A SOBER SECOND THOUGHT

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Go Sens, Go!” the popular cheer of the fans of the Ottawa Senators NHL hockey team, has taken on a new political poignancy and relevance. This is especially so as the Supreme Court of Canada is conducting hearings into the nature and purpose of the Red Chamber. Given our present political situation I feel it is incumbent on me to add my voice to those addressing the matter of senate reform or abolition. 

 

The drama of Mike Duffy ( is he now growing spuds in his home province?), Pamela Wallin, (no shy little prairie maid,) and Patrick Brazeau, (is he taking boxing lessons again?) have riveted  the attention of Canadians from coast to coast. Mike Duffy’s oratorical skills have left the public  as well as his senate partners and all politicians  breathless. Since his historical speech, in which he reiterated that, “....and there is more!”  Canadians including our prime minister have sat on the edge of their chairs. What has he up his toga besides a lot of flesh?

The senate has a long history  which in our country may or may not come to an end  in the near future. The word senator comes from the Latin senex which means old man. Old age has often been identifies  with wisdom, though  the present scenario has cast some doubt on this assumption.

In Rome it was considered  that decision making was best performed by the older and experienced leaders. Indeed in many societies, for instance in aboriginal communities, elders are held in high esteem and always consulted. This also holds true for the churches. In  the Roman Catholic Church there are few young cardinals. In Protestant denominations the role of elder is pivotal  in the governance of the church.

In Canada the senate is considered to be a court of sober second thought. Legislation passed by parliament  is sent to the red chamber for careful consideration. The senate, like the House of Commons, has committees where bills are discussed before they are brought before the full chamber for a vote. A majority in the senate can overturn such legislation and send it back to the House. 

The senate is meant to be an independent body although they are appointed by the prime minister who mostly picks them from his own party. Their life-time tenure might assure that they can survive the government that appointed them.

 

As a court of sober second thought this body is of great value to the country. Their independence, however, has been much questioned. Indeed, just as in parliament they sit according to party affiliation and tend to reflect  the policies of him who has appointed them. In this system much of their independence  and wisdom has been put in question. At present the senate is composed of a majority of Conservatives,  of Liberal leftovers from a previous government and the occasional independent. New Democrats, the Bloc and Greens, either by their own choice or circumstance,  have no representatives in the senate.  Harper during his term in power has endeavoured to paint the red chamber blue.

To-day, everyone from the prime minister down  feel  that there is a disfunction in the Upper House, no doubt about it. Stephen Harper has called on the senate to reform itself while New Democrats and others such as the premier of Saskatchewan, a Conservative, call for the abolition of the senate altogether.  However, that may be easier said than done. 

The question that Canadians confront is whether the senate can reform itself . Is the parliamentary ruling party, especially the prime minister, prepared to allow a chamber whose second thoughts may be contrary to his opinions? Can the senate be liberated from party politics and be free and independent? We await the advice of the Supreme Court.

To the west of the capital city, near Kanata, Canada’s first planned city, there is a huge sports complex known as the Canadian Tire Centre. It is the venue for many battles on ice between teams of the National Hockey League and others. Ottawa citizens largely cheer for their home team, The Senators. However, on their jerseys is emblazoned a crest with  a stylized picture of  a Roman centurion, not a senator, as the name would suggest. 

Those Roman legions were a tough force that held the empire together. They were despatched “on the double” to any hotspots on the well known Roman roads. It was those centurions who supervised the execution of Jesus, a convicted rebel, who also guarded his final resting place from grave robbers , albeit unsuccessfully. They were also the force that levelled Jerusalem including its magnificent temple in AD 70 and ended Jewish life in that troublesome country until the present time.

It would seem to me that our hockey team would be better identified  by these battle hardened soldiers than senators in Rome or Ottawa. Roman senators wore long white togas which are totally inappropriate for battles on land or ice, though back-stabbing is not out of the question then or now. 

Thus there are two suggestions that I wish to leave with you.  The first is that they change the name of the hockey team to anything but senators. The second is  to liberate  the senate from party control or if impossible do away with them altogether. Undoubtedly the latter may deprive our system of governance of a source sober second thought although we don’t seem to have much of that now. A fat chance on both accounts. 

SQ  13/11/2013

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REMEMBER!

