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Abolish the Senate? One brave senator says no
65 Plays3 years ago
We sit down with Senator Paula Simons on what is to be done with the senate. Is it a vestigial structure from a bygone era – the coccyx of Confederation? Or is the newly reformed senate actually providing value to Canadians? Listen and find out.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Progress Report' and Harbinger Media Network
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to The Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network. We're one of just many excellent left-wing podcasts on Harbinger, and a new episode on the network that I want to recommend is the latest from Paris Marks at Tech Won't Save Us. Lauren Gurley joins Paris to discuss surveillance, union busting, and the terrible and exploitative working conditions at Amazon. And that's just one of the shows you can get at Harbinger. And at Harbinger, we're building something that's challenging right-wing corporate media dominance from coast to coast.
00:00:27
Speaker
Get access to exclusive shows and other supporter-only content at harbingermedianetwork.com. Now, onto the show.
Introducing Senator Paula Simons
00:00:37
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skuygen, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory. And today, we're very pleased to have probably our most August politician that has ever come on the show.
00:00:55
Speaker
Senator Paula Simons. Senator, you're representing Alberta, or actually, you're probably technically representing the Western region, but you're based here in Alberta. You're a member of the independent senators group, but you're probably much more familiar with Paula from her work as a journalist working for the Emerson Journal, as well as the CBC. Paula, thanks for coming on the pod. Well, it's very nice to be here. Also, I am in a Ms. Kuchiawehagan in Treaty 6 territory, looking out my bedroom window at all the snow coming down.
00:01:24
Speaker
Ah, you get a window. I'm in a dark basement room recording here with things on the walls. No, I mean, I have set up in the master bedroom a kind of a fake studio, which meant that this morning when I was having an extremely important conversation with a member of the European parliament, my husband wandered in in his house coat, being careful to stay out of the frame, got his clothes out of the closet and walked out again.
00:01:48
Speaker
We're hoping he will not bomb this podcast.
00:01:54
Speaker
Well, it's no, it's no video. So it's no harm really, as long as he's being quiet. Well, and he's dressed now. So this is a noticeable improvement. Yeah. It's one 20 in the afternoon. Hope he's dressed by now. Well, uh, thanks for coming on the
The Role and Existence of the Canadian Senate
00:02:05
Speaker
show. I mean, I am not a big fan of classic high school debates, team style debates. Uh, I actually think that training our youth in the ability to make fantastic arguments for terrible things they don't actually believe in is rather corrosive thing in our democracy.
00:02:21
Speaker
You know, I was the high school provincial debate champion in my day. I am aware of your love of debate, which is why I bring this up. But we are not here for a debate, Paula. We are here for a conversation, a discussion. I can do that.
00:02:34
Speaker
a chat. And this chat and this conversation is about the Senate and whether it should continue to exist. Again, we're not having a debate here, but just to lay out the lay of the land. As you might imagine, the senator in this conversation is going to be defending the existence of the Senate, and me as the godless lefty is going to be calling for the abolishing, the abolishment of the Senate.
00:02:55
Speaker
But Paula, before we get into the back and forth, why don't we actually just establish what the hell we're talking about when we're talking about the Senate? I look at the Senate as the wisdom teeth of Canadian governance, this vestigial structure from a bygone age that should be removed before it does any more harm than good, but we need to establish what it is we're talking about first. So what is the Senate and what is it supposed to do?
00:03:21
Speaker
All right, Canada has a bicameral system of government. So we have the House of Commons, which is the lower house, and we have the upper house, which is the Senate of Canada. And if you think about this, you have to remember that our parliamentary system was established in 1867.
00:03:35
Speaker
to mirror or model the British parliamentary system. And in Britain, they had an elected House of Commons and they had a hereditary House of Lords. And 1867, I think it's useful to remember, is also the year that Britain signed the Reform Act into existence, which really opened the door for
00:03:55
Speaker
functionally universal manhood suffrage, which meant far more people had the vote than ever before. And so there was a lot of concern in Britain in 1867 about making sure that Canada's democracy wasn't going to be a little too democratic. So they also wanted to have an upper house here, problem being we didn't have any hereditary aristocracy.
00:04:14
Speaker
So they had to kind of invent one. So the first function of the Senate was to fill it up with landed gentry. So to be in the Senate in 1867, you had to own $4,000 worth of real property and also have $4,000 in other assets. So by the terms of the day, you had to be effectively a multimillionaire.
00:04:36
Speaker
And you had to be landed with property in your name. And so the function of the Senate at the outset was to be that break against the populism of the House of Commons. And I think, if you will allow me, it is useful to think about the British constitutional theorist and writer Walter Badgett
00:04:59
Speaker
which is spelled bag-hot, but is pronounced a badget. I've checked this. I guess it's their language. They can say it however they like. But Walter Badgett, this was how he thought of the upper house, whether it was the Senate or the House of Lords, and I shall quote, in theory, said Mr. Badgett, it is desirable that the highest class of wealth and leisure should have an influence far out of proportion to its mere number.
00:05:23
Speaker
A perfect constitution would find for it a delicate expedient to make its fine thought tell upon the surrounding cruder thought.
00:05:31
Speaker
So that was the first function of the Senate to be the fine thought that would keep the crude people in the House of Commons in line. So it's 1867. Keep the Hoyt, Poloyan order. If they pass any laws that actually affect the rich, we'll make sure that they don't affect the rich. Precisely. So that was the first job of the Senate. But the Senate had another function, which is also extremely important because Canada was made out of four colonies, Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Ontario, and Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.
00:05:59
Speaker
And Nova Scotia and New Brunswick at the time had much smaller populations and land bases, but they had really thriving wealthy maritime economies. And they did not want to join a confederation where they didn't have power. They didn't want Ontario and Quebec to run roughshod over them. And so the other compromise that the Senate fulfilled was to give
00:06:18
Speaker
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, some kind of balance. So there were 72 senators, 24 from Quebec, 24 from Ontario, and 12 each from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, so 24, 24, 24. And that was to give the two maritime provinces
00:06:35
Speaker
some extra, you know, so that by pop. Regional representation. One of the reasons why the Senate was started was to provide regional representation, right?
Senate's Diversity and Minority Rights Protection
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, so exactly. So that's why we have the Senate. So obviously,
00:06:54
Speaker
Mr. Badgett's theory doesn't read very well in 2021. And I think it is possible to make an argument in theory that this is a vestigial organ, like the appendix of democracy, and you only notice it when it gets inflamed and sometimes explodes.
00:07:12
Speaker
But I think it's really important to see ways in which we have found a new purpose and new raison d'etre for the Senate over the years so that it is not just a private club for wealthy friends of the Prime Minister and not just for the landed gentry, but it is a body that now at least strives to, although it does it imperfectly,
00:07:33
Speaker
reflect the diversity of Canada, the ethnocultural diversity, the linguistic diversity, the geographic diversity, and to be a defender of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution. Because the value of having an appointed Senate is that you are not elected, and so you do not have to worry about what if I make a decision to protect a minority right that is unpopular.
00:07:58
Speaker
So our, you know, one of our main functions, not our only one, I run the risk of sounding like the guy in the Spanish Inquisition sketch from Monty Python. But, you know, one of our main purposes is to defend
00:08:13
Speaker
minority rights and to use the power and the protection that comes with being appointed to make sure that we stand up for the rights that are enumerated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and to stand up for other constitutional rights, including the duty to consult with indigenous peoples, linguistic minority rights, and the rights of provinces. So that is why I think we still have an enduring value. That's one of the reasons.
