tell him about, as Senator David Tkachuk, chair of the Senate’s Internal Economy Committee, would later confirm. A second good reason was that the PMO had unequivocally asserted that the prime minister’s new Senate appointees satisfied all requirements of office. Nobody running the Senate wanted to publicly contradict the all-powerful PMO.
On her appointment to the upper house, Senator Wallin pledged that as soon as the provincial government set up a voting system for Saskatchewanians to elect senators, she’d resign and seek election to her seat. Not only was that stance consistent with the private commitment the prime minister had extracted from his new Senate appointees to support Senate reform, but it was the kind of forthright public statement people had come to expect from Wallin. So it came as no surprise.
What did surprise many, however, was her acceptance of a senatorship as a Conservative. During her long career as a broadcast journalist, Wallin had covered all parties and maintained the necessary political neutrality. Like the CBC’s Don Newman and the Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson, Wallin did not vote in federal elections when working in Ottawa, knowing that to mark a ballot required making a choice and that doing so would make it harder to regain the objectivity true journalism demands.
Moreover, before starting into journalism with CBC Radio in the 1970s, Wallin had been a member of the NDP. And when she departed journalism years later in the 1990s, it was to accept a diplomatic appointment from Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Reinforcing the sense that the former New Democrat now had an affinity for the Grits was the fact she’d worked closely with Liberal foreign affairs minister John Manley to host the “Canada Loves New York” post-9/11 rally in Manhattan, and that she and Liberal senator Jerry Grafstein had been jointly honoured in 2003 by the Canadian Society of New York for their ongoing devotion to strengthening ties between Canada and the United States. Although Consul General Wallin’s work in New York as a partisan-neutral diplomat kept her away from party affiliations, her personal history suggested that if she had any at all, they’d likely be with the NDP or Liberals.
Yet Wallin had reached a station in life where the direction of the Conservatives and the opportunities for public service as a senator enabled her to step vigorously into her new role. She would be effective for Stephen Harper’s party, not in the folksy but persistent manner of Mike Duffy, but as a suave and seductive spokesperson, especially with urbanites in places like Toronto, where she’d lived for years.
Between the pair, Wallin and Duffy could cover both sides of the street on their upbeat march to sell political conservatism.
Prince Edward Island’s newest senator charged heavily out of the starting gate.
Just days after he’d been sworn in, I began receiving Tory-partisan emails from ebullient “Mike Duffy, Conservative Senator.” As a former PC member of Parliament, the Conservative’s candidate against Michael Ignatieff in the 2008 general election, and an intermittent financial contributor to Conservatives over the decades, my name and address were evidently in the party’s database.
Had the Grits named Duffy to the upper house, I smiled, my Liberal friends would have been receiving these exhortations instead. At first it seemed that a procession of prime ministers — Trudeau, Clark, Trudeau again, Turner, Mulroney, Campbell, Chrétien, and Martin — had missed real opportunity by not getting Duffy onside. Sure, there was the adage “Be wary of one who wants something too greatly.” But if you were a Tory, Senator Duffy was great!
Duffy’s pent-up lust for being in the Senate of Canada — never a joke, in his mind — was now re-channelling him from being Canada’s most ardent supplicant for a senatorship into Canada’s most assertive partisan in the Red Chamber. His skills were those of a communicator. His talent in politics was to “get the message out.” The prime minister had found his personal paladin. The two were seen on countless stages together in an unending flash of photo-ops, and provincial Progressive Conservative leaders were soon just as pleased as the national party leader to bask in the celebrity glow radiating from “the Senator,” whose presence nobody could miss or mistake.
Duffy’s urgent political messaging included frequent appeals for campaign donations. I began to sense, though, that these were being scripted by someone else, and sent from an office other than the senator’s own. However such early donor appeals may have been orchestrated behind the scenes for the closely run Conservative money-vacuuming operation, soon enough the powers-that-be decided that personal contact with Senator Duffy would work better than continuing his avalanche of emails.
He began appearing across Canada, a magnet drawing people to public events and party gatherings, a Maritime Midas turning local fund-raising opportunities into lucrative events helping Conservatives amass a bulging campaign war chest. Yes, Senator Duffy was great!
In the meantime, the prime minister, his government having survived, developed the same fondness for using the Senate all his predecessors had. Among other appointees that year was Conservative campaign chair Doug Finley. One might have imagined a person running the party’s disciplined election-ready machinery as a full-time paid job from the Senate would see the necessity of coordinating his Senate colleague’s time and allocating Mike Duffy’s expenses in ways to ensure immunity from partisan counter-attack. Basic adherence to conflict of interest rules would have been a starting point too. Payment of constant campaigner Duffy’s expenses by the Conservative Party rather than the public treasury, another.
It is hard to be a celebrity; even harder, a celebrity senator.
In the House of Commons, members represent people who have chosen them over other candidates because of who they are as individuals and what they stand for politically. They also have an intense connection to a particular electoral district. Their supporters volunteer to work for them because great effort is needed for re-election campaigns. MPs have a public identity. Constituents admire MPs for their authentic qualities, such as their accomplishments as a job-creating entrepreneur, a fine educator, a respected lawyer, an innovative food-producer, a resilient unionist, an ardent civil libertarian, or an advocate for society’s vulnerable members. They do not want their MP to change but to remain true to character. All the while, MPs must engage forces, both partisan and parliamentary, that render them more like each other, buffing off their individuality. They run for election under a common logo and using approved “messages” they are forced to stick with, and in the Commons they vote in unison, while struggling to preserve some vestige of their individual personality that got them into Parliament in the first place.
For senators, most all of this is absent.
The pressures to perform and remain actively connected to a specific community do not exist. Able to hold office to age seventy-five, free from any concern about being fired, with no imperative to get re-elected, senators free-float in time and space, the Chris Hadfields of Canadian politics.
So a senator merely carries on, being who he or she was before, miming their prior life on a new stage. That’s what made it impossibly hard for a good man and a great hockey player like Frank Mahovlich — no ice surface. And very difficult for talented queen of skiing Nancy Greene — no downhill slopes. Patrick Brazeau remained true to himself when he climbed into a boxing ring with Justin Trudeau for a worthy cause. Pamela Wallin continued to play herself, but looked so out of place in the becalmed upper house that she dubbed herself “an activist senator.” Mike Duffy, too, remained just who he always had been, with no incentive to change and no need to, either.
The Senate can swallow whole those not sufficiently well defined by strong character. But those already larger than life can attract in Canada’s political arena all the attention of a gravity-free, camera-performing astronaut in space.
Senator Wallin was not cutting back, but becoming more active than ever, thanks to the freedom of action offered by the Senate. Her 1998 memoir Since You Asked made clear that Wallin never shied
