Tories look to consult public on Senate choices

**ZFBoxcar** · 13 Dec 06,, 18:26

The Globe and Mail

Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants Canadians to help him decide who should sit in the Senate.

In a bill to be introduced on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Harper calls for a plebiscite on the choice of Senate candidates.

While the bill falls short of actually electing senators, it will give the prime minister a taste of public sentiment when appointing people to the upper house and Mr. Harper says it forms the next plank in his bid to make Parliament Hill more accountable.

"This way the Senate will be more accountable, more credible and more democratic," Mr. Harper old the Conservative caucus on Wednesday morning.

"After a century and-a-half, democracy will finally come to the Senate of Canada."

But Liberal leader Stéphane Dion says it is irresponsible for Mr. Harper to be pursuing an elected Senate unless it comes with other sweeping reforms.

"If they are elected, they will play the same role as MP's, which would be unfair," Mr. Dion said.

"The current distribution does penalize certain provinces, particularly western provinces, Alberta and B.C., that only have six senators at this time but they have four to five times of the population of New Brunswick or Nova Scotia where they have 10 senators.

"Many will share my view that it's not good for the province to have an elected Senate as long as we don't have a change of the number of senators per province."

Mr. Dion said the Liberals are open to the idea of limited-duration Senate appointments, because that would make it easier to appoint younger people to the Upper House.

Mr. Harper has long had an eye on redoing the 105-seat Senate and his bill to limit Senate terms to eight years is already in the works.

Under the proposed bill, voters would choose preferred candidates to represent their province or territory in the upper chamber in a special polling system run by Elections Canada.

"A democratically elected and democratic Senate may not serve the interests of the Liberal party, but it will serve the Canadian people, and their interests come first to this government," Mr. Harper said.

Mr. Harper is betting Senate reform will be a winner with voters as opposition parties openly muse about bringing down the government in the new year.

A full makeover of the powers of the Senate and the method of appointing its members would require a full-blown constitutional amendment. The new legislation allows changes without opening up a constitutional battleground.

But critics warn that he's trying to change a fundamental part of the political system without proper consultation and constitutional change. And some speculate it will lead to battles over who has more power — MPs or senators.

Liberal Senator Romeo Dallaire said he has no problem with moving toward a Republican-style Senate, but he added that if senators are to have real powers, that should be outlined with a constitutional change.

"If you're gong to start tinkering with something so fundamental with a constitutional dimension to it, then you've got to open the whole complex debate and do it properly and not fiddle on the periphery of it."

Full details of the Senate Appointments Consultations Act will be released when it is presented to parliament on Wednesday afternoon.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I fully support Harper on this one, although I hope there will eventually be a constitutional amendment on the issue so we know exactly who the new Senate will represent (and the distribution throughout the country) and what their powers will be.

**ajtigger** · 13 Dec 06,, 23:19

Dion is right.

In fact, it makes more sense to abolish the senate altogether than to elect it. It is pointless to have two elected legislative bodies. Public opinion is sufficiently reflected in the elected house of commons, and a competitive senate would merely end up duplicating it. What's the point of forcing a bill to endure the frivolities and intense debate of two houses of commons? Its unecessary additional bureaucracy.

Regardless of where you set the required qualifications for candidates of senate elections, putting it in the people's hands wil automatically turn it the senate into a competitive legislative body. The house of commons was always intended to be the body of the people, and the senate was always intended to be a chamber of "sober second thought", to ensure moderate government from the elected politicans, by further examining and amending bills passed by the House of Commons. You can't have "sober second thought" if the senate is a plebian body, reflecting the current emotions of the populace.

Currently, Canadians are perfectly content with the fact that most power lies in the fully public House of Commons, and that senate proceedings now largely ceremonial, intervening in the public's direct will only on rare occassions. We do not need an additional "regal" elected body like the American senate. We are fine with the more informal, civilian body that we have in the HOC, as it is a direct reflection of the public.

The senate should either remain a ceremonial vestige for appointed acomplished Canadians or disappear completely.

