There was a story out on Friday about how some of the latest batch of Senators wanted to keep their old day jobs, because you know, it’s not like they actually do anything in the Upper Chamber, right? Two of the new appointees who thought that they could easily do double-duty included a Québec mayor and the aforementioned Jacques Demers, who wants to keep commentating on hockey games and such.

What struck me while reading this article was the fact that so many people – including apparently some media outlets – seem to have little grasp as to what kind of work actually happens in the Senate. For as long as it is continually portrayed as a cushy pre-retirement perq for party faithful rather than a chamber where actual policy gets debated and decided upon, we’ll continue to see stories like these. I’ve met more than a few Senators in my time on the Hill, and pretty much to a single one, they’re people who are busy five days a week – and the Senate only sits three of those days. If they’re not actually in the Chamber, they’re hard at work with their committees, giving most legislation a far more thoughtful once-over than it gets in the Commons (and we have seen an increasing number of examples of bad legislation that has come out of the Commons in recent years that ends up getting caught in the Senate), and many of them have personal projects that they want to accomplish during their time there, usually relating to an area that they’re passionate about.

It’s true that the Senate hasn’t done a good job of selling itself in the past, and stories of abuses by honourable Senators are more likely to make the round than stories of good work that they’ve done (like fixing some of the most glaring holes in the “Accountability Act” when the Commons rushed it through in a rush to punish the Liberals). And that’s a problem for the political education of the nation, and it allows people to not get suitably outraged when Harper appoints wholly inappropriate people to the Upper Chamber because they promise that they’ll help him pass his (unconstitutional) reform package and that they’ll only serve eight years – promise! In fact, the more I’ve thought about it, the more Demers seems entirely unsuited for the job, given that he’s been functionally illiterate for his life and doesn’t follow federal politics at all. When your new job is to scrutinise legislation and develop new policy, one has to wonder if he’s really the best person for the job. Oh, wait – he’s successfully distracted the media from the other ultra-partisan appointees. I guess he’s done his job already.

Also, in case you were wondering, just before Harper made these appointments, a whole pile of other patronage appointments went out, and at least 20 of 111 appointees were verifiable federal or provincial Conservative donors and supporters. Because you know, Harper came into office on a promise of cleaning up the way appointments were handled.

Harper, by the way, says he’s more concerned about the way that his god will judge him rather than the history books. Good to know.

On the topic of appointments, Immigration minister Jason Kenney says that IRB staffing is finally nearly at 100 percent, but our refugee problems are still because of the system, and not because they left so many vacancies unfilled that it created the backlog that spiralled out of control. Funny how it’ll take six months to get the new appointees up to speed, which wouldn’t have happened if he’d retained trained adjudicators rather than made fresh appointments. But you know, they still have to make it look as broken as possible in advance of their proposed reforms this autumn, likely so that they can justify more drastic changes.

While Liberals Scott Brison and John McCallum put out another release to decry the trade deficit and the deepening job crisis, the Liberals are again vacillating on whether or not to force an election this autumn. Because apparently it’s a day that ends in y.

If looks like Jewish groups are getting 84 percent of the new funds designed for improved security against hate crimes. I’d be curious to see which other groups got the remaining money, and while I’m not saying that Jewish groups don’t need the increased security, I am forced to wonder if this isn’t just one more angle of attack in Harper’s bid to secure the Jewish vote.

And finally, Alberta will delay the new law that makes it a human right for parents to pull their children out of classes containing religion, sexuality, and sexual orientation, for a year. Apparently, they still have a few problems to work out – such as how exactly they can make this sop to the religious right workable in the real world. After all, what are they going to do – send a note home before those classes, or post the entire curriculum online?

Amid cries of hypocrisy, Stephen Harper made nine more Senate appointments yesterday – nine Conservative partisans who are committed to upholding his minority government and the ideals of Senate reform. Appointees include such luminaries as his campaign chairman (and husband to the Minister for Human Resources and Skills Development) Doug Finley, his former press secretary Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, and party president Don Plett. Oh, and a functionally illiterate former hockey coach who was previously critical of the governments cuts to literacy programmes. But hey, he was a hockey coach, and maybe he can help Harper to finally finish that book on hockey he’s been “writing.”

(Incidentally, Harper’s Parliamentary biography lists him as “author, economist, and lecturer,” even though the only books he’s written are his Master’s thesis and his 2003 agreement with Peter MacKay to merge unite the right – which I’m not sure counts – and he’s also never worked as an economist).

Now, let me just say that I have no problem with an appointed Senate. In fact, I think it’s still the way to go as far as the way our democracy works. But I also think that there should be actual criteria that Prime Ministers should set at the beginning of their terms when it comes to the criteria by which they will appoint Senators – things like accomplishments, or ways that they can contribute to the dialogue of governing, or previous public service, or so on. Suffice to say, there can be actual criteria applied. But Harper’s criteria don’t really cut it. For one, his plans for trying to get enough senators to pass his “Senate reform legislation” won’t really matter because the legislation is unconstitutional and would never pass – let alone that piecemeal Senate reform is nothing more than an invitation to disaster because it hasn’t been considered in the larger context of the Canadian Parliamentary system. And it’s also unwise to make these hyper-partisan appointments to a less partisan chamber because it spoils the quality of debate that the Senate has become known for.

