Hello, Roy here. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to the Roy Green Show ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. Well, it seems that our Senate, since 2014-15, needs a lot more money to do its work. That's the word work.
The Senate cost taxpayers $85.4 million in 2014-15, and adjusted to $2019 for inflation, that's $90 million. And for this year, or 2019-2020, they have allocated themselves $114 million, which is a 33.4% increase in just five years' time. And I know that makes absolute sense, but my next guest, Aaron Roderick, who's the Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we get our money's worth, Aaron. Well, I'd argue, Roy, really what we're paying for, with $114 million, is a very, very expensive rubber stamp.
I mean, as you say, you point out this chamber, they have no democratic legitimacy whatsoever, they have no more right to pass laws than you or I do, and yet they get to sit in this chamber, they get a six-figure salary, sometimes for 20 or 30 years, and as you just pointed out, for some reason, after Justin Trudeau introduced his reform, quote-unquote, we see that the cost of the Senate has jumped by a third, and they're spending it on things like travel, they're spending it on hiring more staff, more bureaucrats in the Senate, so no, I do not think they're getting good thanks to the budget. And they also have something called, and this is new, Canadian Senators Groups. And in far I understand, that's when a group of Senators gets together and declares itself a group, and then they're entitled to up to, I guess, half a million dollars a year in funding in order to hire the assistance they require for the group, they hire more staff, and they hire a secretariat. I don't even know what a secretariat was.
I thought a secretariat was a resource. Do you know what a secretariat is? Yeah, it's just a form of bureaucracy inside the Senate. I mean, the one in the short of it, Roy, is the Senators that are in there right now are just rearranging themselves into different groupings in order to maximize the amount of funding that they're eligible for.
So they can form little groups. It's just like caucuses and House of Commons, right? You have more money. So they're just rearranging themselves into these little groupings in order to maximize the amount of taxpayer money they can get.
So I think it's pretty outrageous. The worst part of this whole CDC ex-Rosé Roy is that they don't even want anything bothering to answer questions. When CDC asks them, how do you justify this? They just basically told them to go quiet tight.
I mean, that's how unconcerned these people are about what the public thinks. So when you think about it, why would they be? It's not as if we can vote them out. These people are there until they're 75, whatever you like.
Conservative Senator Denise Batters has said, and she sent me a tweet, direct message recently on this, that she and her conservative senators have been trying to hold the line on spending, quote, end quote, but they're accused of being micro-managers, and the so-called independent senators, who really is, make up the Liberal caucus, don't want any of that to go forward. And really, we don't have any recourse, do we, is? As citizens, we can't unelect them, we can't unappoint them. They're there.
No, you're right. It's mentally frustrating. I mean, at least we saw temporarily after this whole Mike Duffy scandal, there was, I think, quite a bit of effort in the Senate to at least be more transparent because they knew that the public was fed up. Yeah, but you knew that wasn't going to last.
Well, and this is the problem. There is no recourse. The best way I put it to people is this, Roy. If the Canadian politics was a human body, the Senate would be an appendix.
It is just there. It doesn't do anything. People don't really notice it unless it starts to cause you pain. And they are a rubber stamp.
They are an anachronism. They already get rid of them. So, you know, for the time being, they're there. But at the very least, Roy, they could not rub in our face wasting millions of dollars on doing not very much.
So I sent out an email to a friend of mine this morning about this, and we've been exchanging some conversation over the last few days, including on Don Cherry. He attacked me by phone a couple of days ago because I hadn't said anything about Don or written anything about Mr. Cherry. And what's wrong with you, Green?
He's a friend of yours. I had to talk about it. And we will next hour. I'll play back that particular interview that I recorded with Don Cherry yesterday.
But what I sent to him was, as far as the Senate is concerned, when we got around to conversing about them, I sent them like a big skin tag. Yeah, we got no kidding. Really, they are. It's like a look at it.
It's there. And how do I do with it? Do I do what people say? Let's tie a little bit of a thread around it and pull?
No, maybe not. That might be good. But they're there. And then what really bothers me so much, Aaron, is that they rubber stamp.
Depending on which party is governing, then the Senate side on that party will rubber stamp, usually, what the sitting government wants because they're part of the caucus. So they'll rubber stamp it. But then what happens? The other side challenges the legislation.
And where does it go? It goes to another group of appointed people, and that's the judiciary in Canada, which then quite often overrules what the elected and the appointed members of the government have done. The whole thing needs to be tuned up. No, you're right.
It's a question of legitimacy, right? I mean, the Senate, I think it's hard to get rid of. But I'm so astonished in this day and age. I mean, no other country, if they were developing a political system, would say, hey, let's have a group of people who are not accountable to anyone with the power to shoot down legislation.
And make no mistake, I don't think they should. I think they should not stand in the way of what the elected House wants. And I say that, Roy, whether I like the bills coming out of the House or not. It's a lot of people who are elected.
You know, you point about the courts. Courts are supposed to interpret the law. They're not supposed to make laws. And when courts rule in a way, that make laws, that is them.
And Aaron, that happens all the time. You're right, it does, and it shouldn't. But that's supposed to be their role. It's not supposed to make law.
And that's where people get that up. That's where we hear the term judicial activism. Judges playing the role of MPs. If they want to make law, they should run for office and make it do with them.
Here's a line from that story. The government representative in the upper house, Peter Harder, and his two legislative lieutenants, I didn't know they had two legislative lieutenants, but apparently he does, also have a budget of $1.62 million a year to help them guide government legislation through the Senate. So I ask myself, okay, here's Senator Harder, who I'm more than happy to talk to, to call in, and his two legislative lieutenants. They get a budget of $1.62 million a year to help them guide government legislation through the Senate.
Aaron, correct me if I'm wrong, but this has been going on for a long time. How much help do you need to guide legislation through the Senate by now? Isn't that just a practice art? Doesn't that come sort of second nature?
Isn't that as natural as reaching for a coffee first thing in the morning? Well, it shouldn't require the amount of resources they're putting in. $1.62 million. And remember, they should not be touching these bills.
They should not be making... Again, that's the problem we elect those people. Well, they have to answer to us. The Senate has no business tinkering with those bills, and so I don't know what they're spending the million dollars on.
It really, as I said, it should be a rubber stamp, send it back, and then the House can get on with it. But I have a million dollars. How is that? It's $1.62 million.
How is that money spent? Where does it go? Let's not count on this. Yeah, in many cases, a lot of part of the problem here is they refuse to account for it, but we understand that part of it is they're traveling more.
So they're traveling across the country. It's Canadian. Again, I don't know why they need to do that, because no matter what they hear, they should not be hoarding the will of the House. They're spending on research.
Again, I don't understand why they're doing this. So they seem to be spending money to give the impression that they're doing more, when really they shouldn't be doing more in the first place. And even if they are, I don't know if it should take a million dollars to do it. No, I mean, the office budgets were $185,400.
They're now $222,450 a year. They've increased by $37,000. For a lot of people in this country, a family of four, after taxes, lives on less than that for 12 months. Oh, no kidding.
And for the cost of this institution, they'll leave by a third in just five years. I mean, can you imagine most Canadians getting that kind of increase in their income in a five-year span? Aaron, thank you for the time. I was going to talk to you.
Take care. Aaron Woodrick is the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. If you want to hear more, subscribe to The Roy Green Show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorites. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review and tell a friend.
I'm Roy Green. Have a great weekend. Puck drops, tip-offs, first pitches, kick-offs. When the game is on, you call the shots.
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