00:08:42
Speaker
And, you know, one of the other points I think is important to just as we're just doing our Senate rundown is that senators are appointed for life. There's a forced retirement age at 75. No. Yes. Yes. So that's not for life. That's not for life. No, I mean, no, I mean, it really isn't a Nancy Pelosi's 80. Right. I mean, so it was a lifetime appointment in 1867 that changed when Diefenbaker was prime minister. So now it's to 75.
00:09:06
Speaker
For some people, that is a life term. For other people, the late Nick Taylor, who died just a couple of months ago, retired from the Senate 20 years before his passage. So, 75 isn't as old as it used to be. The Senate also can't introduce or veto money bills or budget bills, if I'm correct. That is correct. Yeah. So, we can't cost you more money.
00:09:32
Speaker
No, you can't introduce it like we want to spend 100 million dollars in this thing. The Senate can't do that. It's laws that the Senate can introduce laws, but
Senate Reforms and Independence
00:09:39
Speaker
not money bills. Yeah, we can introduce bills and those bills that need to be sponsored in the House of Commons. We can't unilaterally pass legislation, but we can we can kickstart the process. And this you kind of raised it, but you didn't really say it. But like this, what you're interpreting as the one of the things that the Senate does was just is to
00:09:59
Speaker
defend minority rights. I mean, that's a recent addition to the job description and one that not necessarily every Senator holds. I mean, I think the one thing that I think has been consistent over time is that the Senate is supposed to provide this, I think, Johnny McDonald said at this sober second thought or whatever, right? They're supposed to look over legislation.
00:10:19
Speaker
Right. And this always makes me laugh because John A. Macdonald did not exactly have a reputation for sobriety. So, I mean, this is the enduring function of the Senate as well, is to be the second set of eyes on legislation. So, I mean, we do this in a couple of ways. I mean, every bill has to be approved by the Senate, even if it's passed by the House of Commons, it must be approved by the Senate.
00:10:39
Speaker
And that gives us an opportunity, senators, for most bills. We hold our own hearings. We call in our own expert witnesses. We call in our own stakeholders. And we hold those very public hearings. We suggest amendments to bills.
00:10:54
Speaker
And with greater and greater effect, thanks to the modernization of the Senate, we get the government to pay attention to our amendments. So we've certainly become a much more activist body since the Senate reforms of five years ago, which we will probably discuss in a minute. That's actually the next question. What are the changes? There's been big changes to the Senate over the past five years that
00:11:16
Speaker
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has brought in. Why don't you kind of walk us through those two? Sure. So back when Justin Trudeau was the leader of the third party in the House of Commons, I think it's important to remember that he made these promises at a time when there wasn't a great expectation that he would be the next prime minister. There was a cascading series of Senate scandals, some real, some slightly imaginary, and he decided that it wasn't worth
00:11:45
Speaker
Yiddish, you'd say the Saurus, it wasn't worth the trouble of having liberal senators who might get into trouble that could serve to embarrass him. And so he effectively fired the liberal caucus. And there are some former liberal senators who are still quite aggrieved about this. But basically he said, you're no longer liberal senators. You're not members of my caucus. You will not caucus with me. You can, you know, you can
00:12:08
Speaker
They went on calling themselves liberal senators for a while, I think somewhat to his discomfort. Senate liberals, I believe. Senate liberals, yes. They don't call themselves that anymore. There were not going to be any more liberal senators, and he promised, I think at that point, that he was not going to appoint any future liberal senators. That was an easy promise to make when people didn't think he was going to win. Then, you'll recall, he had this come from behind victory.
00:12:37
Speaker
And one of the things that he did do early on in that term was to live up to that promise. And he set up a more or less independent arms length
00:12:47
Speaker
panel, you can argue about the length of the arms, but he set up this independent panel to receive applications. So now anyone over the age of 30 who owns $4,000 worth of real property in the province they hope to represent can apply for consideration as a senator. And it's a pretty straightforward process. You write an essay about why you think you would be a good senator, you get
00:13:11
Speaker
three to five letters of recommendation. You answer some questions about your past political involvement and sort of your basic knowledge of
00:13:19
Speaker
of how a parliamentary system works. And then those applications go to the independent board, which goes through them and creates a very short, short list. There's no interview. So you don't have to tap dance to impress anybody. They look at what your words are. And then a very short, short list goes to the prime minister's office for consideration. So it has made the system, I think,
00:13:49
Speaker
somewhat more transparent than the old patronage system. But it has also freed senators from caucus discipline. So in the Senate now, there are still about 20 conservative senators who still caucus with Aaron O'Toole. They look to him as their leader and they take direction from the leader's office.
00:14:08
Speaker
But all the rest of the senators are independent and we sort of caucus in three separate groups. But we are none of us whipped. We none of us have the discipline of a party leader or a party line. And that means that, you know, 80 percent of the senators plus
00:14:28
Speaker
have the independence to look at every piece of legislation and make up their own minds about how they're going to vote on it. And it means that the government has to work much harder than ever before because there is no sense of the Senate being a rubber stamp anymore. It is much closer to the American system where you need someone to count noses and make sure that you have the votes. And so it has given independent senators much more
00:14:53
Speaker
personal individual power than they ever had before because they don't vote as a bloc and they don't vote as they're told. And so it has really changed the balance of things in parliament and it has made the House of Commons much more responsive to Senate proposals for amendments because they need us to vote their bills.
00:15:16
Speaker
Okay. I think we've set the scene. We know what the Senate is. I think you've even got a light defense, a pretty good defense of why you think the Senate should exist and why it does good work. I mean, I'm just going to start right off with the one thing that's just going to follow us directly on your point. The reforms that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has brought in to reform the Senate could be immediately reversed by the next Prime Minister.
00:15:36
Speaker
The appointment process could be gone tomorrow, not tomorrow, but after an election. The next liberal prime minister could even invite the former liberal senators to rejoin the caucus if he so chose, right? I don't know. Now that they've had their taste of freedom, I don't know that they would go back.
00:15:54
Speaker
But here's, yes, it is absolutely true that, you know, Andrew Scheer, for example, had he been elected in the last election, said he would not maintain this system. And I don't think Aaron O'Toole has been very clear about what he wants to do. The thing is, it's a numbers game. So there are now, okay, so at full compliment, there are 105 senators. We currently have 14 vacancies and a 15th one coming up shortly.
00:16:24
Speaker
So the prime minister over the course of his two mandates will have appointed most of the senators and even the ones he didn't appoint, the ones who've left the conservative caucus, and there are quite a few of those, and the former liberals are sitting as independents.
00:16:42
Speaker
And so a conservative prime minister or a different liberal prime minister could come in and change the system, but there will still be 80 plus of us, you know, and if the next 50 so that, you know, they'll be, there will be a lot of us.
00:16:58
Speaker
And that's a hard thing to undo because it's not like we have four year terms or 10 year terms. I mean, I was appointed days after my 54th birthday. So I just turned 54. I can be there till I'm 75 if everything works out.
00:17:17
Speaker
So, I mean, what Trudeau has accomplished is really quite astonishing and I think a lot of it has happened under the radar.
Debating the Senate's Legitimacy and Role
00:17:23
Speaker
And I think there are some liberals who are not very happy about this. I think it became obvious when there were bills that kind of got stuck at the end of the last mandate and they were really worried about whether they were going to get passed by the Senate.
00:17:36
Speaker
Um, and I think some people in the liberal party of which let me be clear, I am not a member. I don't, I don't speak to them on a regular basis, but I imagine that they woke up and went, Oh crap. We appointed a bunch of really headstrong, independent people to the Senate and told them to be independent. And now crikey, they're being independent. And it turns out that that's considerably more obnoxious than, than we thought it was going to be.
