Tories decry lack of in-person Senate meetings

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This article was published 06/05/2022 (1262 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A Manitoba senator is accusing his Red Chamber peers of using COVID-19 as an excuse to not show up for work, after the Conservatives were outvoted in their bid to end hybrid sittings.

“Everybody’s moving along, but in federal buildings, no. It just makes no sense,” Sen. Don Plett, Conservative leader in the Senate, told the Free Press.

“What makes us that much more important than the rest of the country?”

The Conservatives had been pushing for weeks to have the Red Chamber end its virtual sittings, in which senators can speak in the chamber or at committees through a video link. Under that system, there have been fewer sitting hours and committee meetings.

The Tories argue it’s a bad trade-off, particularly when Ottawa has low case counts and Ontario has lifted almost all workplace restrictions.

That was a non-starter for senators appointed by Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who sit in various groups but aren’t officially linked to a party.

“This chamber and people on all sides of it, in the context of hybrid sittings, have given of their best,” Ontario Sen. Tony Dean said in the chamber.

“Suggestions to the contrary were, frankly, deeply offensive to many of us in this room,” said Dean, arguing his colleagues have been busy at work and saved taxpayers on flights.

Plett’s team tried to find a compromise this week, proposing the Public Health Agency of Canada outline what in-person meetings are safe, and have the Senate law clerk compare those pointers and Ontario and Quebec rules with the capacity and spacing of the Senate chamber and committee rooms.

Senators voted against that proposal, arguing COVID-19 is still spreading in communities across Canada.

Plett found that stance excessive when senators are vaccinated and wear a mask on planes and taxis.

“Ottawa’s the safest place in the world to go to,” he claimed. “It’s much more dangerous staying in my home province.”

Senators have instead opted to extend the virtual sittings until the summer break starts in June, just days after the Commons passed a motion that allows the Liberals to curtail House sittings.

“It is the most undemocratic motion that this dictatorship, this regime has brought in seven years that we have been suffering with their leadership,” Plett said.

Keeping the hybrid option was the best compromise for a chamber with diverse views on safety, said Sen. Marc Gold, who represents the government in the Senate.

“I’m not being ideological about this. It makes sense at this juncture, to consider the importance of not disenfranchising senators,” Gold said last week. “

An Ontario senator died in November from COVID-19: Josée Forest-Niesing, 56, had an autoimmune condition that weakened her lungs for more than a decade.

Plett said he misses Forest-Niesing, a good friend, and said it was “a low blow” when Dean brought up her death in the debate over virtual sittings.

“The world has opened up, and the Senate of Canada has not,” he said, arguing federal buildings are also being overly cautious.

At the Service Canada centre in Steinbach, Plett said he was baffled to face numerous vaccination and health questions, distancing, masking and staff “completely encased” in plexiglass.

He went to a grocery store afterward, and said nobody seemed to be wearing a mask, save for a few cashiers.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca