Conservatives could table Senate reform bill by spring
Published January 13, 2010
By Martin C. Barry • TLN

The year 2009 was “interesting,” Senator Leo Housakos agrees. The Montreal-born Housakos was appointed just over a year ago to Canada’s Senate by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. A long-time Conservative, Housakos has also been involved for many years with Montreal’s Greek community. He is one of the founders of the Hellenic Board of Trade. For the second year, Senator Housakos sat down for an interview with journalist Martin C. Barry of The Laval News.
Among other things, he predicts the Harper government will launch an effort by this spring or summer to reform the Senate.

TLN: We talked a little last year about Senate reform, which you said you are in favour of. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just revealed that the Conservative government wants to seriously take up the issue of Senate reform once again. Since this is your domain, where are these efforts heading?
Sen. Housakos: The Minister for Democratic Reform has had this dossier in his hands now for a couple of years. We’re very firm on having eight-year terms for senators. I’m on record for that. I believe in that. I believe that for any particular area or field of work that you do, after a period of time you have to move onto bigger and better things. I think that after eight or 10 years on any particular job, that’s more than a sufficient amount of time to do what you have to do. So I’ve been on record in the past saying I believe in terms for senators. I still believe that. We’ll have more Conservative senators named by the prime minister in the next few weeks and we’ll be having a plurality of Conservatives in the Senate in the next few months. And we hope the longer the Conservatives stay in power, the more likely we can get a majority in the Senate, and the more likely we will be able to pass Senate reform legislation, which I support and I know the vast majority of my colleagues on our side of the Senate support.

TLN: Where are the Conservatives headed with reform? Are we looking at an elected Senate?
Sen. Housakos: There are many options on the table. Knowing this prime minister, he believes in the step-by-step approach. Sometimes when you try to make grand reforms quickly, it doesn’t work overnight. The prime minister is clear that he believes in an elected Senate with terms. There are a lot of provinces that are against that, making it very difficult. I believe the government’s first step is to make terms for senators, and I believe we have legal opinions on this issue which say the government has the right and has the ability as the federal government to reform the terms of senators. It has been done in the past and I think it can be done again, so I think that would be the first step. After that we would have to engage in more deep discussion with the provinces to find what form the Senate reform will take. Will it be an elected Senate? Will it still be appointed with terms? Those are things that need to be discussed.

TLN: As for yourself, you will still be able to remain in the Senate until you’re 75 years old.
Sen. Housakos: In the current system, my expiration date is 2043, which is a long, long way off.

TLN: Of course, there is some opposition to Senate reform.
Sen. Housakos: The Liberals have been opposed to it. A number of provinces, including the province of Quebec which I represent, have been vehemently opposed, especially in terms of having an elected Senate. So there are barriers, there are difficulties. There are parts of the country that are wholeheartedly in favour, like western Canada, and there are a lot of eastern Canadian provinces that have a hard time with it for various reasons.

TLN: Can we actually begin to set some kind of a timeline for this?
Sen. Housakos: I believe that in the next session of Parliament, from what I understand from caucus, there will be legislation tabled to reform the Senate. As early as the next session. We’re looking at between March and June.

TLN: Harper has come under fire for once again proroguing Parliament. What’s your take on it?
Sen. Housakos: When the prime minister prorogues, it’s well within his constitutional right to do so. It’s been done on a number of occasions. The prime minister at the beginning of the last session of Parliament had a very short throne speech, which was specifically catering to the needs of the economic crisis that we were going through in 2009. We’re still going through those difficult times because of this great international crisis. It’s not unusual for a government to have two throne speeches on average every three or four sessions. We’re going into the third session of this Parliament, so this is not particularly unusual in any way, shape or form. It’s the 105th time that there’s a throne speech in the middle of a session to announce a new session. The government has taken the decision and the prime minister has come to the conclusion that the first phase of his economic action plan has been instituted and he feels that very shortly after the olympic games that we have to go into phase two of the economic action plan. The first phase is to obviously make sure that the stimulus package has had the desired effect in bringing us out of this economic crisis. The second element is to make sure that we have a rebalanced budget very shortly as we come out of this recession, and third that we have somewhat of a more solid economic action plan for the future of the country because I think we need it. Personally, I think the crisis we went through on an international basis over the last year is only the first step. I think there are going to be other tremors along the way. I think countries are still highly leveraged, I think citizens in the western industrial world have become highly leveraged individually. And I think at some point in time it catches up to us and we have to pay the piper.

TLN: That’s what Harper was also suggesting in an interview this week with CBC TV. He, too, doesn’t seem to feel very secure about the current economic situation.
Sen. Housakos: For good reasons. He’s a Conservative by nature, as am I, and I think our generation of Canadians and Americans and western industrialized countries have spent too much, consumed too much, and have taken for granted the whole idea that inflation goes on and on and it’s a race to beat it. At some point, we have to come to the realization that we must become fiscally responsible as citizens and as governments.

TLN: At the same, however, he is not anticipating any further economic aid coming from the federal government.
Sen. Housakos: No. I think right now his perspective is that Canada came into this recession relatively later compared to other countries, because of our stronger fiscal situation. We’ve come out of the international economic crisis in better shape than other western industrialized countries, and he feels that the stimulus package that he implemented in the last budget is sufficient, and we’re seeing the fruits of that investment.