00:18:04
Speaker
I imagine, but still, I mean, the Senate has a fundamental weakness, right? The lack of democratic legitimacy, you know, a group of a hundred some ruling class adjacent people who are appointed to this unelected body that have the ability to amend or even sometimes kill legislation that are passed by our democratically elected representatives. I mean, this is a long term, well-known criticism of the Senate.
00:18:30
Speaker
Who the hell are these people? That's what the criticism that I think is important because I think that's pretty fait accompli. We can all agree that that is an issue, but the important part of that is that I think there's a ticking time bomb at the heart of the Senate and at the heart of our democratic process. There's a worst case scenario here that we have to contemplate. We live in norm shattering times, right? Rob Ford, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell.
00:18:55
Speaker
They've all shredded long held norms and conventions because they decided they could get away with it. There was no consequences for them for doing so. And as a result, we've seen the weakening and erosion of liberal democracy as an institution, right? Conservative politicians realize that they can just do what they want if the only thing stopping them from not doing it is a handshake agreement not to. That's what the Senate is for.
00:19:19
Speaker
The Senate is like the ultimate insurance policy. It's like the ultimate, you know, in case of emergency, break glass. I mean, that is what we are there to do. That's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that there's nothing stopping the Senate from simply not passing laws that are passed by the House of Commons in perpetuity. There's no process, no rule that is written to deal with this. Certainly no consequences beyond the appropriate of the public if it were to happen.
00:19:46
Speaker
Right. We are governed by something, not governed exactly, we are guided by something called the Salisbury Convention. Because when the first labor governments were elected in Great Britain, they had a challenge because they were socialists. Those original labor governments were pretty reforming, even through certain Tory eyes, to be considered radical. And you had an unelected hereditary House of Lords and
00:20:17
Speaker
The House of Lords were not always very thrilled with what the Labour government was trying to do, but the Labour government was elected and they had a mandate. And so the Salisbury Convention said, if a government is elected on a platform, the House of Lords cannot defeat legislation that was part of the elected government's mandate and platform.
00:20:40
Speaker
And so we have largely adopted the Salisbury Convention here. It doesn't work in quite the same way because of the regional nature of Canada. But we showed, I mean, it is part of the parliamentary common law tradition for us to show deference to the elected House of Commons precisely for the reasons you say. The elected House of Commons holds a mandate directly from the people and they are accountable to voters.
00:21:03
Speaker
And if you don't like your MPs, Albertans, you should listen to this part of the sentence. If you don't like your MPs, you are allowed to vote against them. So, you know, as an MP, you're on a much shorter leash and you're directly accountable. And because of that, you hold a very particular kind of mandate. And senators know
00:21:26
Speaker
that they don't hold that mandate. So, I mean, yes, I mean, what you're describing is hypothetically possible, but it would require a great number of senators to lose their minds all at once. I mean, there is- You only need a few terms of another Stephen Harper-esque prime minister to get a majority, right? Well, you would need a lot of terms. I mean, there are 80 independent senators right now who can sit until they're 75.
00:21:53
Speaker
So, you know, is it possible that you could have an obstructionist Senate? Yes. And prime ministers in the past have dealt with obstructionist Senates. You might remember that Brian Mulroney appointed a button. I guess you don't remember because I am older than you. But when Brian Mulroney was trying to get the GST passed, he appointed extra senators so that he would have enough votes to get his legislation passed through the Senate.
00:22:18
Speaker
So, I mean, there are protocols and precedents for this, but I think the other thing you have to give consideration to is what I would call institutional inertia.
Challenges in Regional Representation
00:22:26
Speaker
The Senate is like an extremely large aircraft carrier or ginormous cruise ship, and getting it to turn around quickly is difficult, which is what makes these recent reforms of the Senate really quite astonishing. But, you know, to get everyone in the Senate all at once
00:22:48
Speaker
to decide to oppose things would be tricky now because here's the question. So say, for example, Erin O'Toole were to win the next election. And there are a lot of senators who would not agree with Erin O'Toole's hypothetical climate policies, for example.
00:23:06
Speaker
But it's not really in our purview to defeat climate legislation. It's in our purview to defeat, to devote against bills for constitutional reasons, not just because we don't like them or we would write them in a different, different to us better way. Yeah. I mean, I still take issue that at the core of our governance system is this democracy defeating institution that, and the only thing holding it, stopping it from not being a democracy defeating institution,
00:23:36
Speaker
is like handshake agreement norms. As we've seen, norms can be broken. Handshake agreements do not have to be followed. At the end of the day, if the Senate refuses to fulfill its constitutional obligations,
00:23:54
Speaker
I mean, there is a Supreme Court, and there is also, you know, the ultimate weapon of the, of the constitutional amendment, which nobody in Canada likes to think about because it makes them itchy when they think about Meech Lake.
00:24:10
Speaker
Well, this is why my abolish the Senate talk always runs up against amending the constitution, but that's a point we'll get to later. There's another point that I think is important about the Senate to raise. There's a contradiction at the heart of the institution, and it was recognized from the very beginning, we've raised it in our conversation so far, is it supposed to be for sober second thought or is it supposed to be for regional representation? And I would argue that it does neither very well, though it has slightly improved on the sober second thought part.
00:24:36
Speaker
But but it seems that like this split focus harms the institution. Right. Well, here's OK. So let let me unpack this. The regional representation part gets tricky because of the way the seats were apportioned at the beginning. So the idea was to give smaller provinces that were further away from the center more power so that the two big provinces in the center didn't run the country.
00:25:06
Speaker
You can see how well that worked. So the challenge now is that when provinces such as British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan entered the, entered Confederation, we were assigned Senate seats predicated on our populations at the time. So Alberta got six seats, British Columbia got six seats, Saskatchewan got six seats, and Manitoba got six seats. And to be honest, in 1905, giving Alberta six seats was a bit of a gift.
00:25:33
Speaker
Paul, I'm going to have to interrupt you there, actually. I've done research for this episode. I was speaking with political science. Oh, maybe. You're smart and smarter than I. I'm not smarter, just I talked to a person who was smart. I talked to political scientist Melanie Thomas about this. The reason we have the setup we have, 24 for the Maritimes, 24 for Ontario, 24 for Quebec, and then 24 for the Western region. Yeah.
00:25:57
Speaker
is precisely so that the Western region has just as many senators as the Maritimes and just as many senators as Ontario, just as many as Quebec. I think that's what I just said. So the challenge is now,
00:26:12
Speaker
populations have moved, right? I mean, people- The population never entered into the lake. It was still representation by region. Why Canada, why Alberta got six senators back in. Yeah. But now Newfoundland also has six senators. So it's sometimes frustrating to sit in the Senate and think, okay, so there's six senators from Alberta, but there are four from Prince Edward Island and there's six from Newfoundland. Now then there are, you know, there's- One from New Brunswick, yeah.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, 10 for New Brunswick, 10 for Nova Scotia. So, I mean, the maritime provinces are hugely privileged. It does make the parties more fun in the Senate.
00:26:51
Speaker
You know, but you're right, it was never about rep by pop. It was supposed to be the antithesis of rep by pop. But so we sort of, we're sort of neither fish nor fowl, nor good red herring. If you look at the American model, where each state gets two senators, so California gets to, New York gets to, Wyoming gets to, you know, Rhode Island gets to, I mean, clearly, we've seen over the last four years of Donald Trump, some of the problems that that leads to, when you're
00:27:19
Speaker
giving political power to geography rather than people. But that was the way the US Senate was set up. We're sort of caught halfway in between. So the way we set it up was to avoid that model, but to still balance the regions, but it doesn't really balance the regions fairly.
