In a surprise move, Prime Minister Stephen Harper established a new employment insurance scheme in Canada last week.
It’s only for a select group of people, however: former senators who resign to run for elected office and cabinet ministers who go down to defeat at the hands of voters.
Two weeks after winning a majority government, Harper appointed former senators Larry Smith and Fabian Manning to the jobs they left before the recent vote in order to seek elected office as Conservative MPs.
He also appointed Josée Verner, a cabinet minister who lost her Quebec City-area seat, to the Senate. In Smith’s case, he came in third in his Montreal-area riding.
Canadians may rightly welcome the prospect of a majority government as something that will end the bickering and appalling lack of co-operation in the recent minority parliaments.
Harper may be able to appoint Conservative partisans as eagerly as his Liberal predecessors, and Smith, Manning, and Verner may be able and qualified representatives. But to disrespect Canadian voters and pay so little regard to the will of the electorate is beyond offensive.
The appointments will hopefully be the tipping point for finally resolving the legal and constitutional quagmire around what to do with the Senate given the added disrepute Harper has now brought onto the Red Chamber.
Reforms could include abolishing the Senate, as the NDP suggests, or having some form of election. Maybe that’s what Harper secretly hoped would be the result of his shameful appointments.
There was also talk last week of a police investigation into whether Harper improperly promised Smith and Manning they’d get their Senate jobs back if they lost in the election. But beyond the legal and constitutional matters at play, the issue comes down to ethics.
Harper had no business appointing losers to cushy jobs in Ottawa when voters had clearly rejected the idea of having them in Parliament.
It’s ironic that the move comes from a party that touts its free-market leanings. Smith and Manning took the entrepreneurial risk to resign their Senate seats in favour of elected office. Both hinted beforehand that they wouldn’t seek to return to the Senate should they lose at the ballot box.
For them to get to keep their jobs anyway is an affront to the notion of accepting the consequences of the risk they took.
Throughout the election campaign, Harper repeatedly referred to complaints about his undemocratic behaviours as partisan bickering that deflected from the real issues.
Voters seemed to have accepted his arguments. But this time he went too far. Let’s hope Canadians don’t forget what he did in this instance. In the meantime, Smith, Manning, and Verner have an ethical duty to politely decline their appointments to the Senate.
— Glenn Kauth