Hanns F Skoutajan

I know its time for Remembrance because my wife after rummaging in her dresser drawer has found her favourite lapel badge. It is a black square  with a white dove carrying a palm branch in its beak. The message on the badge says : To Remember is to End All War. Humanity has had much time to remember the horrors and wastage of war.

I have recently been immersing myself in Margaret MacMillan’s tome  with the title , The War that Ended  Peace: The Road to 1914. It is a  recent book, out just in time for this season of the year. It calls to mind  that it is now 100 years  since the European powers  prepared for the Great War. I don’t know what was so “great” about it , except that thousands upon thousands of soldiers perished on its battlefields. Pilgrims still flock to the military cemeteries of Belgium and France to get some sense of the sacrifices committed by both sides in the wars of the 20th century.  Thousands more bore the marks of the war throughout their lives. In one of my congregations I ministered to a gentleman as he suffered and finally died of  emphysema having been exposed to mustard gas in “The Great One”.

As a child growing up in prewar Czechoslovakia it was not unusual to see men on crutches, blind or legless, victims of “the war to end all war.” I was well aware of the ravages of man’s inhumanity to man. 

In my book The Road to Peace: Memories and Reflections Along the Way I reflected on an incident in the spring of 1938.

“The shadow of an aircraft like a dark cross floated across the valley. It moved slowly for it was a World War 1 vintage machine, a double decker whose engine produced a sputtering sound. We heard it long before we saw it approach  the military encampment that housed various units of the Czech army on exercises just north of my hometown  not far from the German border.

My mother and I, along with many other people had taken our places on the grassy slope  overlooking the valley. We had come to see something of the military might of this  modern army, albeit in 1930 terms. 

The German border, our enemy, was not far up in the hills where I had learned to ski. Times were tense as Hitler turned up his rhetoric calling on the unification of all Germans which meant the surrender of the Sudetenland of Czechosloivakia to which Britain and France acceded at Munich in Septenber 1938.  

The public had been invited to come and observe the military exercises from the vantage point of the surrounding hills. Below us on the football field were rows upon rows of dark green tents and beyond that the military equipment, horse drawn gun carriages, even several tanks and armoured cars and other accoutrements of war. For me, admittedly a bit of a timid child, there was something ominous about this “death-dealing” array of power.”

What impressed me most,  ... well, alright, scared me, was that one airplane cruising over the encampment. It made my skin crawl, as it, like an evil omen, a shadowy cross, presaged war. This picture has lived with me all those years and I have been eternally grateful that my parents and I managed to escape to another continent and avoided that war altogether.

Following The Great War there came a respite of 20 years . I have a cartoon  that pictures death in the form of a skeleton astride a bass drum which he is beating vigorously and announcing, “..... and after a brief intermission we shall be back for more of the show.”

The Second World War was certainly different with many more battlefields besides the ones in Europe’s east and west and south, but also Africa and the Pacific. Civilian casualties in the Great War were relatively few compared to the Second War in which cities in Britain and Germany were set alight, to say nothing of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Each year our veterans march and stand solemnly at the cenotaph in Ottawa and most other cities and towns across the country. We gather to “Remember” and to pray that wars might cease. 

Reading Macmillan’s book I learned that in the decades before the war there were many statesmen who disparaged of the efficacy of war - it was too expensive they believed. Today, however, in his book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, Jermy Scahill writes about the privatization of war. Dick Cheney, then defense secretary and later as Vice President  in the Bush government, strove to privatize as much of the military as possible as a way of creating another barrier to civilian oversight. War and war production was not unaffordable but good business for large corporations producing military equipment. That administration and its acolytes believed war and war production was supremely profitable as long as the taxpayer was sufficiently scared to pay the bill. In our own country we need only think of the jet fighters that our government was willing to spend billions of the citizens’ dollars to acquire. For what purpose is a fair question.

Ian McKay and Jamie Swift in their book Warrior Nation: Rebranding in an Age of Anxiety write “Once known for peace-keeping, Canada is becoming a militarized nation whose apostles - the ‘new warriors’ - are fighting to shift public opinion.” 

Linda McQuaig commenting on this book  writes that, “With our federal government determined to glorify war and eradicate our enduring attachment to Canada as a promoter of peace, this engaging and highly readable book alerts us to what’s at stake  - the very soul of our nation.” Can we afford to be so changed?

In my mind I can still see and hear that lone aircraft  trailing its black cross over the valley .... and the world to come. Dare we remember  and strive for Peace and end all war?

SQ 07/11/2013