Twist of Fate

Irony comes to mind when chatting with Senator Stephen Greene about his recent appointment to the Canadian Senate. Greene, a card-carrying Reform Party member (now a Conservative Party of Canada member) spent years rallying for an elected Senate. When he got the call from Prime Minister Stephen Harper in December 2008 with the offer of a Senate appointment, the two long-time acquaintances had a bit of a chuckle over the irony of the situation.

Greene, the executive director of the Insurance Brokers Association of Nova Scotia (IBANS) between 1999 and 2007, believes that whether he’s in the Senate for a long time or a short time — pending reforms — he sees the position as “an amazing opportunity to do something important for one’s country.”

When Greene signed on to the Reform Party “a long, long time ago,” he never imagined, “not for one minute” that he would ever be appointed to the Senate, he says from his Halifax home.

“When you have a Prime Minister coming from the exact same political tradition, the odds of this happening are so remote it’s unbelievable.”

When Prime Minister Harper called Greene, he said: “Now, I know that I’m the last prime minister that you ever would have expected to offer you a senate seat, and I know that you’re the last person to ever be expected to be offered one,” Greene recalls, with a chuckle.

“It was kind of an amazing discussion. I was amazed, but I was happy to say yes.”

BANK ACT BATTLE

Greene has a diverse background. He has lived in various locations across the country and has worked in a number of different sectors, all of which give him a broad perspective that he brings to his new role. A Montreal native, he attended high school in southern Ontario, completed his undergraduate degree at McGill University (back in his hometown of Montreal) and obtained a Masters degree at Dalhousie in Halifax. He moved around a bit after school, with stints south of the border in Washington and Boston, but he always returned back to the East Coast. Nova Scotia adopted him, and he adopted it as his home, he says.

Over the years, he has worked in private organizations, professional associations and for provincial and federal governments. His career path is peppered with political experience. He served as Preston Manning’s chief of staff from 1993-97. Most recently, before accepting the senate position, he was the principal secretary and deputy chief of staff to Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald.

Prior to joining IBANS in 1999, Greene worked for a large private seafood company in Halifax as a lobbyist. This experience helped him to land the position as executive director of the provincial broker association — an organization that is no stranger to highly politicized issues.

Sure enough, the association put Greene’s ability to step up on a soapbox and sway politicians to good use. During his tenure at the helm of IBANS, Greene was extremely vocal in the Bank Act reforms, which ended with banks being told they are not allowed to retail insurance from within their branches.

“I got involved in the Bank Act reforms very, very much,” he says. “I was on a number of national broker committees and had an opportunity to meet with members of parliament, et cetera, and wrote a great many position papers on behalf of the industry.”

A VOICE ON THE HILL

The position the brokers took on the Bank Act created a firm foundation for them to weather the current economic turmoil, Greene suggests. “I think the position that the broker associations took with keeping the banks out of the insurance industry and to maintain the division between insurance and banking was a very important move, because it’s now proven through our experience in the past six or eight months that the regulations around financial services are very important,” he says.

“You can’t have different parts of the financial services industry mucking around in other parts or else you’re going to get chaos.”

The United States has allowed the intermingling of the insurance and banking sectors, and the result is a recession that Greene anticipates will be around for a very long time. This recession has quite a significant impact on Canadian brokers, he continues.

“On the one hand, I think their position as brokers is protected now,” he says. “I don’t think the banks — even if they want to, and even if they mount the most amazing lobby we’ve ever seen — will ever receive the government’s approval to allow them into the industry.”

At the same time, Greene notes, “buying insurance through a broker, although it’s the best way to buy it, also tends to be the most expensive way to buy it. And that poses some difficulty during a time when consumers are so focused on their bottom lines.”

Should the banks launch another formal lobby to retail insurance through their banking branches, Greene assures the independent broker channel that, as a senator, his experience with the insurance industry will most definitely influence his future involvement in the Senate.

To date, however, Greene has yet to identify a specific cause to champion as a senator. He notes a key difference between senators and MPs is the “tremendous amount of independence” that senators enjoy.

“They can launch investigations and develop a cause and so on,” he says, pointing to the example of Senator Michael Kirby, who during his tenure championed mental health issues and now sits as chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to bring everything that you’ve ever been a part of to bear on issues of the day,” he says.

Greene says he’s been lucky enough to be selected to sit on the banking, trade and commerce committee, the same committee responsible for insurance issues.

“One way of looking at it is that brokers will now have a voice in the Senate,” he says.

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“Now, I know that I’m the last prime minister that you ever would have expected to offer you a Senate seat, and I know that you’re the last person to ever be expected to be offered one.”