Picking Principles

A neighbor called today to invite us to Christmas dinner; another called to invite us up for a drink, thinking that I might be feeling a little stir-crazy in the snow. Happy to oblige on both counts. I am always struck by how genuinely kind and thoughtful our Canadian neighbors are. Maybe it is not Canadian kindness but simply the kindness of people living in small towns, but in either case, I am grateful.

When we went up for the glass of wine, we found that household’s son, daughter-in-law, and grandson were also up for the evening and I got to have a new lesson in Canadian politics. This past week, there had been much to do, again, about the (maybe) temporary Prime Minister (we’re waiting for the end of January when Parliament comes back in session to see what happens to him). Prime Minister Harper appointed 18 new Senators to the Senate. Well, I thought from my U.S. brain, surely he couldn’t appoint 18 senators if he didn’t have the authority to do it, but what a strange thing that he had to appoint so many of them. Was this like Roosevelt trying to pack the Supreme Court? But, I let the news go by me without pursuing the questions further.

But now I had real Canadians with lively political interests to explain it to me. This much I knew: Canada has a Parliament and a Senate, but the Senate never seemed to me to amount to much. The members of the Senate are appointed, and these appointments seem to go to political actors, fund raisers, business people, do-gooders. I had previously considered these appointees as comparable to the kind of people, in the U.S., who get ambassadorial appointments to mid-level countries as a kind of legal payoff for services rendered. You send these people to places where you don’t need to know much to be able to preside successfully over ceremonial occasions for a few years.

Not quite, though. Turns out that, at least on paper, the Senate is in some way equal to the Parliament but has never been treated as such because the members are appointed and not elected, and therefore are understood to have no real legitimacy. So far, so good, but kind of odd. Over the years, I’ve heard many Canadians express nothing but contempt for Senate appointees…a good-paying gig (until they are 75) with not much of anything to do but think of how and why they’re being rewarded with this office. It turns out that Prime Minister Harper, has been one of those people critical of the Senate’s dubious nature. And the reason he had 18 appointments to make was not because he was trying to pack the Senate, but because over the past two years, he had refused to make any new appointments because he thought the Senators should be elected.

All of a sudden, though, he’s a fan of making Senate appointments. And this is because if he loses out as Prime Minister when the end of January comes and Parliament has the Confidence vote, then the new Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, will become Prime Minister, presumably, and the Liberals will get to appoint those 18 Senators.

Well, that’s the problem with principles—they’re easier to take seriously when you are in control of events. And that’s the trouble with losing control—your principles may turn out to be a tad inconvenient. I am reminded of Groucho Marx saying “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.” The brouhaha over Harper’s Senate appointments demonstrates that Harper, too, has others.