There has been a raft of rumours out about the Senate the past couple of days, the latest being that there could be yet another caucus forming, possibly out yet another split within the Independent Senators Group, because there is some friction over the current leadership—erm, “facilitatorship”—and that is not entirely unsurprising. The ISG is large and unwieldy, and when you have that many type-A people in a room who all have their own ideas on how to do things, and their own agendas, it’s little wonder that they can barely organise themselves to do anything. So we’ll see if this happens, but nevertheless, I can confirm that I’ve heard grumblings about the current state of the ISG.
Meanwhile, there is another rumour circulating, both from the Globe and Mail and iPolitics that prime minister Mark Carney is looking to appoint Tom Pitfield to the Senate—the same Tom Pitfield who won a turf war within the PMO that saw David Lametti take a job as UN ambassador instead of the post he was supposed to take up within PMO. The rumours also state that he would take over as Government Leader in the Senate and take up a seat in Cabinet like the post is supposed to be, but this too is being denied. The source of this rumour also hints that Carney is going to start appointing partisan Liberals to the Senate again, which I’m not necessarily opposed to, provided that there is no expectation of a whip, which never really existed in the Senate before, but with almost no former Liberal senators left, the new batch may be under some false pretences.
Meanwhile, I find myself baffled by the notion that Carney is looking to appoint Pitfield and partisans in order to move bills through the Senate, as though there is obstruction happening there. There is not. Government bills are passing through at a pace that is actually too fast for proper scrutiny in many cases because of an exaggerated sense of faux urgency, while the real problem remains in the House of Commons, which has barely passed any legislation, leaving senators bored and preoccupied with their own hobby-horse bills, and frankly, some of this talk about splitting caucuses is likely a result of that boredom.
Programming Note: I will be taking the full long weekend off. See you next Wednesday.
Ukraine Dispatch
Russia launched a daytime drone attack and killed four people in the central Cherkasy region, damaging more energy infrastructure. Russia also claims to have fully taken control of the Luhansk region, which Ukraine denies. Ukraine struck a missile component factory in Russia’s Bryansk region.