Of the nine appointments, the only two that seem to me to be quality ones are Kelvin Ogilvie, a past president of Acadia University and expert in biotechnology, bio-organic chemistry and genetic engineering, and Dennis Patterson, a former premier of the Northwest Territories. Granted, I don’t know how partisan they are, but they have accomplishments other than being backroom players or failed Conservative candidates. Experts in the field, or someone with a history of public service at the end of their career are what appointments should be more like. Too bad Harper has such disdain for the institution that his very appointments to it largely degrade it.

The Liberals, meanwhile, are backing away from the election trigger, saying that they don’t want to fight an election over EI (I guess that really didn’t resonate with the public after all), and it looks like they might not even move non-confidence during their first slated opposition day. Another climb-down? Likely. We’ll see how well they can articulate it (though I fear that we’re at the point where Making Parliament Work™ has become the new drinking game), but I’m starting to think that things may end up being held off until the next budget in the spring.

Manitoba’s NDP Premier Gary Doer has announced that he will be stepping down at some unspecified date in the near future. Doer is currently the longest serving Premier in the country, and has won three back-to-back majority governments. Should Jack Layton be concerned that Doer may be coming after his job next?

And finally, Facebook has indeed agreed to follow the Privacy Commissioner’s recommendations, and she has given them the request year to make the complex technical fixes to implement them. Increased privacy might actually be making a comeback after all.

NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar made a pre-emptive strike before the emergency meeting of the Foreign Affairs committee yesterday, proposing legislation that would “ensure cabinet and ministerial accountability” for consular services for Canadians stranded abroad, and lay out their responsibilities in law – and of course, the NDP’s answer to everything, which is to create another ombudsperson position to oversee the whole thing. (Seriously – I don’t think one of their proposed solutions doesn’t involve the creation of an ombudsperson). And it’s nice to see Dewar actually doing his job as a critic, rather than meddling in municipal affairs.

But the Liberal consular affairs critic, Dan McTeague, raised a very good point. While he’s not opposed to Dewar’s plans for the legislation, McTeague quite rightly points out that it doesn’t matter how many laws you create – the government actually has to follow them. And we’ve seen time and again that this particular government has a problem following the rule of law. It doesn’t matter that the law is on the books, or even not – as we are seeing by way of the Federal Court rulings that consistently come down against the government in their behaviour in abandoning these Canadians abroad. This government seems hell-bent on ignoring their responsibilities (and the rule of law) in their apparent desire to create separate tiers of Canadian citizenship, be it for ideological or racially motivated (as has been suggested) reasons. And a new ombudsperson isn’t going to do much about that – I mean, it’s not like this government really pays any attention to the Information Commissioner. Why would they pay any more attention to this? So while Dewar’s effort is commendable, it might as well be for the sake of symbolism in the end.

(And by the way, thanks Paul Dewar for having a linkable version of the press release on either your website or the party’s. It’s really helpful! What’s that? Oh, right, you didn’t put it up anywhere. I realise it’s still summer, but someone should have been on that ball).

The other emergency committee meeting yesterday – agriculture – was a disappointment for the opposition, who couldn’t get their motion for further investigation on the listeriosis outbreak to pass. It seems that the Conservative committee chair couldn’t make it back to Ottawa, so the Liberal vice-chair had to fill in, thus ensuring that the Conservatives had the majority of the votes on the committee, and oh, look – they passed a motion that said that the recent investigation was enough. Ladies and flamboyant gentlemen – the government of “openness” and “accountability.”

Liberal finance critic John McCallum went to Burlington for what I suspect to be the first of many visits to sites where the government announced a project with stimulus money only to find that gee – no work has been done. I’m curious to see how far they’ll take this, and how many projects they can tally up in the next two weeks. As a bonus, they’ll have to get out of the GTA to do it, because Toronto got no stimulus funds at all.

It looks like Harper is poised to make eight new Senate appointments, including his current political master strategist, party president, and his former communications director. And I’m sure that all of these appointees will totally promise to only sit for eight years, and will totally run for a “senate election” if their province allows one. Totally.

And finally, it looks like Facebook’s plans to comply with the ruling by our Privacy Commissioner could make international breakthroughs, and have ripple effects through the entire social networking industry. But then again, Canada’s Back™, in case you hadn’t heard.

While Jack Layton danced around the question of whether or not he’d help Michael Ignatieff pull the trigger on the government when the first confidence vote comes up in the last week of September, Ignatieff was up in Yellowknife trying to play coy about said upcoming vote, but he gave the same usual story about trying to Make Parliament Work™ over having an election.

