Friday, June 4, 1999
By Senator Colin Kenny
Most reporters yearn to be columnists, or so I am told. But columnists' jobs are usually reserved for those scribes with that extra bit of insight or pizazz, so they are doled out sparingly.
Cleverly, Jack Aubry seems to have figured out a way of making himself a columnist without having to show any insight or pizazz.
Since it is open season on the Senate at the Citizen, Mr. Aubry has learned that a reporter can write the most opinionated drivel about the Senate and pass it off as a news story.
On Monday, May 25, Mr. Aubry slipped still another of his anti-Senate columns onto the news pages: "Senate takes extra week off," was the head on the story. The subhead - "While MPS return to Parliament today, upper chamber can't find enough work."
His complaint this time is that the Commons is sitting this week but the Senate isn't. As he points out, there wouldn't be enough legislation coming through the Senate this week to justify the extra cost to taxpayers of flying senators in from all across the country one additional time.
As usual, Mr. Aubry largely defines "work" as those days on which the Senate sits.
Frankly, Senate sittings count for about a tenth of the work I do on behalf of Canadian taxpayers. That may vary with other senators - some of whom, like reporters, are quite industrious, and a few of whom aren't. But it's probably a fair rule of thumb.
In Monday's column Mr. Aubry does note that senators do a lot of committee work, but cluck-clucks that three of seven sitting Senate committees cancelled meetings this week "to accommodate the extended break."
So instead of getting credit for saving taxpayers money this week, the Senate gets another mindless hammering for not meeting enough. Never mind that with 103 members in the Senate it doesn't take as much time to go over legislation as it does with 303 MPS in the House. Never mind that a lot of work was done sorting out which Senate committees had to meet this week, and which could put meetings off until next week to give the taxpayer a better bang for that outrageous $1.50 per Canadian it costs to have the Senate do its job.
As usual, Aubry does his darnedest to make one feeble point, then pads with old filler about the Senate's stupendous 2% pay increase (after seven years of frozen salaries), and . . . blah, blah blah. He doesn't have any real news, but, hey, columnists get to fill the space.
I have a challenge for Mr. Aubry. I would like to compare work schedules - the work that I do for the Senate (no outside business), and the work that he does for the Citizen (no freelancing).
I worked Christmas week on the campaign against youth smoking that my office has been spearheading for more than a year now. In fact, over the Christmas "holidays," I was meeting with heath advocates in St. John's, Halifax, Charlottetown, St. John, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Sacramento and San Francisco.
I'm sure Mr. Aubry was busy too.
I bet if you checked the newspapers that week, Mr. Aubry's byline appeared every day that I was working. Because if your byline isn't in the paper on a given day, it's probably just like the Senate isn't sitting. You're not really "working," are you? But I'm sure he was.
At 9 o'clock last Friday, as the Victoria weekend was beginning, I was in Toronto in a meeting with that's city's chief medical officer of health. I'm sure Mr. Aubry was working that night too, and he must have been working yesterday, Victoria Day, because I certainly was. That Senate story wasn't "canned" copy, was it? I mean Mr. Aubry did put in a full day on the holiday Monday, didn't he?
In short, I challenge the Citizen to do some comparisons. Let's do work weeks for a start. And how about value of work done (My anti-smoking and other issues vs. Mr. Aubry's anti-Senate and other issues). And, if you would like, let's have a look at remuneration. Mr. Aubrey thinks that I'm overpaid. Let us compare who does what, and for how much.
I will accept any honest arbiter - how about Publisher Russell Mills?