{"id":62834,"date":"2017-01-11T19:34:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T19:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/you-can-be-partisan-in-the-senate.html"},"modified":"2017-01-11T19:34:14","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T19:34:14","slug":"you-can-be-partisan-in-the-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/you-can-be-partisan-in-the-senate.html","title":{"rendered":"You can be partisan in the Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate is tightening rules on how Senators use the Red Chamber for personal videos and photography, after a Conservative senator posted online a partisan video filmed in the chamber before Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FpzR4tuuUbM\">the 65-second video posted to YouTube<\/a>, Saskatchewan Senator Denise Batters accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s office of trying to eliminate opposition in the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>Standing on the opposition side of the chamber and speaking directly into the camera, Batters says in the video she was concerned that Senator Peter Harder, the government&#8217;s representative in the Senate, wants to do away with an organized official opposition.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is Canada, a free, democratic country. We must not allow the Trudeau government to destroy the opposition in a democratic chamber of Parliament, emptying these opposition benches forever,&#8221; Batters says, gesturing to the empty chairs behind her.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/senator-denise-batters-senate-video-partisan-1.3907863\">Senator accuses Trudeau of trying to &#8216;destroy&#8217; opposition in the Senate<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In a statement to CBC News this week, a spokeswoman for the office of Senate Speaker George Furey said all future requests to reserve the Senate Chamber &#8220;will require a detailed description when submitted to the Office of the Usher of the Black Rod.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Usher of the Black Rod is the senior official who oversees protocol for the Parliament of Canada.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Requests from senators to film or photograph will be vetted to ensure that the content produced in the Chamber is not used for partisan messaging,&#8221; the spokeswoman added.<\/p>\n<h2>Cameras rarely allowed in Senate &#8211; for now<\/h2>\n<p>When asked in December about filming a partisan message inside the Senate chamber, Batters said in a statement, &#8220;The Senate is a partisan, political institution. I have previously made exactly these same comments during debate and in question period in the Senate chamber.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Later, a spokeswoman for Batters said that while arranging for the video to be shot in the chamber, &#8220;no one asked the topic of Senator Batters&#8217; video, nor was the information offered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Filming in the Senate is currently strictly controlled by the Speaker, and the chamber remains off-limits to all cameras while in session. Debates can only be heard through an audio <a href=\"http:\/\/senparlvu.parl.gc.ca\/\"><span>webcast<\/span> on a parliamentary <span>website<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But the Senate is expected to open the upper chamber to television cameras when it moves in the coming months to a temporary location to allow for decade-long renovations to Parliament Hill&#8217;s Centre Block.<\/p>\n<p>The temporary location, in Ottawa&#8217;s former train station, is being designed to allow for live broadcasting of the Senate&#8217;s proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate is tightening rules on how Senators use the Red Chamber for personal videos and photography, after a Conservative senator posted online a partisan video filmed in the chamber before Christmas. In the 65-second video posted to YouTube, Saskatchewan Senator Denise Batters accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s office of trying to eliminate opposition in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-62834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}