Prime Minister Mark Carney in Vancouver last week.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
The chamber of sober second thought is apparently too sober for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s liking, and tends to waste all kinds of time in second thought. What it needs, we are told, is more party loyalists.
So Mr. Carney appointed his principal secretary and campaign manager, Tom Pitfield, to the Senate, alongside Conservative MP Richard Martel, 65, who bolted from Pierre Poilievre’s joyless Conservative caucus for another nine years and eight months of job security.
But the PM also changed the appointment process for new senators to remove the nominal requirement of non-partisanship, thus opening the door wide to former politicians, aides and fundraisers.
It seems strange for a Prime Minister with so little partisan history of his own, but it was not the first time Mr. Carney has removed restrictions on partisanship in power. Last year, he loosened rules on the government spending on partisan ads – and now Mr. Carney’s Canada Strong campaign slogan is often heard in TV commercials.
Quebec Conservative MP Richard Martel announced Tuesday he is quitting his caucus and being appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Mark Carney to sit as an independent.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Now, the Prime Minister is once again free to fill the Red Chamber with all the Liberals that can fit.
Well, freer. There was never really a bar on appointing politicians who had partisan ties.
In 2014, Mr. Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau expelled the Liberal senators from the Liberal caucus, setting them free to eventually coalesce into new groups with Conservatives and new independent appointees. He created an appointment process that called for a modest level of non-partisanship.
Yet that didn’t stop Mr. Trudeau from sprinkling long-time Liberal politicians and partisans into the ranks of local luminaries, former senior officials and others that he tapped for the Senate.
In 2023, for example, Mr. Trudeau appointed the voluble Rodger Cuzner, who had been a Liberal MP from Nova Scotia for 19 years. He later appointed former Ontario Liberal provincial cabinet minister Sandra Pupatello and former Quebec provincial minister Pierre Moreau, among others. Mr. Carney elevated the latter to the role of government representative in the Senate.
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In fact, the rules that Mr. Carney is changing now had explicitly stated that “past political activities would not disqualify an applicant,” and they only had to demonstrate that “they have the ability to bring a perspective and contribution to the work of the Senate that is independent and non-partisan.”
So why did the Prime Minister make the claim that his decision to remove the non-partisanship criteria “recognises the valuable contributions made by Canadians who have chosen to serve in elected office or in other partisan roles”?
The old rules just slowed the roll of partisans into the Senate a little. Now the doors are open wide again. There need be no pretense that senators should have a sliver of distance from the government that appoints them.
It’s worth noting that no one asked for that, at least not outside the ranks of political-party insiders. The public wasn’t clamouring for more partisans.
There were critics, notably Conservative senators, who argued that the independent senators appointed by Mr. Trudeau were such left-leaning folks they were really Liberals.
Yet the public hadn’t been looking for prime ministers to make it easier to reward former politicians for service to the party or to provide a lifetime sinecure to party fundraisers. They didn’t ask for the PM to appoint more senators who feel their first duty is to the party.
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Tuesday’s appointments might well help Mr. Carney politically. He hit a double by luring Mr. Martel away from the Conservative caucus to sit as an independent senator. That’s another blow to Mr. Poilievre.
Mr. Martel’s appointment also provided a fig leaf of bipartisanship over the appointment of Mr. Carney’s aide, Mr. Pitfield – also a friend of Justin Trudeau and the son of late senator Michael Pitfield, who headed the civil service during Pierre Trudeau’s tenure.
Mr. Pitfield is presumably going to the Senate with a mandate to push government legislation through faster. The Senate now has five loose factions, with only a handful of senators representing the government. Its slow workings can frustrate the PMO.
And it’s certainly fair for Mr. Carney to change the criteria for Senate appointments to favour expertise in, for example, “strategic industries.” What small value the unelected chamber provides comes from occasionally putting a different lens on legislation.
But there hasn’t been hot demand to make it easier to fill the Senate with partisans.