Justin Trudeau taps into voters' Senate outrage: Hébert

One of the major attractions of the Liberal leader’s move to take partisan politics out of the Senate is that it is actually doable.

RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

A poll found 52 per cent support for Justin Trudeau's decision to remove senators from the Liberal caucus.

By: Chantal Hébert National Affairs, Published on Fri Jan 31 2014

MONTREAL

There are features of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s move to put a Chinese Wall between the Senate and the parties that sit in the House of Commons that are eminently debatable, but his sense of timing is not one of them.

An Angus Reid poll done in the immediate aftermath of Trudeau’s endorsement of a non-partisan Senate found a majority (52 per cent) in support of the proposal and only 16 per cent against. (About one-third are still undecided).

Trudeau is essentially but not exclusively tapping into a major backlash against the Senate. On the heels of a spending scandal that reached all the way to the prime minister’s office, many Canadians are understandably angry with the upper house.

The Liberal leader has provided them with an outlet for that anger and one of the major attractions of his plan is that it is actually doable. The (summary) expulsion of 32 Liberal senators from the party caucus illustrates as much.

On that score support in the Angus poll was particularly high among people who have voted for the NDP in the past.

That should probably not be confused with a secret attachment on the part of New Democrat sympathizers for an institution that their party has long vowed to abolish.

But it does show that even within Mulcair’s ranks many are not convinced that he can bring his Senate plan to constitutional fruition.

Trudeau’s proposal will not come anywhere near fulfilling the NDP dream of eliminating the Senate but it would break the Liberal/Conservative stranglehold in the upper house.

A Senate that was no longer divided along partisan lines would tap into a larger progressive pool for some of its members. Its makeup would almost certainly better reflect the diversity of the opposition in the House of Commons.

As an aside Green Party leader Elizabeth May was among those who reacted positively to Trudeau’s proposal. (Would anyone be surprised if in another life May found a berth in an upper house reconfigured along non-partisan lines?)

But there is another strong undercurrent that is propelling Trudeau’s proposal forward in public opinion and it has its source in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s political persona rather than in the collective exasperation with the Senate.

Over the past eight years more and more voters have become rattled by the authoritarian streak that has been a feature of this prime minister’s tenure.

By now, the notion that Harper prizes blind obedience over almost all else is entrenched in the public’s psyche. Trudeau’s promise to give up the prime ministerial prerogative of stacking the Senate with members beholden to his party comes at a time when some of Harper’s own MPs are trying to curb the power of party leaders.

Moreover, with every mandate, Harper and his government have reinforced the perception that they are deaf to constituencies that do not make up the party’s base.

Again this week the sight on television of a handful of veterans driven to tears by minister Julian Fantino could not but advance the case for a non-partisan Senate that could serve as a political court of last resort for those unable to get what they feel is a fair hearing from the government of the day.

That may be a pipe dream. It is not a given that a non-partisan Senate would even be willing to use its leverage on any government. But for the many on the outside of Conservative Ottawa looking in it is at least something to dream about.

Still there is a paradox at the core of this week’s Senate episode and it is that many of the voters who are most irked by Harper’s noncollegial approach to leadership are among the most enthused by the sight of Trudeau wiping out the Senate half of his caucus at a stroke of his leader’s pen.

When it comes to imposing his will on those around him or to leaving rubber on the road on the way to power, the Liberal leader needs no lessons from the prime minister he is seeking to replace.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.