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In December, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper named 18 people for appointment to Canada's Senate, Leo Housakos, a Conservative insider since the mid-1980s, was among them. The 40-year-old Housakos is a Montreal businessman who has been involved for many years with the city's Greek community and is one of the founders of the Hellenic Board of Trade. Housakos, who was appointed by Harper last year to the board of Via Rail, resigned his seat in order to sit in the Senate. Earlier this week, he sat down for an interview with the Laval News's Martin C. Barry.
NSN: Why do you feel Prime Minister Harper chose you for the Senate?
Housakos: Probably my years of service and commitment to the party and the country. He knows I share Conservative views and values. I was also a candidate in 2000 here in Laval-les Îles with the Canadian Alliance. Furthermore, I think Mr. Harper's choice of 18 senators shows he wanted a broad representation of people from all walks of life. Native Canadians, businessmen, professors, teachers, journalists. So I probably fit one of those criteria in terms of what he was looking for to create a balance of what he wanted. I know since he's appointed me, he's asking me to be a much more active senator than a passive one. He's bestowed on me the responsibility of being responsible for Montreal. We don't have a very large bench when it comes to the Greater Montreal area with Conservatives right now. So one of the responsibilities he's given me is to be sort of the de facto member of parliament for the Greater Montreal region, to serve as a sounding board for the interests of people in this region back to national caucus in the government. And also the fact of the matter is Newfoundland right now and Montreal are probably the two toughest regions in the country for the Conservative Party and he's asked me to try to turn that around … I think right now our last polling numbers in Quebec were good. We were at 32 per cent compared to the Bloc's 35 or 36. We've elected in two successive elections now 10 MPs and our vote has been going up in the Quebec City area. Beauce, Bas St. Laurent are some areas of the province where we're growing. So I think Montreal has proven to be the biggest challenge right now in the country. That's definitely one of the challenges the prime minister has put on my plate.
NSN: Does that mean the Conservatives consider Montreal to be its biggest challenge in all of Canada?
Housakos: That and Newfoundland are the two most challenging regions in the country.
NSN: Do they actually compare population-wise, all of Newfoundland and the Montreal region?
Housakos: No. There's a lot more in Montreal. In the Montreal region, you're talking about maybe a million-and-a-half to two million people. The South Shore, North Shore, Laval and Montreal. Newfoundland, I guess, wish they had that.
NSN: There have been reports of Prime Minister Harper wanting to reform the Senate, while others now say he is going to appoint more Conservatives to eventually match the number of Liberals who now sit in the Senate. What's your take on it?
Housakos: The Conservative Party has been and will continue to be committed to Senate reform. I am one of those. I have been a proponent of Senate reform since the days when I ran for the Canadian Alliance in this riding. I think we have to make the Senate more modern, more dynamic, more responsive to the needs of the 21st century. So I'm in favour of an elected, an effective and an equal Senate. I think it's important. I think there should be terms that will apply to senators. It's a part of our legislative process that is important. It's been part of our parliamentary system since 1867 and it sure has an important role in terms of being a place of sober second thought for amending legislation and helping improve upon what comes from the House of Commons. Having said that, it is viewed as somewhat archaic in terms of the procedural aspect of the Senate and, yes, Mr. Harper is in favour of Senate reform. I am, I know my colleagues who were named to the Senate are, and there will be legislation tabled in the new parliament to that regard. We hope that Liberals and NDPers will come on board and support us.
NSN: But does Mr. Harper intend to appoint more Conservatives?
Housakos: Oh, I think as long as he's prime minister of Canada and the Senate is there and there are openings, he will definitely have like-minded individuals like ourselves who believe in the sort of things that we believe in, including Senate reform, who will be named. If you want to pass a strong reform on an important part of government like the Senate, for example, you have to have control of the Senate. We've had difficulty in the past getting legislation through. It was give-and-take with the Liberal opposition. They're against Senate reform. So if we're going to see some of these things happen, we definitely need more Conservatives in the Senate.
NSN: Is is possible the number of Conservative senators could eventually reach the number of Liberals?
Housakos: It is possible that with the number of vacancies coming up next year that we might, if the government survives by the end of next year, have a one-seat majority in the Senate by the end of 2010.
NSN: Many Canadians have a perception of the Senate as a rather stodgy place and they question the amount of work that actually takes place there. What are your thoughts?
Housakos: I've been at it a week and the Senate hasn't started sitting yet and I've never worked harder than I have in the past week. I think the Senate has done itself a little bit of a disservice due to the fact that it's not an elected body. Senators do a lot of good legislative work. They don't feel the need that they have to do PR, and I think that that's due to the fact that they're not elected and they don't feel that they have to answer to a specific constituent.
NSN: In the early 1980s when you were a young volunteer in the youth wing of the Progressive Conservative Party, most other young people were supporting the Liberals. What made you choose the Conservatives at that time?
Housakos: I don't remember the defining moment in my life, but I always viewed myself as a small 'c' conservative. I believed this country needs an economy that's dynamic. I always believed in smaller government rather than more government. I always believed in more liberty rather than less liberty. The Conservative Party always corresponded more to what I valued as a Canadian, and less government meant less interference in the economy. Free market economics was always something I believed in thoroughly and that was probably one of the things that attracted me to the Conservative Party. And also in the mid-1980s, there was a huge wave of Conservatism after the recession we had in the early 80s, when the Liberal Party had mismanaged the finances of the country. We had huge deficits and the economy was just in disarray. There was a natural inclination for me to say we needed a change, we needed a more dynamic economy to gravitate towards the Conservative Party, which subsequently led to a huge majority in 1984 …
NSN: In 1993, the Progressive Conservative Party was left with an interim leader, Jean Charest, and two MPs. Most of its followers at that time abandoned ship, but you stayed on.