00:27:41
Speaker
So it is a challenge, but I don't think that that's inherently in conflict with our role of providing sober second thought, far from it. I think it is our job to look at legislation through a regional lens, not purely through a regional lens. I mean, we have many lenses through which we look, but for me to speak for Alberta, to speak for the Western region, I think that's a really important part of what I do.
00:28:05
Speaker
I'm the only Alberta senator in the Independent Senators Group, which is the largest group in the Senate.
Simons' Focus on Alberta and Western Issues
00:28:10
Speaker
And so it's incumbent upon me to bring to the attention of my ISG colleagues issues that are a particular import in Alberta to apply my Albertan Western experience and insights and eyes
00:28:26
Speaker
to legislation as it comes before us. I mean, not solely that. I mean, I'm in the Senate for many other reasons, but I think these things are complementary, not in contradiction.
00:28:37
Speaker
I would just prefer a focus. Do one or the other. Do one thing and do it well. I have a question for you. Do you see yourself as representing Alberta, or do you see yourself as representing the Western region? Because by the definition of the way this thing was set up, you're not really a senator from Alberta. You're based in Alberta, but you're representing the West.
00:28:57
Speaker
I mean, you're sworn in as a member of your province. I mean, all the provincial shields are on the sides of the Senate when you're sworn in. You're sworn in as a senator from, not from the West, but from Alberta. But Alberta is part of the Western region. So I see it as both. You know, I've been a student of Western Canadian history and Western Canadian political history.
00:29:21
Speaker
For a long time, the, you know, the Prairie West in particular. So I mean, obviously, there, there is a particular Western perspective, but within that I think there's a subset Alberta perspective, and then there's a subset, you know, Edmonton Metro Edmonton northern Alberta perspective.
00:29:37
Speaker
So traditionally, there's nothing in the rules about this. Traditionally, Alberta has usually three senators from Calgary South and three senators from Edmonton and North. And so you kind of fall into those categories, too. I mean, you know, today, as we're recording this, I gave a lecture, no, it wasn't a lecture, it was like a
00:30:02
Speaker
talk this morning to a political science class in Dalhousie. And it was in part about Western Canadian history, you know, Western Canadian relations with the Métis Nation. And so, you know, I speak for the West, but I also speak for Alberta and I also speak for my chunk of Alberta, which is different culturally than the southern chunk of Alberta. Fair enough. Every province in Canada
00:30:28
Speaker
responsible for resource development and education and healthcare.
Constitutional Challenges in Senate Reform
00:30:33
Speaker
Our provinces do a lot. Every province in Canada has a unicameral legislature, no Senate. And they all seem to be able to pass bills and function fine. Given the past 150 some years of evidence that suggests that unicameral legislature's work in Canada, why do we have one at the federal level aside from inertia, as you said?
00:30:55
Speaker
Well, but that's the reason. I mean, if we were starting all over, if, you know, if we were becoming a country day after tomorrow, would we set it up this way? Probably not. I mean, this is an inheritance and a legacy from that Walter Badgett point of view.
00:31:09
Speaker
you know, like to quote Cicero, it was this whole sense. If you look back at ancient Rome, that was the job of the Senate in ancient Rome. I mean, there was a lower house that was elected, and then there was the senatorial class, which was this kind of weird combination of election, but only from the upper echelons of Roman society. And so, I mean, it's this long standing idea that you need
00:31:34
Speaker
you know, you need this other house. Do we need this other house? I mean, I don't know if, I mean, if I were making up a country from scratch on like in a lunar colony, I don't think I would set it up this way. But here we have it. And here is, you know, and this is the point I think you and I are both going to get round to. Stephen Harper asked the Supreme Court what it would take to abolish the Senate.
Imagining Senate Abolition and Relevance
00:32:00
Speaker
And the Supreme Court was really clear. It said it would require the consent
00:32:04
Speaker
of every single province and the House of Commons and the Senate, the unanimous consent of every legislature and the House of Commons and the Senate.
00:32:13
Speaker
Is that likely to happen? I don't foresee it happening anytime soon. If the Senate lost its collective mind, as you described, and became so obstructive, so reactionary in a way that stood in the way of any government, whether that's liberal, conservative, indian, or green, or whatever the future governance of the country would be, if the Senate
00:32:42
Speaker
through the Salisbury Convention out the window and started voting down legislation in defiance of the will of the democratically elected people and without regard to the constitution and not because they were protecting minority rights, then perhaps you would get unanimous consent, but you might not get unanimous consent from the Senate. So- I think it's far more likely we have a revolution where Canada ceases to exist.
00:33:07
Speaker
Right. So, I mean, we could be hit by an asteroid. I mean, the next pandemic could wipe us out and the raccoons would take over. I mean, there are all kinds of scenarios you can imagine. So let us accept for the sake of argument that we are stuck with the Senate.
00:33:27
Speaker
and that it would be very hard to abolish. So the thing is, okay, you're stuck with this thing. How can you repurpose and retool it so that it does something useful? And I think that's the project that I was interested in being part of in these last five years is, okay, so we have this vestigial organ, whether you want to call it the appendix or the wisdom teeth or, you know, you, I mean, you have this, you have this relic of a Victorian worldview.
00:33:55
Speaker
How do you make it relevant and functional today? So I mean, I think what you do right now, we're at gender parity in the Senate. So you make sure that it's not an old boys club anymore. You make sure that it reflects the multicultural reality of this country, that it's got robust, robust, diverse indigenous participation, and that it reflects LGBQT numbers, that it reflects multi, you know,
00:34:24
Speaker
the true diversity of Canada in every sense, linguistic. I mean, it doesn't represent the true diversity of Canada. No, but it sure does more than it used to and more than more than say the unicameral Alberta legislature. I mean, the Senate doesn't, it's not just a bunch of
00:34:44
Speaker
I mean, when I talk to grade nine students, I say that what Sir John A. Macdonald appointed were 72 rich old white dudes. And the Senate is no longer rich old white dudes. It's a very eclectic group. And, you know, you called us, was it power adjacent? What was your phrase? Ruling class adjacent. Ruling class adjacent. That's more elegant.
00:35:04
Speaker
You know, so a lot of the people who've gone into the Senate over the last five years have not been ruling class adjacent. And, you know, lots of my Senate colleagues are
00:35:15
Speaker
former social workers, former people who worked for NGOs and social justice organizations, lots of academics.
Lack of Representation and Misconduct Issues
00:35:23
Speaker
So I mean, class is a fungible kind of thing in Canada. I always used to laugh when I worked for the Edmonton Journal and people called me an elite and I would be like, oh my dude, do you know how much money print reporters get paid? I'm not elite. And the first time someone called me elite after I became a senator, I was like, oh, I guess I am now.
00:35:44
Speaker
You are a member of the elite now Senate. It's very uncomfortable to think about. I would argue that journalists, especially because they have such poorly defined politics, don't really view themselves as worker. They might not be members of the elite, but they certainly are the loyal foot soldiers of the elite in far too many cases. Oh, I think he'd make a lot of reporters really angry. They should be angry.
00:36:12
Speaker
I mean, there are a lot of really interesting people in the Senate these days who- Wow, that's my next point here. So that's an excellent segue. I mean, look, would I like to have a Senate full of people like you who are curious and who want to learn about the world and have a lens that is broadly
00:36:31
Speaker
you know, that I agree with, even though I disagree with you on a lot. Yes, I would much rather have a Senate full of Paula Simon's types than not. But as we know, the Senate is not full of people like you. There are people like Lynn Bayak, who I mean- Oh, in order- No, they're not. She's- Bye-bye. Bye-bye. You know, but they're also like, you know, have you ever talked to Kim Pate?
00:36:51
Speaker
who is this really extraordinary senator from Ontario who spent her whole life. She's a lawyer, but she has very working class roots. She was a lawyer who spent her entire career working for prison reform. She worked for the John Howard Society, for Elizabeth Fry.
