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Trudeau boots senators from Liberal caucus.


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Surprised no one has posted this yet.

Trudeau’s expulsion order catches Liberal senators by surprise

GLORIA GALLOWAY, KIM MACKRAEL AND JOSH WINGROVE

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Jan. 29 2014, 9:22 AM EST

Last updated

Wednesday, Jan. 29 2014, 5:45 PM EST

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has expelled all Liberal senators from his caucus and says he will advocate for a non-partisan process for appointing members to the Senate going forward.

The surprise announcement Wednesday morning caught senators by surprise and appeared to create significant confusion for 32 members of the Red Chamber.

It also prompted Conservatives and New Democrats to suggest Mr. Trudeau was making a pre-emptive move to avoid the fallout of a sweeping audit of senators’ expenses that could be made public shortly. But Mr. Trudeau said he was releasing his Liberal senators to sit as independents because it was the right thing to do.

“I have come to believe that the Senate must be non-partisan, composed merely of thoughtful individuals representing the varied values, perspectives and identities of this great country, independent from any particular political brand,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters at a morning news conference.

The Senate is suffering from both partisanship and patronage and its party structure interferes with its ability to act as a chamber of sober second thought because senators must do what’s best for their party rather than their country, Mr. Trudeau said.

If elected prime minister, he said, he would ensure that all future Senate appointments are made by an open, transparent, non-partisan process and, once they are appointed, all would sit as independent members.

Mr. Trudeau met with the 32 senators who were members of his caucus early in the morning to tell them the news. It was a difficult conversation, he said, especially for those who have spent decades actively participating in party politics as fundraisers and campaigners.

The Liberal Leader indicated during his news conference that he intends for the senators who were appointed as Liberals to now sit as independents and to have no claim to the party brand. “There are no more Liberal senators. Let me be perfectly clear,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters.

He also said the senators who were appointed as Liberals will no longer be able to play active partisan roles.

“Any individual is free to take out a membership or to keep a membership in the Liberal Party of Canada,” he said. “But as far as political operatives, these senators will no longer be, you know, Liberal organizers, fundraisers, activists in any form.”

But the senators themselves saw things differently.

James Cowan, the former leader of the Liberal caucus in the Senate, said the Liberal senators would continue to share the same values as the Liberal Party and would continue to refer to themselves using the Liberal name.

“I think not a lot will change,” Mr. Cowan said. “There’s a perception perhaps that senators in our party and the other party are under the control of folks on the other side. That’s not been the case in our side, we obviously consult with them and we’ve had the privilege of being part of their office up to now. We won’t have that any more but we’ll continue to talk to them and I suspect not a great deal will change.”

And Mobina Jaffer, who was appointed as a Liberal, said: “I’m still a Liberal, I’ve always been a Liberal, I’ve been a Liberal for 38 years. I worked very hard for Liberal values and I’ll still work hard for Liberal values… I can absolutely campaign. It doesn’t stop me doing anything any other Liberal can do.”

The move was made unilaterally by Mr. Trudeau’s office, though the party’s own constitution defines the caucus as “those members of the Party who are members of the House of Commons or the Senate of Canada.” Mr. Trudeau is now saying senators will not be permitted in caucus, and his office said the party constitution will be amended as soon as possible.

Mr. Trudeau wrote the Senate speaker to inform him the former Liberal senators are now “independent senators,” but confusion reigned during the Senate sitting Wednesday afternoon. The former Liberal senators identified as the “Senate Liberal Caucus,” with James Cowan as the caucus leader. He’d been the Liberal leader in the Senate before Mr. Trudeau’s announcement.

It led Government Senate Leader Claude Carignan to stand up with a point of order, saying “these are independent senators in the Senate, so that creates tremendous confusion.”

"Do we have an opposition, and do we have a leader of the opposition?" Mr. Carignan asked.

Mr. Cowan replied quickly, after earlier calling it a “new era” for the Senate.

“Let me reassure the leader of the government in the Senate that he has an opposition,” he said.

Several senators stood up to affirm they would, indeed, like to serve as a caucus, and the party appeared to have the numbers to continue to form the opposition in the Red Chamber. But it was not a clear situation.

