REALity   Volume XXXVI  Issue No. 1  January 2017

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has no difficulty controlling the House of Commons with his solid majority of seats.  His Liberal MP’s are meekly doing his bidding, voting for bills that defy logic, common sense and evidence.  These controversial bills include Bill C-16, to provide special rights for transgendered, lowering the age of consent for homosexuals (Bill C-32) and amending the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to allow the spread of harmful drug injection sites in Canada.

However, in 2015, when he was elected, this smooth sailing of his bills in the House of Commons could have been stalled in the Senate, which had 40 Conservative senators and 21 so-called “independent” senators, with 21 vacancies. The previous year, in 2014, Trudeau had arbitrarily kicked out of his caucus the Liberal appointed senators who were, as a result, supposedly to become “independent” senators.  They, however, promptly identified themselves as “Senate Liberals”.

This created a serious problem for Trudeau as his untenable bills could be permanently stalled in the Senate unless he took action to revise this situation.

Con-job Committee

To remedy this problem, Trudeau carried out a con-job.  He appointed a committee of Liberals, headed by a well-known Liberal supporter, former public servant and former University of Ottawa Chancellor, Huguette Labelle, to sift through the 2,700 applications from Canadians who had volunteered their names for appointments to the Senate.  Why wouldn’t people apply for such a job?  It pays $145,000 base salary plus living expenses, job security to age 75, a gold-plated pension, with no elections to fight and no accountability.  A dream job.  The best gig in the country.  There was no requirement that Trudeau actually had to choose the names of those recommended by his Committee, but who knows since the Committee’s recommendations remain a secret.

Trudeau made 25 new appointments to the Senate in October, claiming that they were all “independent”.  This was clear nonsense.  The newly appointed senators were all liberal leaning elites, and their appointments in no way changed the politics of the Senate as Trudeau was pretending.  The only difference was that the Senate is now dominated by Liberal senators not Conservative senators.   For example, one appointment was that of Patricia Bovey of Winnipeg, formerly involved with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, a widow of a former Liberal MP.  Most had worked for government or organizations supported by government, or were university professors, etc.  That is, elites and bureaucrats were appointed rather than individuals with whom ordinary people can relate.  As stated by National Post Columnist, Christie Blatchford (November 2, 2016):

 Where are the ordinary Joes?  The steelworkers, teachers, the guys on the line at Ford, the out-of-work oil patch folks, the cashiers at Metro?  Where is there anywhere someone who isn’t from the conventionally approved swaths of Canadian society?

The reality is that Trudeau has created a Liberal dominated Senate while pretending it is independent.  There are now 40 so-called “non-affiliated” senators, 41 Conservatives, as well as the 21 “Liberal Senators” previously appointed, who are supposed to be independent.  Now Trudeau should have no problem pushing his bills through the Senate.  This was the objective of his scheme of appointments in the first place.

How naïve does Trudeau think the Canadian public is? It’s not hard to recognize that his appointments to the Senate are nothing more than the customary patronage, clothed with his usual hot air.