With 30 years on Parliament Hill — in the press gallery, as an MP, as the Mulroney-era minister who shepherded through free trade, then, finally, as a B.C. senator — Pat Carney has a depth of experience that leaves her little patience for pundits who go off half-cocked about the Senate.
“I get annoyed when I hear these shallow and uninformed opinions,” the Saturna Island woman says.
That’s the sort of bluntly unpolitic thing you get to say when you’re not worried about being elected. It’s the paradox of the Senate: The lack of accountability to the electorate offends the public, but also frees senators of the pressure to pander to big voter blocs to the exclusion of all others, or to do what is politically expedient as opposed to what is right.
There was no shortage of chatter following a Supreme Court ruling on Friday that pretty much slammed the door on the idea of reforming or abolishing the Senate. The decision will anger those who see the Red Chamber as a black hole, nothing but a political gravy train. Not Carney, though. At 78, six years after taking early retirement from the Senate, she remains proud of the institution’s role.
“Nobody likes the Senate until they need it,” she says.
When the House of Commons threatens to go off the rails with a rash piece of legislation like the much-maligned Fair Elections Act, the Senate is there to apply the brakes. When MPs tried to push through an assisted-suicide law, it was the senators who said hold on, there’s no national consensus on this. Relatively free of partisan shenanigans, the Senate truly is the place for sober second thought, she says.
We hear lots about the inequity of a system that grants the 4.6 million people of B.C. just six Senate seats while the 756,000 of New Brunswick get 10 and Prince Edward Island, with a population not much larger than that of Saanich, gets four.
But here, Carney says, is the flip side: were it not for the balance provided by that unbalanced Senate, Ontario and Quebec would dominate Canada with sheer numbers — 199 of the Commons’ 335 seats in the next election. B.C.’s perspective would be lost.
“We would be overwhelmed on issues.”
Carney is a big believer in a senator’s role in offering that perspective. Where MPs focus inside the borders of their individual constituencies, only senators are positioned to tap into the feelings of an entire province and take those views to Ottawa. (She thinks Justin Trudeau is nuts to have booted Liberal senators out of his caucus; that just robs his MPs of a chance to listen to regional voices, to learn where Canadians conflict or have common ground.)
As a senator, Carney took it upon herself to represent coastal B.C., where the interests of a sparse and scattered population wouldn’t get much attention from politicians besotted by the 905, the area code for vote-rich southern Ontario. It was she who fought to keep the fuel dock in Kyuquot, to match construction of a Haida Gwaii dock to the fishing season, to keep navigational aids for mariners, to advocate for aboriginal women who would otherwise be ignored.
Likewise, current B.C. Sen. Nancy Greene Raine is big on children’s health, while Jim Munson battles for autistic children. “You are free to pursue issues that would otherwise get lost,” Carney says.
Yet the only senators we hear about are the Harper appointees caught swimming the backstroke in the public trough.
That irks Carney. “Everyone assumes that we all have our hands in the taxpayer’s pocket.”
Not so, she says. Almost all senators abide by a few simple, clear rules. They actually live in the provinces they represent, too.
The Senate might not be perfect, she says, but good politicians learn to work within an imperfect reality — and Friday’s ruling means the reality is unlikely to change soon.
• Carney gave me one of my favourite memories from the Times Colonist Book Drive.
She once approached me at the sale, brandishing her memoir, Trade Secrets. “I found a signed copy of my book,” she said.
“Cool,” I replied.
“I didn’t sign it,” she said.
Remember, the annual book collection goes from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. today and Sunday at the Victoria Curling Club. The sale itself is May 10 and 11.