“Every group or new group can’t spring up and simply call themselves the Liberal Party of Canada,” Senator Anne Cools, who was appointed as a Liberal but has long served as an independent, said in the debate. She pointed to Mr. Trudeau’s letter as evidence. “What there’s no doubt about is he says they’re independent. So he has disowned them,” she said of Mr. Trudeau.

Senate Speaker Noël A. Kinsella ruled that the senators remain both Liberals and the opposition in the Red Chamber, saying they met the threshold set out in Senate rules because there were more than five of them, and all were, in the eyes of Elections Canada, members of a registered political party – the Liberals. In essence, Mr. Kinsella’s finding is that Senate rules suggest the ousted caucus can’t be called anything else but Liberal senators.

Mr. Trudeau's decision comes as senators face audits of their expenses by the Auditor-General following a scandal that has dominated Parliament and which saw three Conservative senators suspended over improper claims.

“The expense issues that we will be hearing more of in the coming months are part of what people are concerned with the Senate,” Mr. Trudeau replied when asked if the audit results prompted his decision.

Minister for Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre called Mr. Trudeau’s move a “smoke screen” to cover the results of the audit.

The proposal, he said, would make the Senate even worse than it already is. “Under his proposal, not only would senators be unelected, but those who appoint senators would also be unelected. That’s not just one step from democracy, but two.”

Mr. Poilievre said the only real effect of the changes proposed by Mr. Trudeau is that the senators who were appointed as Liberals will no longer be able to attend weekly caucus meetings.

NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen questioned Mr. Trudeau’s motivation for expelling senators from the Liberal caucus ahead of the Auditor-General’s report on senators’ expenses.

“If the intention is to try to distance himself from his own senators, that will be very difficult to do... If they were Liberal senators when they took money, or they did things like what [former Liberal senator Mac] Harb did, then Mr. Trudeau is of course accountable for those that were in his caucus,” he said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made 59 Senate appointments, many of them drawn from the ranks of Conservative party members. The Canadian government is proposing to create elections for senators and set a term limit of nine years to make the Senate more democratic and relevant. It is asking the Supreme Court if it can make those changes on its own, without provincial consent.

But Mr. Trudeau said his proposals would mean real reform of the Senate without introducing any constitutional questions.

Canadians “don’t want a long, rancorous, and likely pointless debate with the provinces that would distract us from focusing on more important problems,” said Mr. Trudeau.

Ending partisanship now means ending patronage going forward, he said.

“I challenge the Prime Minister to match this action,” said Mr. Trudeau. “As the majority party in the Senate, immediate and comprehensive change is in Conservative hands. I’m calling on the Prime Minister to do the right thing. To join us in making Senators independent of political parties and end partisanship in the Senate.”

Interesting to see how Harper will respond to this...

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Harper and the boys immeadeatly had a good laugh. Harper:". So now we have 30 some independant senators that just happen to be liberals". All his minions "hahahahahahahahahahahaha".

As much as I'd like to support him I think he's going to regret this move.

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He WILL get elected... 2015 or 2019 but he will get in... the sooner the better so we can stop the Con train from sending Canada farther into short-sighted, immediate monetary gain mindset and redefine what our nation is.

We need to stop bending over for the US and kissing Israels ass.

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Trudeau is trying to follow his dad's footsteps....sadly he's not his dad. He's a bit douchey if you ask me

He will still do well. According to a 2009 survey 60% of voters don't read the party platform before voting and thus the issues play less of a role then the people. That's why right now trudeau is in a statiscal tie with harper.

For voters surprisingly

Issues, platforms< People

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He will still do well. According to a 2009 survey 60% of voters don't read the party platform before voting and thus the issues play less of a role then the people. That's why right now trudeau is in a statiscal tie with harper.

For voters surprisingly

Issues, platforms< People

Trudeau will get alot of female votes from the ones that are idiots and will vote for him simply because they find him good looking

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Those same people are the ones who are too lazy to vote. They won't matter.

yep, which is why even though in polls 58% of canadians disapprove of Harper, he keeps winning elections. cause the type of people that oppose him are too lazy to get off their asses to even go vote

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Ya you're right we should bend over for Russia and kiss Syria/Iran ass. :picard:

There's no middle there. At all.

Funny, leader of the third party effects a tangible reform toward the Senate, while the majority party is on its what year of talking about it? How's that elected Senate working out for Canada? Oh wait, we don't have that, we have a Conservative caucus stuffed with patronage appointments and failed CPC MP candidates.

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