One of the unintended consequences of the Senate expense scandal is that it brings the upper house itself into disrepute. And that’s a pity, because the Senate does some good and important work, particularly in its committees.
The Senate banking, trade and commerce committee, for example, has for many years been known as the best on Parliament Hill. When Leo Kolber was the chairman in 2002, the committee turned out an outstanding report recommending large bank mergers in record time of two months.
The financial-services industry and the Department of Finance itself both regarded the Kolber committee as a much more serious operation than the Commons finance committee.
It was no mystery — many senators on the banking committee had been executives or directors of banks, and knew how they worked. There was a civility and a degree of collegiality about their hearings that’s rarely seen on the House side, where the idea is to score partisan points, even in committee.
That’s no mystery, either — senators don’t have to face the voters as elected members of Parliament do, and can take a long view.
The 2006 Senate report on mental health, Out of the Shadows at Last, was the first of its kind in Canada, or North America for that matter. Thousands of Canadians came forward to tell their stories, and their voices were heard in the report, which was a milestone that led to the creation of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. It was greatly to the credit of its Liberal chair, Michael Kirby, Conservative vice-chair Dr. Wilbert Keon and members on both sides.
In 2003, Kirby had teamed up with Conservative Marjory LeBreton on the landmark Senate report on health care. They recommended a health-care guarantee as a remedy for waiting times in the public health-care system — that if patients couldn’t receive timely treatment within the public system, they could go outside it.
The Conservatives later ran on the health-care guarantee in the 2006 election. The Kirby report on health care was much more solution-oriented than Roy Romanow’s royal commission. It was Kirby who sounded the alarm that public health care was unsustainable without new investments from Ottawa and the provinces.
This clarion call became the policy template that ultimately led to the 10-year, $41-billion 2004 Health Accord, being renewed by the Conservatives for an additional three years past 2014.
In February of this year, the Senate national finance committee, chaired by Liberal Joseph Day, put out an important report, The Canada-USA Price Gap.
“Large price gaps remain even when the Canadian dollar is at or above par,” the committee reported. “Even some automobiles made in Canada are priced significantly higher than in the United States.” It’s called tariffs, and it’s why the same book that costs $25 in the U.S. can cost $35 in Canada. As Conservative vice-chair Larry Smith said: “Canadians feel ripped off.”
Well, this is why we have cross-border shopping.
Not to mention drive-and-fly cross-border travel. The Senate transport and communications committee, chaired by Liberal Dennis Dawson, last month issued a report, The Future Growth and Competitiveness of Canadian Air Travel, a $45-billion industry.
From the time it started its work to completion, the committee found the number of Canadians driving to a U.S. city to catch a flight increased from 4.2 million to five million, “in order to take advantage of cheaper flights.”
This is no surprise, either, what with airport-departure or -improvement taxes, not to mention security fees and sales taxes.
So even as airports are upgraded in this country, Canadians by the millions are taking flights from places such as Plattsburgh, N.Y., rather than Montreal, to avoid the high cost of leaving the country, to say nothing of lower costs on such carriers as Southwest Airlines.
You didn’t hear that from the House of Commons, but from the Senate.
Many senators have carved out niches for themselves, such as Hugh Segal on the Commonwealth, and his Conservative colleague Janis Johnson on the foreign affairs committee. And former chairs, Liberal Colin Kenny and Conservative Pam Wallin — yes, that Pam Wallin — have done good work on the Senate national security and defence committee.
None of which is to excuse the Senate shenanigans over travel expenses and housing allowances, a scandal that went from bad to worse last week with the resignation of Nigel Wright as chief of staff to the prime minister for writing a personal cheque to Sen. Mike Duffy for reimbursing $90,000 he owed the government.
But it’s precisely the diligent and financially upright senators who are most annoyed by the scandal in their midst, in that they’ve all taken a reputational hit. So they should be.
L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy magazine.