00:37:05
Speaker
She dedicated her entire career to social justice initiatives, particularly for indigenous women. And as a Senator, I mean, I think she was a brilliant appointment, but I think there are days that Justin Trudeau just wakes up and slaps his foreheads. What was I thinking? Because she has made more good trouble in the words of John Lewis. I mean, she is an absolute moral force in the Senate. She sounds lovely. I mean, that's a best case scenario.
00:37:33
Speaker
Well, I mean, lovely. I don't think Kim would like to be told she's lovely, but she's ferocious as hell. Sounds like an excellent senator. But I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that we have Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazot, Linda Froome, Denny Spatters. Those are all your confederates. Well, they weren't appointed under this system. Those are all senators who were appointed.
00:37:55
Speaker
But they're senators until they're 75. Right. And so I don't know how many folks are enthused that these people have political cynicures until they're old and gray. But you know, I mean, it's it's very easy to be cynical. If you if you actually watch Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy at work, they I mean, Mike Duffy has has has worked very hard on his own redemption narrative, you know, and has has
00:38:24
Speaker
He's a changed man. Patrick Brazot has, I hate to say turned his life around, it's such a cliché, but he has and has dedicated himself to raising awareness about suicide in Indigenous male communities.
00:38:45
Speaker
Pamela Wallen has become a ferocious champion of medical aid in dying and particularly pushing us to think about medical aid in dying for people with Alzheimer's and other progressive dementias. So, you know, sometimes
00:39:01
Speaker
But the people who were caught up in scandal 10 years ago, I've been surprised when I got there myself to meet them in person and see what they're actually doing. It's very touching that these people were able to turn their lives around or to have a second chance or a third chance. But the fact of the matter is that we had no choice, that they were there until they were 75.
00:39:24
Speaker
I mean, one of the real problems in the Senate, and here you and I may be in accord, we don't have a very good method for disciplining and ejecting senators whose behavior is beyond the pale. And that's for a reason. I mean, just like with governors general, the idea is that you don't want to make it easy for the political powers of the day
00:39:50
Speaker
to kick people out of the Senate because they are difficult. I mean, the whole point of having appointed senators is that we have this immense power and responsibility to use it well because we are not elected. So you don't want a situation where the government of the day says, oh, that Paula Simon, she is a huge pain in the tuckus. Let's, you know, let's get rid of her. So we're protected for good reason, but it has led to some serious problems that have decreased public
00:40:21
Speaker
I would just say decrease public confidence. That's not quite the right way. But have brought the Senate into disrepute. It's effective. It's legitimacy. Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that we can't get rid of them, the fact that Lynn Bayak, because of these bizarre Senate rules that every time there was a prerogation or the House rose for an election, her clock restarted again. There are these really very frustrating structural
00:40:49
Speaker
structural norms in the Senate that keep you from having any kind of efficacy in terms of dealing with, you know, in Don Meredith's case, well-founded complaints of sexual harassment. In Lynne Bayek's case, public indisputable hosting and mouthing
00:41:09
Speaker
of racist views. So, you know, I think a lot of us have been really frustrated. And I think it was telling that Murray Sinclair, who was, you know, the head commissioner for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was on the Senate Ethics Panel that had to deal with Lynn Bayak. And, you know,
00:41:28
Speaker
I mean, the people on the Senate Ethics Committee are very, very good. But it's really tough because the mechanisms aren't in place to deal with anything in a timely manner. And it's really problematic. And I think along with a lot of senators, I'm not speaking out of school here, there are a lot of us who are really concerned about this. I mean, one thing that we have managed to accomplish
00:41:54
Speaker
Uh, and this took a lot of negotiation is that we've now set up a system where we have external members of the audit committee, which we never had before. So we have external people to come in and, and, you know, look over the books, uh, that took tremendous amount of work and compromise. Uh, and you know, it's, it's, it's a problem. It's absolutely a problem. I can't deny it in any way. On the issue of better senators, right? If, if the institution depends on appointing high quality people to it,
00:42:24
Speaker
I mean, how strong is the institution in the end? That is a completely legitimate criticism. That is a completely legitimate criticism to which I have no smart ass rebuttal. Yeah. And if in a world we're creating a country from scratch on the moon, and we simply must have a bicameral parliamentary system, and we simply must have regional representation and sober second thought. I mean, the dark side of the moon once hits its say.
00:42:53
Speaker
But I would literally rather have 105 random Canadians picked out at random given six to nine months of training and a five to eight year term or whatever, and give those people the opportunity to pick over legislation and do your job rather than like the people who go through the whole rigmarole of becoming an appointed senator, or if that falls away, are just appointed.
00:43:11
Speaker
Right? Now you sound like the kind of right wing American who says he'd rather be led by the first hundred people in the New York phone book. William F. Buckley said it, but it doesn't matter whether he said it or not. I mean, I think the citizens assembly approach to this type of issue, I mean, there's always unintended consequences, but we can get sober second thought and regional representation just as much from what the body that I'm talking about, just as much as they can get it from you and your colleagues. Right?
00:43:37
Speaker
I mean, I think in our moon colony, that would be a really interesting idea. I mean, I will say it's quite a lot of work. Not everybody might want to do it. It probably sounds more glamorous than it actually is.
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, maybe everybody should have a shot at it and they would see what it's like and run screaming back where they came from. If you give people 125 grand a year for five years to learn something, I'm sure a decent amount of folks would sign up for it, but that's just a hypothetical. I mean, I think, you know, I will be my own devil's advocate here for a minute and say one of my concerns about the Senate, frankly, is
00:44:23
Speaker
We're not elite anymore in a financial economic sense, but we are in a
00:44:31
Speaker
pointy-headed intellectual sense. I mean, I have a master's degree from Stanford. I don't talk about it all the time, but I'm reasonably proud of it. And around the Senate, that's a lesser form of education. There are so many people with PhDs who don't, in fact, use their PhD, their doctoral title, so you don't know their senator, so and so and so. They're not, you know, they're not senator, doctor, so and so.
00:44:56
Speaker
But if you went down the list of who has a PhD, who has a law degree, who was a judge, it is not a representative cross-section of Canadians by any stretch of the imagination. And we do skew, even though lots of people have solid working class blue collar family backgrounds, everybody who's in there by the nature of the appointment process is at the top of their profession.
00:45:26
Speaker
And so even if they have not made a lot of money because, say, one of my favourite senators is René Cormier, who's this fabulous senator from Francophone, New Brunswick, who is a choreographer and a dancer and a singer and a musician and a theatre director and a playwright. So he was never a person who made a lot of money doing those things because that is not how you get rich in Canada.
00:45:54
Speaker
But he's a member of the artistic elite. Pat Bovee, who was a museum curator and art historian, right? I mean, so we're not- You're making it to the point that I was actually going-
00:46:10
Speaker
But this is where I think your criticism is completely valid. Are we reflective of Martha and Henry to borrow Ralph Kline's favorite aphorism? No, I mean, we're not. I would get even beyond that. I mean, yes, there is a lack of worker representation clearly in the Senate, as well as just political ideology. There's no social democratic, there's no Quebec sovereignist, there's no
00:46:33
Speaker
Well, there are there have there have been new Democrat senators. I mean, Lillian Dick was appointed. She'd been a lifelong Democrat. She was appointed by Paul Martin, I think. And Francis Lincoln, who was a member of Bob Ray's provincial cabinet, is a senator now. But no, but you're right. It is there, you know, and I guess.