TLN: Do you anticipate a federal election taking place in the next year?
Sen. Housakos: The Harper government’s point of view since the last election is that we have to focus on the ball. It’s the economy, economy, economy. That’s been our position since the last federal election. We think we have a clear mandate from the people to deal with that economic crisis. Unfortunately last summer the Liberals were somewhat irresponsible by trying to egg on and provoke an election for last fall. Fortunately, pressure from the public allowed for common sense to establish itself. And from our point of view, regardless of the great polls we’ve had, our focus is still the economy.

TLN: The Conservatives are perpetually unable to make significant progress electorally in Quebec. What can be done?
Sen. Housakos: We’ve put together a great team of individuals led by Christian Paradis, our political minister for Quebec. And our goal is simple: to get as many seats as we can in the next election in Quebec. We got 10 in the last election. We improved our electoral score a little bit. We were very pleased a little over a month ago with the results of two by-elections in Quebec. We won one in Rivière-du-Loup, and that is a sure sign that we’re starting to make inroads in Quebec and we have the capacity to win in certain regions of Quebec. So we think that’s the first good news, the first step forward, and we’re going to continue to build on that. We’re reaching out to the cultural communities. We have an outreach program led by Jason Kenney, the Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism. I’m working very closely with him and his team to advance that. Agop Evereklian, who was our candidate in Laval-les-Îles in the last election, is currently chief of staff to Minister Jason Kenney and he’s very much involved in the outreach program for the cultural communities.

TLN: Why is Quebec so reluctant to support the Conservatives?
Sen. Housakos: I think the issue is the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc Québécois was formed in 1993. They had a very specific parochial mandate from the people of Quebec, and it was supposed to be a short term political party put into place to defend the interests of Quebec. And this is the quote of Lucien Bouchard, that it would be a short-term political movement. For various reasons, it has surpassed its life expectancy and its shelf-life, so to speak, and I think that’s the biggest stumbling block. I think all federalist parties over the past 15 years had a hard time convincing Quebecers that they’re the best option for having a strong Quebec within a strong Canada. We feel that Mr. Harper so far has been the best of the available federalist options, and step by step Quebecers are realizing as the weeks and months go by that his form of constructive federalism, where provinces are respected in this federation, is the right approach. I think Mr. Harper will stand the test of time. Rivière-du-Loup is a Bloquiste riding that we won, so we feel that is just the first positive sign of things to come.

TLN: In December, the Senate’s ethics officer exonerated you after accusations were made that you breached ethics rules by being on the payroll of an engineering firm which had received federal stimulus package money to evaluate repairs on the Champlain Bridge. What’s your reaction?
Sen. Housakos: I don’t want to comment on it any further than I have over the last few months. I said from the beginning of this process when I sent the issue to the ethics commissioner of the Senate that whatever ruling he comes out with I will stand and live with. And the report is concise, it is clear, and I am very pleased with what was outlined there. I guess the person who really has to answer these questions is Jennifer Ditchburn from Canadian Press, who broke the story and left out some very significant facts. Facts which I’m very pleased the ethics commissioner in his report was diligent enough to outline from his investigation … She was talking about how a senator gave a federal stimulus contract to his firm, but forgets to point out that the contract was 50 per cent federal, 50 per cent provincial, and that when we say federal it wasn’t even Public Works Canada. It was an arm’s length organization called the Federal Bridges Corporation that put in 50 per cent of the budget on this contract, and the other 50 per cent came from Transport Quebec. And she also failed to point out that there was an independent committee of four bureaucrats, two from each side, that did the evaluation of all the consortium bids. And essentially, unanimously, this committee reported to the Transport Ministry of Quebec and to the board of the Federal Bridges that this was the best, cheapest and most efficient consortium to do the job. All these facts were not reported by Mrs. Ditchburn in her story. The fact that was reported, ‘Senator gives his firm a federal contract.’ And if anybody reads the details of the ethics commissioner’s report, that is the furthest thing from the truth. So was she just not diligent and prudent in prudent in her research to find out these facts? Or did she intentionally ignore them? I choose to believe it was probably the first. I just suspect she wasn’t diligent in doing her homework. I would really hate to assume that she had this information and intentionally did not publish it in her story.

TLN: When we spoke last year, you were hopeful about the federal government becoming involved in the development of a high-speed rail link in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. As a former member of the Via Rail board, the enthusiasm was understandable. Is that project moving forward?
Sen. Housakos: Unfortunately it isn’t. I’m still an advocate of high-speed rail for Canada. The information I’ve gotten so far from the transport ministry is that the costs are just astronomical. We’re talking about $30 to $40 billion, conservative estimates, to be able to do a high-speed railway between Quebec City and Windsor. Personally, do I think it’s warranted? I think it’s something that the government should look at regardless. Obviously during the economic crisis that we’re facing right now when we’re in desperate need to rebalance our budget as we go forward, it’s going to be a hard-sell. There are difficulties because of fiscal constraints, but we have to understand that nothing begins and ends with a firm yes or a no. It is a project that I still think has merit. I think logically, though, it’s just economically a hard-sell during the fiscally difficult times that we have. And we have a prime minister and a government that is very fiscally responsible. He’s an economist and we can’t forget that. Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the official opposition, announced a few months ago that he’s in favour of a high-speed railway, as am I in principle. But has he taken the time to evaluate the costs? And where would he find the additional $40 billion to put in place a high-speed railway? So I as a parliamentarian, like many others, have a long shopping list of things that Quebecers and Canadian citizens call me and write me with very legitimate arguments for why we need high-speed rail and this and other things. I believe that at some point in time it’s going to have to be looked at. It’s just that in situations where we’ve already pumped in billions in stimulus dollars and where we’re facing deficits over the next couple of years, it’s a hard sell.