Of course, this all goes back to the very same narrative that they’ve been crafting. It’s not enough for them to try to pull the trigger over the EI issue. Astute observation has put it that the issue over the EI “working group” will build into the larger picture of a government that not only hasn’t managed the country’s affairs well, but that the EI issue will be a “last straw.” Which is certainly the way things are going.

The key to the whole Making Parliament Work™ scheme is that they want to be seen going into an election kicking and screaming. They really don’t want to have an election, but Harper is forcing to have one because he’s just such a horrible meanie whose poor performance just can’t be tolerated any longer. That sort of thing. And for as much as the pundit class – and the Conservative talking points for that matter – say that Canadians don’t want another election, Ignatieff can agree. They don’t want one but we didn’t have a choice – and then hope and pray that the public buys it, and won’t punish them for forcing it. But I doubt we’ll see how well it works until the day after the election.

And if you’re interested, Canwest’s David Akin compared Harper and Ignatieff’s summer tours, and it seems that Harper spent most of his time touring regions his party already holds, while Ignatieff spent most of his time in unheld ridings. Does this mean Harper is on the defensive? And isn’t a defensive battle a losing one? I guess time will tell.

Elsewhere, the Harper government plans to appeal the Federal Court’s decision that they must intervene in the case of Omar Khadr, and the next level is the Supreme Court. They’re also denying that their decision to appeal is a racist one, in the face of the fact that the list of dark-skinned Canadians being left to languish oversees is getting suspiciously long. Of course, the government is also saying that Khadr has been getting “due process” in Guantanamo Bay, and that they would be concerned if he wasn’t. Um, hasn’t the American Supreme Court ruled several times that no one in Guantanamo Bay was getting due process? And that all of the evidence obtained would be inadmissible because it was obtained by torture? That doesn’t sound very reassuring to me – and it shouldn’t to any government either.

And finally, over in Quebec, the provincial government has decided to pull their $600,000 in funding for the Study to Access Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness (SALOME). That’s a harm reduction programme that would compare the effects of addicts being given medically prescribed heroin as opposed to Hydromorphone, a licensed narcotic, and whether the patients would accept in by pill rather than by needle. This follows on the NAOMI project, which showed promising results when patients were given the active ingredient in heroin rather than methadone. The Quebec government said it was a cost-cutting decision, and that the money could be better spent in other projects. Because apparently finding effective treatment options for those addicts labelled “untreatable” isn’t a good enough option.

Up today: Not one, but two emergency committee meetings, happening at the same time! On the one hand, the agriculture committee is meeting over inaction on the listeriosis report. On the other hand, the foreign affairs committee is meeting on the whole Suaad Hagi Mohamud issue. And I’m sure that these will only contribute further to the Liberals’ pre-election narrative of them trying to Make Parliament Work™ but the government just isn’t cooperating, so they’ll be forced to defeat them. Like you do.

The call went out over the wires this morning – Jack Layton was going to meet with the Prime Minister – photo op at ten to three, press conference at four. Was this a sign that Harper was going to do the same song and dance, dog-and-pony show as last year, when he met the other party leaders for the sole purpose of making it look like he was besieged when he went to Her Excellency in order to break his fixed election date law?

Well, not exactly. This year, it’s Jack Layton who is planning to meet with the other party leaders in his bid to Make Parliament Work™. He went in to the Langevin Block to talk about both the Suaad Hagi Mohamud situation – he had spoken to her on Sunday – and to reiterate just what his party had put forward in the House in the spring when it came to pensions, EI, and protecting Canadians against the evils of credit card companies.

So when Layton appeared before the assembled press gallery, he said that he and Harper had spoken about issues like job creation, climate change and the upcoming Copenhagen conference, and the fact that infrastructure funds weren’t flowing. Apparently Harper disagreed on that last part, to which Layton dutifully reminded him that those funds came from the Building Canada Fund three years ago – not the stimulus funds from the current budget.

But it wasn’t until he opened the floor to questions that he revealed that Harper gave no indication that he would be “changing direction” on any of the issues that Layton outlined, or that he even comprehended the scope of the crisis in which we find ourselves. And every time a reporter asked what it would take for Layton to support the government, or whether he would vote with the Liberals in a hypothetical non-confidence motion, Layton danced around the question.

Layton said that while the Liberals like to talk about elections – to the point of obsession even – that his party was trying to get the government to change direction. In fact, he operates on the assumption that if you press governments long and hard enough, that they’ll change. And yet, he walked away from this meeting without any sense of optimism that it was likely to happen.

Was Harper trying to sound him out for which issues he could gain support on? Not really. How did it compare to the meeting last summer? Apparently Harper was much clearer last year that he wanted an election. But hey, they’re keeping the lines of communication open, and that’s important when you’re trying to Make Parliament Work™.

In other words, this whole exercise was Layton’s contribution to the Making Parliament Work™ narrative before what looks like an inevitable autumn election.