00:46:53
Speaker
But when I say there's a lack of worker and social democratic, I can go to your own words. Like you said this on Twitter back in November 26, 2018, you were live tweeting the debate around legislating postal workers back to work. Here's how I know you're not, we don't share the same ideology, Paula, because you said this, you said, quote, I am not a fan of strikes. Like many Canadians, I find them annoying and inconvenient. And in this case, there's no doubt rotating strikes at Christmas time will be a huge and expensive pain for many merchants and shoppers.
00:47:20
Speaker
Yeah, but then you have to read the rest of the tweets and I voted against ordering them back to work. I mean, there are people in the Senate who come, I mean, there are quite a few from policing backgrounds who were union members. They're like, Frank. Police are not working class, police unions are not real unions, but. Well, I think, I, you know, I mean, there's, there's, there's Don, there's Don Platt, who's the leader of the conservatives in the Senate, who's a plumber.
00:47:51
Speaker
I mean, it's not like- Did he run a plumbing business or was he a plumber? I mean, there's a difference there. He ran a plumbing business. Yeah, that's not a plumber. I mean, I will say, this is the quote from you where you say, you did end up voting against the legislation, but you say, quote, I confess it was easier to do so once I saw that the legislation would pass with or without me, right? And you hemmed and hawed.
00:48:13
Speaker
I was very, I was very, I was very honest about that. I mean, I voted against it. I voted against it because I did not think that I, I mean, I did not think having listened to all the constitutional arguments, having, I mean, I actually, you know, used my lifeline. I phoned back to constitutional law profs at the U of A.
00:48:31
Speaker
to ask them advice about what they thought I ought to do. I mean, this is the challenge of not belonging in a caucus that whips you, right? I mean, you have to make up your mind about everything. And I listened to all the debate. I really listened hard. And at the end of the day, I did not think the government had made out a case that this was an emergency that required them to override the constitutional right to strike. And I remain concerned.
00:48:57
Speaker
that many of the issues that were flagged by postal workers during that labor disruption remain unresolved. Right now, we all know the postal system and the delivery system and what COVID has meant for people working in the postal millia has been terrible.
00:49:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I, I, you know, this is something, this is something we need to address, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to apologize for being very honest and transparent about.
Lobbying Influence and Ethical Reflections
00:49:34
Speaker
Sure. But why would any postal worker or any worker who works for an hourly wage and cares about their rights to strike, why would they give a shit about the Senate? If this is the like, this is what's going to happen in the Senate. Well, I mean, I can tell you,
00:49:49
Speaker
that there are progressive activist senators like Kim Pate, like Francis Lankan, people who are really pushing, not just for a debate about a guaranteed basic income, but for a guaranteed basic income. The thing that is cool about the Senate is that it is a place where ideas percolate up.
00:50:07
Speaker
So, I mean, what senators, we haven't really talked about this. This is one of the other, I think, enduring strengths of the Senate, is that it can blue sky ideas and get ideas on the national agenda to debate and talk about. And I don't think anybody's been pushing harder for hearing the basic income than people out of the Senate. Oh, it's like you're reading my notes here.
00:50:31
Speaker
I hate to interrupt you, but that's literally the next thing. One last point on the lack of worker representation here. It goes back to the democratic legitimacy point, right? A huge chunk of Canadians, people who work for an hourly low wage, people who see the strikes as an incredibly important part of exerting their power, the small amount of power they have over the world around them.
00:50:50
Speaker
They're left out of the Senate because there's, I don't know, maybe there is some champion in the Senate, but it's clearly not a very large section of people. I wouldn't expect it to be given all of the things that we've talked about. It would be great if, I mean, we have two Senate seats to fill in Alberta right now. We have two vacancies.
00:51:06
Speaker
As I say they're like 1415 vacancies coming up. I don't think, I don't think actually that the government has done a good enough job. I mean I personally I'm like the one woman band telling people to apply.
00:51:24
Speaker
This is note to all of you listening. If you think you would make a better senator than me or than anybody else in the Senate, you can apply. Apply now. Offer's still open. But I don't think the government has done a good enough job about explaining that to people. I still meet people all the time who do not, I mean, well-informed people, I don't mean people who are not paying attention to the news, but informed politically active people who do not understand
00:51:52
Speaker
the Senate appointment process the way it works now. Fair enough. The point you just raised though about ideas bubbling up from the Senate. I mean, I think that my natural response to that is that we have seen a massive increase in lobbying.
00:52:06
Speaker
of the Senate in the past five years, and that those ideas that are bubbling up aren't necessarily just coming from the senator's own minds, unbidden as they go on long walks in the forest. They could be coming from corporate and industrial interests. And one of the issues that you recently raised, like the nav-can issue, I imagine that came out of a conversation with the lobbyist, right?
00:52:29
Speaker
Well, it came out of a conversation initially with the Canadian Airports Council and then I met with union leaders, with the union that represents the air traffic controllers, with the union that represents the ground air specialists. And so that actually came as much as anything. I mean,
00:52:50
Speaker
It came from the airport authorities, but also from the unions that represent those workers. NAV Canada has laid off a huge amount of staff because of COVID-19. They are proposing
00:53:04
Speaker
major closures to towers and to regional airports. And so yeah, I mean, that's an issue that affects big businesses, also an issue that affects workers. So the thing that's interesting about lobbyists, and I didn't appreciate, first of all, I was quite naive when I got to Ottawa. I had no idea how big the Ottawa lobbying industry was. I was gobsmacked at how many people, and then there are these firms that kind of just like to freelance contract lobbying.
00:53:33
Speaker
I had I had really like as an Edmonton based journalist, I had never encountered this. But I will say what's really interesting is how many lobby groups and this really shocked me are not from big business or the kind of people like when you think lobbyists and you're thinking, ah,
00:53:50
Speaker
you know, the pharmaceutical industry, the auto industry, the oil industry. But lots of registered lobbyists represent NGOs, environmental groups, social justice advocacy groups, post-secondary institutions. So it's really interesting, the people who knock on my door who are registered lobbyists are not
00:54:12
Speaker
are not all guys in suits, you know. No, I mean, I have your lobbyist registry at database up right now. I mean, yeah, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Dine with Dignity Canada, University of Alberta, sure. But I've seen a lot of corporate ones too, Shaw Communications, Telus Corporation,
00:54:32
Speaker
Well, in fairness, I reached out to them because of Bill C-10, which is the new broadcast act, and I was soliciting their input in fairness. So they didn't come knock on my door. I knocked on theirs. So you can make of that. But you can cap the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association. Yeah. I mean, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association were the first... I got sworn in on the 18th, and my first meeting with the Pipeline Association was the 19th.
00:55:00
Speaker
I didn't even have an office. I had to meet with them in a literal closet, a supply closet in the old houses of Parliament. So yeah, I mean, I got lobbied hard when I first got there about C-69 and C-48. I also met with lots of Indigenous groups. I mean, I think if you go through the whole list,
00:55:22
Speaker
It's a pretty eclectic range, but it's tough to know. And there would be some groups that I would say, no, I'm not interested in meeting with you. But this week, I got approached by, what are they called? They're like the Beer Association. And they wanted to meet with me to talk about beer issues. And I was like, do I want to talk to them about beer issues? I don't drink beer. Do I care about beer?
00:55:48
Speaker
And then, you know, Cynthia in my office, my parliamentary affairs adviser said, you know, beer is like beer is a big industry. It's a big economic interest in the West. And maybe I ought to meet with the beer with the beer lobbyists. But you have you can't you can't meet with all of them. I mean, it would just you you would do nothing but meet with lobby groups if the lobby groups had their way. And I say this about all of them. It's you know, it's just it's it's like the you know, the the scene in The Sorcerer's Apprentice where the brooms keep splitting.
