When All Else Fails

The abject fawning press and their Liberal-left academic counterparts are all agush in admiration for the bold new move by Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. A man with an abysmal
absence of practical new ideas shy of agreeing to all the sensible positions of the Conservative government in advancing the best interests of the country. No matter, ideas and useful strategies to improve government and giving added value to Canadians can take second place to making the news; lavish coverage trumps substance every time.

"There are no more Liberal senators."
"As of this morning, only elected Members of the House of Commons will serve as members of the Liberal Caucus. The 32 formerly Liberal Senators are now independent of the national Liberal Caucus. They are no longer part of our parliamentary team."
Let me be clear, the only way to be a part of the Liberal caucus is to be put there by the voters of Canada"
Justin Trudeau, 29 January 2014

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press     “This is not a party he has inherited. It is a party he has control of. It shows very much that this is Justin Trudeau’s party,” a former Liberal official

"We are the Senate Liberal caucus and I will remain the leader of the Opposition and we will remain the official Opposition in the senate. I'm not a former Liberal senator. I'm a Liberal."
Senator James Cowan

"I gather the change announced by the leader today is that unelected Liberal senators will become unelected senators who happen to be Liberal."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

This is the new, decisive leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He has a plan. He will reform the Senate of Canada single-handedly by removing politics from the Senate, enabling senators to sit independent of political party to give their autonomous opinions on legislation vital to Canada, without the interfering nuisance of the leader of the political party to which they are aligned instructing them on how they must view legislation they must judge on merit alone.

The Liberal senators, most of the 32 that elevate the character of the chamber they sit within, appear for the most part, confused, not the least bit thankful to be released from the bondage of political partisanship. They may be life-long Liberals who have been staunch party supporters who have done all in their power to further the aims of the Liberal party, but henceforth they are, while in the Senate, non-aligned and independent; go ye forth and do as ye may. And lump it.

This Liberal leader who decries the top-down methodology of the Conservative leadership who treat ordinary backbenchers as of no account whatsoever, rarely deigning to seek consensus, has decided that he does, after all, admire that method. Which led him to make the decision without any kind of courtesy involved in consulting with loyal senators, and springing a rather earth-shattering (in their confused estimation) ouster on them; leaving them as it were, dangling, partyless.

"These gals and guys in the Senate are partisan. That's what motivates them. They're not about to lose that stripe just because they've been unleashed", commented Donald Savoie, political professor at the University of Moncton. The senators themselves have reacted, in a stunned fashion, stating their determination to continue sitting, identified by their party membership; they are Liberals, full stop.

They will now sit outside the Liberal caucus. But dammit, they are the official Opposition in the Senate. As Independent Senator Anne Cools put it, the 32 Liberal senators are Independent in the nomenclature imposed upon them by the conceit of their leader anxious to promote himself as someone who thinks outside the stifling box of convention: "They're continuing business as usual. Obviously, nothing has changed."

There are a lot of spoilers in the Senate, Liberal senators shocked out of their complacent self-satisfaction who are swallowing hard and proclaiming their loyalty to party and leader. Poor attendance in the House, and where's Trudeau during Question Period? The man has important things to do. Struggling manfully to devise policy issues. And he just lobbed a bomb at the Senate.