Senate attendance: Make records public online
IN 2012, you shouldn’t have to trudge to Ottawa to look up your senator’s attendance record.
But that, according to a recent Canadian Press report, is what a reporter for a New Brunswick weekly newspaper was recently told he’d have to do if he wanted to see what should be readily available — i.e., online — public information.
Given past scandals over Senate attendance, and the public dissatisfaction reflected in polls showing a third of Canadians want the upper chamber abolished, you’d think the Senate would want to be seen as being pro-actively transparent on issues like attendance.
Government Senate leader Marjory LeBreton has reportedly asked for a committee review of attendance rules. But it’s not known if that includes whether people should be able to access the attendance register online, since her office said the senator was unavailable and they wouldn’t comment on the latest story.
If that review doesn’t include a recommendation to put full Senate attendance records online, it should. Senator David Tkachuk, chair of the Senate’s internal economy, budgets and administration committee, did say in an opinion piece published in The Chronicle Herald on Wednesday that how to access attendance records will be part of the review.
To be fair, critics charging the Senate is a “secret society” trying to make its information as hard as possible to obtain are overlooking considerable recent evidence to the contrary.
As the Canadian Press report also mentioned, senators voted in May to put another registry online, one detailing their financial and business interests, but that won’t happen until 2013. For now, that information is only available on weekdays at the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer in Ottawa.
However, that news story didn’t mention that senators had, at the same time, also agreed to expand those disclosure statements to include all sources of employment, income over $2,000 a year and assets over $10,000. Given that, the ethics office’s plan to target next year — instead of October, as the Senate originally voted — to have that information online doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Who cares? Everyone already knows the Senate is useless.
Submitted by shawnino on August 2, 2012 - 8:35am.
How many senators can most of us even name? I might be able to get five.
Abolish this shambles of an institution. In the interim, whether they want to take their naps in the Red Chamber or take their naps at home in bed, it's six-and-two-threes to me.
Is that all?
Submitted by Alan on August 2, 2012 - 8:50am.
Only a third of Canadians polled support Senate abolition? I wonder whether Senate supporters are fond of lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills.
But Should Full Senate Attendance Records Be Put Online?
Submitted by dennis.cato on August 2, 2012 - 9:04am.
"Government Senate leader Marjory Le Breton has reportedly asked for a committee review of attendance rules ... If that review doesn't include a recommendation to put full Senate records online, it should." (The Editor)
There are two different but unspecified views of the Senate contained in these two sentences, views which emerge from conflicting views of the functioning of the Senate itself. However, the start-line for any discussion about the Senate is the unavoidable fact that it is an appointed, not an elected body and therefore not beholden in any direct way to the voting public. This then raises the question as to whether the full Senate records SHOULD be posted online. From whence the moral obligation?
To ask, as Marjory Le Breton has apparently done, for a "committee review of attendance rules" is quite consistent with the functioning of the Senate. It is a self-regulating body. One supposes that the committee will come to some agreement on a minimum number of days attendance for each session to be required of all senators. It might also agree on the penalties to be imposed upon those who do not meet that minimum required up to and inclluding expulsion but that is not the same thing as having the attendance records of each senator posted online and so implicitly make him beholden to the general populace.
It is a further question as to whether the Senate ought to be directly responsible to the voters on the basis of their salaries and pensions having been drawn from the public purse or, for that matter, whether the body of "sober second thought" should be abolished altogether. But, keeping the present question firmly in view, there is no obvious reason why the full Senate attendance records should be put online.
Your points are valid, but I
Submitted by dws on August 2, 2012 - 11:05am.
Your points are valid, but I would respond with the fact that it is public taxpayer money that is paying for their possible non-service to Canadians through absenteeism. I think that entitles us to know if we are getting any value from the expense.
Dump them all
Submitted by Tank on August 2, 2012 - 9:24am.
There is no real reason worth considering that would support an unelected senate. As a tax paying Canadian, I don't want a senate at all, elected or otherwise. It remains nothing of significance to the rank and file except for those who senators assist with their business deals. It is now, and remains a complete and utter waste of money and a stone in the shoe of every ordinary Canadian.
Try polling the commenters on
Submitted by mact on August 2, 2012 - 10:57am.
Try polling the commenters on here. I'm for abolition.
Other Records Too
Submitted by daveburris on August 2, 2012 - 11:22am.
I would think that Senate attendance records should be easily accessible, but at the same time, the attendance records for each Senator at their various committees should be shown. A Senator may not be in the Senate at a particular time if there is also a committee meeting that is in conflict. All attendance records are needed to get a true sense of the issue.