Ontarians haven?t had many senators they can be proud of and the tradition is in no danger of ending.
The latest to join the federal house of sober second thought, with a salary of $119,300 and generous expenses, is Hugh Segal, a longtime Progressive Conservative back room worker in Ontario and later federal politics.
Segal has caused chuckles with the reminder he once irreverently called a Senate job a ?taskless thanks,? a reward requiring little work.
He tried twice to win a seat in Parliament, but was rejected by voters, who often are perceptive enough to be wary of those who manipulate from back rooms.
Other back roomers they rebuffed in Toronto included Dalton Camp, whose varied activities included speech writing for former Tory premier William Davis, and Jim Coutts, chief aide to former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
Segal left Queen?s Park and worked in the business of helping those who could afford him obtain the ear of government, not the most public-spirited of professions.
Segal wrote the fanciful, so-called Charter for Ontario, in which Davis tried to win back a majority in 1977 by promising to balance the budget in four years, but failed in both.
Segal ran for leader of the federal Conservatives in the late 1990s, but they also rebuffed him, partly because they could not believe him.
He had been in a Davis government noted for spending freely, but the public changed to wanting tax cuts. Segal jumped on the bandwagon proclaiming he was avid for cuts and a solid right-winger on finance.
Segal also wanted government more open and less secretive in decision-making, but he had been in a Davis clique that made almost all decisions in backrooms and it did not ring true.
Segal has tried to make his appointment sound deserved by pointing out it was made by a Liberal prime minister, but governments appoint rivals occasionally to deflect criticisms they select too many of their own.
Federal governments have a knack of appointing unworthy Ontarians. Andrew Thompson, who had been Ontario Liberal leader for two years, was absent from the Senate so often in the 1990s, police almost sent out a missing person report. A reporter eventually located him sunbathing outside his home in Mexico.
Norman Atkins got in the Senate after he ran election campaigns for both Davis and Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney and his advertising firm collected government contracts from both.
Trevor Eyton, a Conservative businessman appointed after he advised the province on funding the Toronto Skydome, which it had to sell at a huge loss, has recently been called the Senate?s ?truancy king? because he attends rarely and may face huge fines.
Ontarians who deserved and would have been more use in the Senate have included, from politics, former Liberal leader Bob Nixon, called the best premier Ontario never had, who was passionate about the legislative process and would have loved a Senate post.
Former Tory premier Frank Miller, who died five years ago and had right-wing ideas that Mike Harris developed to win an election and were worth debating, said he would have leaped at a Senate seat.
Ernie Eves, the Conservative premier defeated in 2003, was admired enough he was elected eight times in two different ridings and almost begged to continue in some public post, but was passed over.
The deserving outside politics include Nobel Prize winner John Polanyi, who once offered his considerable services to the Ontario government, but Harris as premier did not call him back.
But this does not surprise ? politicians are less interested in obtaining the best people than promoting their political agendas.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen?s Park press gallery.
