My Hill Times Spin Doctors piece from this week
During the election, I contributed to The Hill Times’ weekly Spin Doctors feature on behalf of the Green Party. If you’re not a regular Hill Times reader, Spin Doctors has a strategist from each party respond to the question of the week. It was initially just for the duration of the election, but now that Green leader Elizabeth May has a seat in the House of Commons, The Hill Times asked us to continue to contribute. Thanks, Hill Times! So make sure to check out my piece each week. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of getting more Green pundits in the media.
This week, the topic was Harper’s ridiculous Senate appointments.
“Conservative Senator Marjory LeBreton says they’ll make a great contribution to the Senate. Liberal pundit Warren Kinsella said “Harper has flipped the finger” at voters in Quebec and Newfoundland who just rejected them. Why did Stephen Harper announce that he intended to appoint three failed Conservative candidates to the Senate?”
My answer:
Scridb filterThe recent Senate appointments are an insult to every one of us, especially to the voters who rejected the three losing candidates. Of course, rewarding Conservative cronies with a seat in the Red Chamber is nothing new for Harper – most of his appointments have been failed candidates, party fundraisers and organizers, and journalists who did Harper’s bidding.
But letting Larry Smith and Fabian Manning resign, run, lose, yet still get their old patronage jobs back? Many people wondered at the time why they would give up cushy Senate seats to take a chance on being defeated at the polls, and I think we now know the answer – there was never any danger of losing their Senate jobs for good. This is a new low for democracy, and it reeks of sketchy backroom dealing.
We need to know whether Smith and Manning were promised reappointment should they fail to be elected. Unfortunately, I doubt we ever will – we do, after all, have the least transparent Prime Minister in history.
Apparently Harper also has a problem sticking to his principles if partisan advantage is to be had. He denounced partisan Senate appointments while in opposition, and let’s not forget the 2004 election platform promise that “Stephen Harper will cease patronage appointments to the Senate. Only candidates elected by the people will be named to the Upper House.”
I guess what he meant to say was that only those “defeated by the people” will win the Senate jackpot.
I went to University with Fabian Manning. He was a sleeze ball then, he and his brother. Two Peckford PC croanies that would sell their souls for patronage. And I don’t know if you realize, this is not the first loss for Manning, he was denied in 2008 as well. Putz.
I should have mentioned that! How ridiculous is it that he can be rejected TWICE?
Camille,
Be more careful in your own partisanship. Not only did Elizabeth “lose” twice, there was at one point I believe consideration of her “elevation” to the Senate, where she could have done good work, maybe more than she can get done as MP even.
Harperites do not care that process gets in the way of whatever blinkered ends they entertain, but in this case there are twists to take into account. If Harper gets his “principled” way with the Senate, as I remarked blogging long ago for Greens, Greens would be in via some provincial proportional rep method, maybe using lists. I also do not believe “defeated” candidates bear “putzy” stigmata, they are going out on a limb in a process that has to be held in esteem, regardless of the nature or the quality of public service many of these people intend. To encourage higher calibre participants, so that other pursuits do not continually strip away the best in academe, business, professions etc, there is something to be said for, say, “losing” candidates in FPTP maintaining their names on part lists for some proportional rep purposes at the same time. There are drawbacks to this, but such for example would have been a corrective to the awful political misreprestativeness that we endure, and Harper, as “alienated Westerner” Reform holdover, was & is the one who keeps putting forward this Senate opportunity — for Greens. And it is not for partisanship that I say this — I quit GPC, and see no reason now to rejoin, I quit GPO way before that, and see less to rejoin them.
As I have said often while GPC-blogging, FPTP, from a localist “green” perspective, attentive to some pre-modern values, can be valuable, if complemented by other arrangements, such a proportional Senate. The way Harper has pre-set things for the failed candidates does smack of so many other things he does, which I have likened to postmodern kitsch, it’s in poor taste. But insofar as they retain accurate perception that the old Senate needs to be redone, why not assist them with their — in this case — oddly useful knack for circumventing regular process, here with constitutional unlikelihoods, assist them in assisting Greens’ getting to Parliament in other ways?