00:56:18
Speaker
At a certain point, you have to pull up the drawbridge and say, okay, I've met with other lobbyists making these same points and now I have to cogitate without being hectared. But I mean, I still want to reiterate. I mean, lobbyists wouldn't be lobbying senators if they didn't think it was worth their time. It wasn't worth investing. We live under capitalism. This is a financial decision to spend money on these people and on these services. And it's troubling. I mean, the specter of kind of
00:56:47
Speaker
you know, like pet senators of corporations, the fact that now that you have this independence, it's not exactly great. But I want to close off the lobbying discussion. There's a few more things we want to get to in this conversation is going long.
00:56:58
Speaker
Paula, you won awards. You built a reputation as a journalist willing to look at the harms that Canada's settler colonial foster care system inflicts on Indigenous families. You know better than most people about the brutal, violent, tragic things the Canadian state has done. And you're also a journalist that, if I remember correctly, you didn't even eat press conference muffins.
00:57:21
Speaker
No, first of all, press conference muffins are not are not worth the eating. But no, I mean, I was not quite I mean, Chuck Russell, I think of all the journalists I know, is the most puritanical about not taking anything. But I, I think he's right. I think the, you know, the one time that I can recall that when I was years ago, I was pregnant, and I was so hungry, and I'd been at some some event
00:57:46
Speaker
at the Shaw Conference Center and they put out a spread and I was like, okay, I gotta eat or I'm gonna fall down. And I pulled up my plate and I snuck into a corner and then I realized that the event I was covering didn't have any food and I had taken food from somebody else's.
00:58:01
Speaker
event. There's a question here. Beyond the press conference muffins. Again, you take it seriously. It was the point I'm trying to make. How do you personally end up applying for and eventually becoming a senator and lending your reputation, your good name to the Canadian state, the Canadian state, everything that you know it's responsible for?
00:58:26
Speaker
Well, because you have to hope that if good people step up that maybe they can make it better. You know, my real ethical conundrum when I applied was I was a journalist. Was it ethical for me to take anything that came from the government, even at secondhand, even sort of, you know, filtered through this independent body? And I really wrestled with that. I mean, I did not like the optics of taking government patronage after it had been my job to critique government policy.
00:58:56
Speaker
And this was, you know, when when I had family members and friends encouraging me to apply, that was that was I was like, like, how does it look for a journalist to take a cinecure from government? And I still kind of wrestle with that. I mean,
00:59:15
Speaker
But you don't have to wrestle with it anymore. You're a Senator now. But my rationalization was that A, I mean, I wasn't in Ottawa. I wasn't getting tips from the government. I was necessarily not hand in glove with the Liberal government. I was mostly writing about provincial and municipal politics and dabbled in federal stuff more occasionally. But I didn't think like there was no kind of, there's no track record in my files of currying favor with
00:59:45
Speaker
You were no Mike Duffy. Well, you know, I mean, I hadn't been anybody's, I hadn't been anybody in politics, in federal politics, pet journalist. Um, but also, I mean, you know, if, if people who want to make change don't step up to try to make change, then, then how does the change get made?
From Journalism to Senate: Simons' Journey
01:00:06
Speaker
I mean, I was really proud to be appointed to the Senate on the same day as, as my friend, uh, she was an acquaintance then. Now she's a friend because now we're bonded.
01:00:13
Speaker
Patty Labecan Benson, who is a Métis advocate in Alberta, an academic, somebody who has dedicated her whole life to helping people deal with intergenerational trauma.
01:00:31
Speaker
you know, she and I, I think, applied for the same reasons. We didn't talk. I mean, we didn't talk about it with each other before we applied. I think we were both, you know, really intrigued and surprised to see that, you know, that the other had been appointed. But, you know, we're both people who spent our careers advocating in different ways for, you know, social justice for Indigenous Canadians. So is it better? You know, should we should we not have applied? I don't know. I mean, you know, Patty,
01:00:59
Speaker
Patty's done amazing things in the Senate. Marie Sinclair did amazing things in the Senate. People, as I say, like Kim Pate and Frances Lincoln and Mobina Jaffa. I mean, there are all kinds of people. But Paula, you're a part of the machine now, right? You are a part of the organs of the Canadian state.
01:01:16
Speaker
that is responsible for all sorts of violence, that's done on a continuous and daily basis to people, like our most disadvantaged and most marginalized people are dying, living under horrible conditions. You know this, you know this better than most. Yeah, and this is what I mean.
01:01:32
Speaker
Did I sell a little tiny piece of my soul? Because as a journalist, it is your job to afflict the comfortable. It is your job to critique government. It is your job to always stand on the outside and throw the rocks in. And so yes, it has been
01:01:53
Speaker
morally murky for me to cross over the line and get into the guts of the machine. But if you're not in the guts of the machine, how do you ever make it better? How do you ever improve things? You can't only do that
01:02:10
Speaker
on the outside. You sweep the machine away and you build a new one that doesn't have all of the violence built into it. Well, that's a big project. I spent 30 years on the outside throwing rocks. After 30 years on the outside throwing rocks, I thought, okay, I think I have done what I can do
01:02:30
Speaker
from this vantage point, what can I do inside? Do I still feel uncomfortable sometimes? Yeah, sometimes they do. I feel uncomfortable with all of the hierarchy that goes with the Ottawa culture. I mean, there was this one moment when we were taking our Senate hearings on the road to talk about C-69 and we were, I think this is when we were in Winnipeg, we were in, you know,
01:02:56
Speaker
the ballroom in Winnipeg and I'd come down and there was a seat section roped off for the press and I actually went and sat down and somebody had to say to me no no no no no no senator this is like I was like oh wow in my head I still think I'm that external critic and it's been hard for me because you know the the job of the external critic as you well know is is to be obstreperous and sometimes when I'm inside it's not always comfortable
01:03:25
Speaker
So that is why I look to people like Kim Pate, who is really a rebel, and say, OK, well, then I can be a senator like that. I can be the kind of senator who doesn't. When the Chicken Marketing Board has an event in Ottawa, I do not go to eat the chicken.
01:03:54
Speaker
I don't schmooze at the lobbyists' events. I try to keep focused on what I'm there for. Okay. We're getting close to the end here, but there's one thing that I have to worry about. You're making me interrogate my soul. I mean, yeah, you know, did I lose
01:04:14
Speaker
You know, did I give away some of my innocence? Yeah, probably. It's interesting inside the machine though. You know, it's the, you got to see how the soft edges are made before you can figure out whether you want to be a vegan. Yes. So final section, as you know, Jason Kenney reintroduced Senate nominee elections to great rejoicing and a claim across the province ticker tape parades. I mean, I don't like, go ahead.
01:04:43
Speaker
I guess I need to get out more. I missed the parades. Yeah, no, they happened. Don't worry. Everyone was very, very enthusiastic about this being reintroduced. I mean, the question of Senate elections is stupid. I don't think we have to spend very much time on it, but what are your thoughts on either an elected Senate broadly or the Senate nominee process that Alberta is such a big fan of?
01:05:09
Speaker
All right, so this is the advantage of having an unelected Senate. I mean, okay, let's flip it around. If you have an elected Senate, what good is it? Why do you need an upper chamber that is elected? Because then it would derive its power and its authority from the same place as the lower chamber. And it would be constantly at war with each other, with the upper chamber not having sort of the governance of the Salisbury Convention to stop from sticking its orient.
Debate on Elected Senate and Campaigns
01:05:36
Speaker
So if you have two elected bodies, then the top one is always going to be Trumping or backseat driving. I mean, Trump in the bridge sense, not the not the president sense. You know, you would have two houses in eternal conflict and you would have gridlock and you would have, you know,
01:05:55
Speaker
It would be far too much democracy. No, it wouldn't be too much democracy. It's just like, why would you have suspenders and belts? Why do you need two houses if they're both the same? Representation by region, representation by population. That's the American justification for the elected Senate, right?
