by Patrick Baud
Associate Director of Research,
University of Toronto Model Parliament
There are eight vacancies in the Senate; there will be four more by year’s end. If last December’s appointments to the red chamber are any indication, Harper will likely pick prominent Canadians who will tow the party line when it counts. Gone are the days when the Prime Minister could think of choosing a partisan member of an opposition party, as Paul Martin did when he appointed prominent Progressive Conservative Hugh Segal in 2005. Suggestions that Harper might appoint a Liberal equivalent to Segal, such as key Ignatieff strategist Warren Kinsella, are bunk. Instead of shaking our heads at the shortsighted partisanship at play here, those interested in the future of Parliament should give some thought about how we might revitalize the Senate to harness its tremendous capacity to do good work, while keeping it from being a plum patronage appointment.
Populists, both conservative and progressive, have suggested that electing Senators or allowing provincial legislatures to nominate them, would make the Senate more democratic. While this would allow the Senate to more fully take on its intended role to represent ethnocultural, linguistic, regional and linguistic “sectional interests” in the words of Sir John A. MacDonald, it would have some negative unintended consequences. The Senate would quite likely become more partisan and unless the balance of power were strictly defined through constitutional reform, conflicts between the House of Commons and the Senate would bog down the legislative process as in the United States.
Instead, it might be possible for the Senate to better represent “sectional interests” without introducing complex appointment or electoral formulas. Instead of lambasting Senators for being lazy or taking advantage of Canadians, we should ask more of our Senators. They have the time and expertise to do the research that MPs cannot because their budgets are too small and list of responsibilities too broad. They can scrutinize legislation proposed in the Commons and ensure that it is constitutional and in the public interest.
Senators ought to become more prominent in Canadian public life because they can bring a voice of experience and reason to the impassioned debates that shape our country. To do so, they must have public respect and legitimacy among politicians that fellows of the Royal Society or members of the Order of Canada have among their peers. Moreover, the public ought to regard these distinguished men and women not as a Canadian aristocracy, but as a great national resource, a repository of wisdom on Canadian public life.
While they may differ on policy questions, they should be unified in their faith in what Canada can be. They should have additional responsibilities to keep the government responsible to its election promises and to ensure the constitutionality of legislation. They should carefully examine and reflect upon the reports of the officers of Parliament and have the power to request further inquiries on matters of concern to them.
Such changes will not be easy, nor will they be popular with those who have a vested interest in keeping the Senate the way it is. Those who oppose any reform will soon find their position to be untenable as more parties and pundits come to realize that the Senate is meaningless unless it can effectively fulfill its role.
There are currently four independent or non-aligned Senators. While their influence on Senate business may not be significant, they play an interesting role since they are free from being whipped into voting the party line since they have none. In Britain, there are over two hundred independent (or “crossbench”) members of the House of Lords and fourteen non-aligned members. These members, most of whom are life peers (the British equivalent of Senators, appointed by Queen on advice of the Prime Minister), play an important role in advancing debate on issues that are not in the field of vision of any political party. They are also prominent in many Lords committees.
So valued are crossbenchers in Britain that in a paper published in June under the auspices of the British think tank Demos’ project on Progressive Conservatism, Jonty Olliff-Cooper argues for the creation of “Commons’ Senators” to “create a strong independent voice in the primary chamber of Parliament, rather than relegating that function solely to the Lords”.
The principal difference between the Senate and the British House of Lords is in size (there is one lord for every 83,000 Britons for a total of 740, one Senator for every 320,000 Canadians for a total of 105) and composition (the Lords includes many ex officio members drawn from the Church of England and British nobility). That said, some Senators have recently suggested that removing political parties from the Senate would make it easier for it to conduct its work.
How such a proposal would be implemented is unclear, but it would be a uniquely Canadian solution to how upper houses function. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut already have nonpartisan legislatures. If we want our Senators to do their best, we ought to consider the idea carefully.
[...] article was republished, under the same title, with a few changes on August 5 on the University of Toronto [...]
I certainly agree with the author’s assertion that Senate reform should be considered carefully. Yet I feel the argument advanced in this article, being somewhat cautious and palatable, leaves very little to consider.
In my mind, partisanship in the upper house is secondary to questions of appointment and composition. Granted, the current Senate may be somewhat hindered by party solidarity. But what practical purpose does the house serve in the legislative process, beyond a sobered second opinion and a rubber stamp? A system of institutional patronage may seem acceptable in a house which has but a diluted role in law-making. Yet if Canadians were to redesign the body to give it more effect, I think a reconsideration of the aforementioned would be warranted.
In my view, Senate reform presents an opportunity to remediate the biggest issue in Canadian governance – the electoral formula. The present system in the Commons tends to exaggerate Canada’s regional differences. Ontario, a province with over a third of the population, is underrepresented, creating debates over the fairness of government policies such as EI (see http://www.fairness.ca.) In turn, other provinces project their interests on the federal agenda disproportionally.
Instituting an alternate formula is a difficult question. After all, in my shamelessly Liberal opinion, some parties are unfit to rule, and it is necessary to avoid the chaos affected by party coalitions. But some sort of change is required.
So my proposition, which I feel in some ways precedes the one advanced in this article, is to entirely reform the appointment and composition of the Senate, coupled with a reconstitution of the federal electoral formula. If the Senate were representative of provincial interests through a direct vote, with a fixed number of senators per province, Canadian governance would balance the interests of provinces in the Senate with citizens in the Commons.
Such a system would be more a reflection of republicanism to the South – the intricacy of party politics, the rise of interest groups and PACs, and of course lobbyists. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a very “Canadian” arrangement – but at least it would make for better reading.
Despite the potential negative consequences, I think it would be to engineer Senate elections in such a way that it can fulfill its special role as an upper house. Nonpartisan and elected Senators would make excellent representatives of provincial and territorial interests. My proposal is modest, but I don’t see yours and mine to be contradictory, but complementary.