Housakos: I did stay on. I walked the lonely walk in the desert with Mr. Charest and the few Conservatives left in Quebec, in terms of fundraising for the party and organizing. I worked very hard in the 1997 election supporting the Progressive Conservative Party and its candidates in the Montreal region, again due to the principles that I believe in … I felt that free trade and the GST and some of the things that the government did prior to 1993 were good things for the country. And, of course, they withstood the test of time …. 1993 to 2003 were 10 difficult years, when the Liberals were in power, and being a Conservative was not in style at the time, so definitely it challenged one's commitment to the cause and to the party to the highest degree.
NSN: There was a lot of controversy leading up to the Conservative defeat in the early 1990s. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney took a lot of blame and there were a number of scandals that occurred. Have you had any second thoughts in view of this unraveling of the Conservatives' fortunes?
Housakos: I did, and I think that the purge of the Conservatives from Ottawa for a decade to some degree we can take some responsibility for it. When I say we, I mean those who were in the government at the time. I was just a rank-and-file member. Having said that, integrity is of the utmost importance and I think there was a questioning of the level of integrity that the party had leading up to the meltdown in 93, as there was deep questioning of Liberal integrity in the meltdown leading up to 2006 with the sponsorship scandal. So definitely it brought into question a lot of things for me at the time and I think the public responded to that. That decade-and-a-half of political experience just reinforces today, actually, why it's so important to have someone at the helm who does have transparency and integrity, and that cannot be questioned in Mr. Stephen Harper.
NSN: As the Conservative government's representative for the Montreal region, can you perhaps name a couple of big issues affecting our territory. Infrastructure investment, for instance, is currently one of the government's big concerns. What major projects of that sort are coming our way?
Housakos: Infrastructure right now is a priority for this government. We're going to see more of it. I believe in the stimulus package that's going to come out in the budget at the end of the month. I think it'll be a central focus point. I think, for Montreal, a key element that I really want to focus on is development more than anything else. Montreal, which is the heart of economic development for this province, has just not seen the type of economic development in over two decades. And I think provincial, municipal and federal governments have to do more in that regard. So I will try to be a spokesman on this for more investment and more development in Montreal. You look at, for example, the Port of Montreal, which is just a huge of strip of land. It's waste land. It's undeveloped. It could be the gateway to the Atlantic and to the northeastern United States and we haven't developed it fully. Another thing that I want to focus on that is a personal project of mine is high-speed rail. Having served on the board of Via Rail, it is something that I hold very dear and important for a number of elements. I think that if we develop a high-speed railway starting with the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, it'll give us not only infrastructure jobs definitely that will help stimulate the economy during a difficult period in the next half-decade if not a decade, but it will also serve in solving some environmental issues. It will put Canadians and Quebecers and Montrealers to work. It will change, I think, our lifestyle and it's inevitable. As the urban centres become more congested, we're going to have to start becoming more aware of the fact that we're going to be living in rural and suburban parts of Montreal. But there still has to be a way to get people in and out of the city and do it in an environmental, friendly quick manner, so that the City of Montreal can maintain its anchor as the economic engine, while recognizing that as the population grows you can't necessarily have everybody living one on top of the other on the island of Montreal.
NSN: Will we be hearing more about the high-speed rail link from the Conservative government?
Housakos: There have been some announcements in favour of it by all levels. We heard as recently as a few months ago at a first ministers conference with the premier of Quebec and the premier of Ontario that they all agreed it's a great thing, and federal minister Lawrence Cannon also said it's a great thing. Well, I vow to really keep the issue on the front burner. I will bring it up with our new Minister of Transport, Mr. Baird. I will have discussions with the ministry. I will continue to encourage the provincial governments, both in Ontario and Quebec, and the mayor of Montreal, to jump on this, which I think is essential, and including the mayor of Laval and the mayor of the South Shore. I think this is an opportunity to link not only Montreal with Ottawa and Windsor and Quebec, but it's an opportunity to link Laval and the South Shore with Ottawa and Toronto and Windsor and the rest of the country.
NSN: There's been talk lately of a high-speed rail northern route. What do you think of that?
Housakos: I think we have to start with the Quebec City/Windsor corridor. It's the busiest, it's the most profitable for Via Rail right now. It is the area where we haul the largest number of people and you would have the biggest impact on the largest number of communities. I think quickly after that we should put it up to the north and out to the west and really we have to not forget that Canada was built by communications and transportation and this is another possibility of a great project that would be similar and have the same positive impact as the great railway project did at the turn of the 20th century.
NSN: What is your view on the conflict that is currently underway in Israel and in Gaza?
Housakos: I support one hundred per cent the position of the current government, which is an immediate ceasefire. My view, and again I share that of the government, is that the State of Israel is an independent democratic state. Hamas is a terrorist organization. It's on the list of recognized terrorist organizations in Canada, the United States and many other western industrialized countries. I think it's important to point out that when you have a terrorist organization launching rocket missiles into the boundaries of an independent free state, like in this case of Israel, you can only expect that the country will retaliate and defend itself.
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