01:06:11
Speaker
Yeah. But the challenge is you can see what happens in the United States where whoever is the president, if you don't control the Senate, you can't get anything done. And to be fair to the House of Commons, it does do both rep by pop and rep by region. When they redistrict it, that's part of the whatever process there. I think it would be redundant to have an elected Senate. More to the point, because I'm not elected,
01:06:37
Speaker
I'm not beholden to anybody. I mean, you talk about lobbyists. Well, I don't have donors. Nobody donated any money to my campaign. I don't owe anyone anything. I don't owe a leader any kind of allegiance. And the benefit of being not elected is that I can have both the luxury and the responsibility to take stands that are unpopular.
01:07:05
Speaker
Was it unpopular for me to vote for Bill C-69 even after it was amended and I think made better? Yeah, it was unpopular for me to vote in favor of Bill C-69. I'm still getting hate mail about it. But you know what? I don't have to go back to the voters.
01:07:22
Speaker
for re-election. And so I can say this was better legislation both for the economy and the environment than what came before it. It was better legislation both for the economy and the environment than the original bill that came to us. And so, yeah, I'm proud that I fought to make Bill C-69 better and I'm proud that I voted in favor of it. But it's a lot easier to take those principal positions if you don't have to go back to the voting booth. So, I mean, the benefit of having
01:07:50
Speaker
an appointed Senate is that you give the Senators that flexibility to not worry about what's popular, to not worry about sucking up, to not worry about doing what is going to get them death threats because they have the protection that comes with that appointment. So I just don't think
01:08:13
Speaker
What good would an elected Senate be if it didn't have that capacity? I'll tell you what good an elected Senate is, Paula, is that I'm actually probably going to run for one of these stupid Senate nominee elections. Well, I'm actually thrilled to hear that because it is a problem with the only people who run a right of center because it makes them, you know, so Mazel Tov, I'm glad you're running. And my platform, top level platform, top headline,
01:08:41
Speaker
is to abolish the Senate? Well, I think that is excellent. I think, um, I think feces disturbing is a, can I say shit disturbing on your podcast? I think shit disturbing is an extremely important part of the democratic process. I think that's awesome. Um, but, uh,
01:09:00
Speaker
So, that the challenge with the challenge with this particular timing. It's interesting because Premier Kenny is not a stupid man. Right, so he can look at a calendar as well as anybody else.
01:09:15
Speaker
Her death in December was, you know, she died too young. And I'm going to miss her dearly. But she was going to retire in March. I mean, her 75th birthday was going to fall in March anyway. And Grant Mitchell retired early, but he retired, you know, at sort of the beginning of the pandemic. So we have two empty seats.
01:09:37
Speaker
And Jason Kenny has to know that the Prime Minister is going to fill those seats at least the Prime Minister had better fill those seats before the before the municipal election cycle when we'll have our Senate nominee elections. And so at that point, Alberta will have its full complement of six senators.
01:09:54
Speaker
And Patti and Scott Tanis and I are all in our 50s, which I know may seem old to you, but he's young for a Senator. So- Paula, what you're saying is that even if I win this very important and legitimate Senate nominee election, that I won't
01:10:12
Speaker
get appointed to the Senate. That's what you're likely saying. For at least 20 some years, 15. You're saying I can put Senator in waiting in my email signature for the next 15 years? I mean, that could be very useful for leverage.
01:10:29
Speaker
But, you know, I mean, Doug Black is a little bit older than us. He's in his mid 60s, I think. But even he has a good eight, 10 years. Now, I mean, people, it's not a life term. I mean, somebody asked me when I was appointed if I had to stay till I was 75. No, it's not like being sent to the Edmonton max. So people do leave early. I mean, Grant left well before 75. It's possible that Scott
01:10:52
Speaker
and Doug could take a retirement earlier than I'm imagining. But hypothetically, there's not gonna be a vacancy for a while. And also, I hate to break this to you, Duncan, but if there's a conservative government, I think it's highly unlikely.
01:11:08
Speaker
that they will... I would be a Senator and waiting. Jason Kenney would have written a letter to the Prime Minister with my name on it that says, you should appoint this guy Senator. Because this is the thing, no government, including a conservative government, is obligated to pay any attention to these Senate elections. No, no, they're jokes. They're absolute travesties in democracy. Because here's the other funny challenge, right? I mean, the purpose of being elected, presumably,
01:11:38
Speaker
is also, I mean, you're only accountable to voters as an elected person if you have to go back and seek a new mandate. So being elected once. Paul, I just want to assure you and everyone else who's listening that if appointed to the Senate, I promise to do as little as possible unless the work involves abolishing the Senate or a few handful, a few critical policy priorities like say not voting postal workers back to work.
Episode Conclusion and Podcast Promotion
01:12:03
Speaker
I didn't vote the postal workers back to work. I know, I know, but I'm just saying if I was in that room, I'm just saying.
01:12:09
Speaker
It would have been a different conversation. Paula, I want to thank you for your time. We've gone long, but I think it's been a very interesting conversation. Well, I've had a great deal of fun. I hope that people who've had the patience to listen to the two of us go on and on and on are probably wishing, oh God, please never let me be trapped with the two of them in a bar.
01:12:28
Speaker
We talk about it. It's a great time. I know you have your own podcast. You have to plug on as a podcaster. Thank you. I have my own podcast. Everybody does during this pandemic. It's called Alberta Unbound. The first season is sort of taken from a live event that I hosted back when that was a thing.
01:12:54
Speaker
a live event I hosted at the Arts Barns on the Ebb and Fringe site with a panel of really interesting sort of eclectic Albertans to talk about Alberta identity and who gets to monopolize the idea of Alberta identity and so the first year was with
01:13:13
Speaker
Jared Wesley from the U of A, Omar Mualim, a well-known Edmonton local freelance writer, Diana Steinhauer, who's the president of Yellowhead Tribal College, Doug Griffiths, who was a former PC MLA and Cabinet Minister in Alberta, and Shannon Stubbs, who is a Canadian Conservative Party of Canada MP from Alberta, rural Alberta.
01:13:38
Speaker
And that was a really interesting, feisty discussion. And so, obviously, doing a live event was not on for this year. So this year I did nine separate interviews with people from across the province, from a wide variety of political and cultural perspectives.
01:13:57
Speaker
sort of looking at Alberta identity in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, in the wake of COVID, or not in the wake, but in the midst of COVID-19, to get them to sort of interrogate the stereotypes of Alberta identity, why we're stuck with those stereotypes, what we can do to move past them, how we can get people
01:14:17
Speaker
in Alberta to think differently about what it means to be in Alberta and how we can be people outside of Alberta to see beyond the stereotypical notions of who and what Albertans are. Because I'm guessing they're not thinking about you and they're not thinking about me. Fair enough. And folks, if you like the idea of me running for a Senate nominee election, definitely.
01:14:44
Speaker
I'm easy to get a hold of. I'm on Twitter at Dunkin' Kinney. You can reach me by email at dunkincayatprogressalberta.ca. That's also the best way to get a hold of me if you have any thoughts or concerns about this podcast or any of our other content. I do like to hear from you. Also, as I'm wrapping up here, if you've made it all the way to the end here,
01:15:03
Speaker
and you clearly like this podcast if you've listened this long. I am asking you to join the 400 and some other folks who help keep this little independent media project going. You go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card, contribute $5, $10, $15 a month, whatever you can afford. We appreciate. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communist for the amazing theme. Thanks again to Paula Simons for coming on the show and goodbye. Bye-bye.