than picking from the usual ranks of party stalwarts, fundraisers, and friendly journalists or lawyers.

 

In March, Trudeau appointed seven new senators, including Harder, former provincial NDP cabinet minister Frances Lankin, and Ratna Omidvar representing Ontario.


With the new batch of senators appointed, Trudeau will have appointed 27 to the upper chamber in his first year in power. Former prime minister Stephen Harper appointed 59 over almost a decade in power, but that number was kept low by Harper’s steadfast refusal to appoint new senators while the expense scandal embroiled his government.


Conservative Senator Leo Housakos, a former Senate Speaker and chair of the chamber’s powerful internal economy committee, said that he’s heard the new appointments will be made “imminently.”
Housakos, a critic of the Liberals’ Senate proposal, said the new dynamic in the upper chamber will make the operations of that place more difficult.


“The difficulty, and they’re starting to recognize it themselves, is that it’s hard to operate in the British parliamentary system without clusters and caucuses,” Housakos said in an interview Tuesday.
“A lot of the decision (about) who sits on (Senate) committees are taken by caucuses, are taken by collectively within groups of like-minded senators.

So when someone says that a senator is independent, do you think that Justin Trudeau is going to be appointing to the Senate right-of-centre politically minded people? Or do you think there’s a great likelihood that, like the last batch, he will be appointing left-of-centre, social liberal-minded individuals?”


The Star requested comment from the Prime Minister’s Office for this article, asking whether Trudeau has made his selections or when those decisions will be made. In response, the Privy Council Office — public servants who support the prime minister — suggested the final decisions had not yet been made.


“The process being led by the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments is ongoing,” PCO spokesperson Raymond Rivet wrote in a statement.

“The government has indicated that it intends to fill the current Senate vacancies by the end of 2016.”

 

Senate Reform Essential Reading and Communication Job Applicatioon

The Senate – An Essential House of Parliament

 http://www.revparl.ca/37/1/37n1e_14_kinsella.pdf


Also
 Why is the Senate of Canada so essential?
   https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-senate-canada-so-essential-alexis-david-fafard

Various positions in Communication          

Job ID:	J1215-0291
Directorate:	Communications
Job Type:	Indeterminate (Permanent) Full-Time
Location:	Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Minimum Salary:	49877/Year
Maximum Salary:	108153/Year
Closing Date:	January 5, 2016

Purpose

To establish a pool of candidates for various positions in the Communications Directorate in order to staff these positions on an indeterminate, determinate, acting, or assignment basis. The positions to staff are:

Chief, Outreach & Committees Liaison ($85,476 - $108,153)
Chief, Writer & Media Outreach ($78,129 - $98,859)
*Stakeholders Outreach Officer ($68,507 - $86,680) *
Committees Liaison Officer (Communications)($68,507 - $86,680)
Digital Content Producer ($61,676 - $78,040)
Social Media Coordinator ($55,672 - $70,443)
Senate Events Coordinator ($55,672 - $70,443)
Media Outreach Coordinator ($55,672 - $70,443)
Communications Assistant ($49,877 - $63,112)
Press Secretary ($68,507 - $86,680)

Read More https://jobs-emplois.sen.parl.gc.ca/cl4/xweb/XWeb.asp?tbtoken=YVtYQRNcR1U4ZHYCRyMhFVFUd2VbBkxYcSZYTlB9f2xFKzduWzESdxR2dEQjGVtQSHBkXTpT&chk=dFlbQBJQ&page=jobdetails&JobId=J1215-0291&BRID=21596&lang=1

MySenateReformBlog Archive 2014-15

My Senate ReformBlog Archive 2014-15

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