**ZFBoxcar** · 15 Dec 06,, 03:41

I see where you're coming from, but I disagree. I think there is room for an elected senate that represents the provinces the way the US senate represents states. Or senate seats could be allocated equally by region so that the West could be empowered without taking away so much power from Ontario and Quebec.

**Canmoore** · 15 Dec 06,, 22:09

The problem, is that what Harper is trying to do just cannot be done. In order to change the senate, you must change the constitution. Changing the senate without changing the constitution, is like giving a brand new paint job to a hunk of junk car...sure it looks all new and snappy on the outside, yet on the inside where it matters, its still the same old hunk of junk.

**cape_royds** · 17 Dec 06,, 02:22

I don't like the idea of an Upper House on par with the House of Commons, because the legislative branch of government is already the weakest, outweighed in practice by both the executive (Cabinet & PMO) and the judiciary.

Right now, by convention, the Upper House plays a very limited role in government.

If the Upper House were elected, even under the ad hoc system proposed by Harper, it would gain legitimacy and would be tempted to be more active in government. In effect, it would be repeatedly tempted to interfere with the Commons, to a degree never before seen.

To have a situation where you could legislative deadlock between two Houses, would just weaken the legislative branch further. Moreover, constitutional questions would inevitablty end up in the lap of the Supreme Court, who would be forced to make even more political rulings than they do now.

For a parliamentary style of government like ours, it's necessary to have one House to which the Cabinet is answerable.

We already have strong provincial representation in the powers of the provincial governments and from the system of federal/provincial conferences.

As for federal/provincial balance, Canada is already the most decentralized nation in the Western world (with the possible exception of Switzerland). Let's see: provinces control roads, schools, hospitals, lands, and natural resources. In most Canadians' everyday lives, the province is far more important than the federal government.

And don't try to tell me that the provinces can't raise enough money. I'm sick of this sob story of "fiscal imbalance." Provinces have power to tax incomes and property, they can levy sales taxes through a variety of constitutional dodges, they collect resource royalties, and they can levy almost no end of other fees and service charges. Under the constitution, the provinces have all the revenue powers they need.

If provinces don't have enough money, it's because provincial politicians don't have the courage to pay the political price to raise the revenues they need to carry out their own policies. Instead, they invariably undertake expensive programmes, and then blame Ottawa.

To get back to the main point, a triple-E type Senate is undesirable in Ottawa because the provinces have plenty of power already. So it's a bad idea to risk the reduction of the legislative branch of government, and it's also undesirable to increase provincial power.

Despite all this, I am sympathetic to the notion of increasing regional power in Canada. In my opinion, Canadian government and policy is dominated by a handful of major urban areas, and because of this, the major cities are sucking vortices of population, wealth, and power. The concentration of power in a few cities is leading to the failure to properly develop our country.

However, an increase in provincial power is not, repeat not, a way to decentralize power in Canada. More power to the provinces just means more power to a handful of cities. I don't much care about the silly tilting matches between Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary and Montreal. Each of these urban elites seeking to aggrandize itself at the expense of the rest and gratify its vanity about being a "world city." Enough!

The disease of over-centralization is far more advanced within most of the provinces, than it is in Canada as a whole.

If there is a place to empower regions and decentralize power, it would be through the reform of provincial governments, not federal. If there was a place where elected and equal Upper Houses would make some sense, it would be at the provincial level, not the federal.

Arguments in favour of effective Provincial Upper Houses:

1. Provinces control things that are highly regional and local in nature, such as roads and land use. What better things to have more regional input through a regionally-based Upper House?

2. To amend the constitution of the Federal Parliament, it takes seven provinces and 50% of the population to agree, so it's very hard to reform the Federal Parliament without causing a big crisis. On the other hand, to amend a provincial constitution, all it takes is a simple statute. It's that easy to create a fully empowered Provincial Senate.

3. If you wanted to test the viability of a triple-E senate model, wouldn't it make sense to experiment in a province first? A number of historic changes in Canada, such as Medicare, also had their start in provinces. Provinces should be the incubators of political change in Canada.

My opinions are heavily influenced by my years in Quebec and British Columbia. BC is a very regionalized province, but that reality is never reflected in policies. Instead, Victoria rams land use down everyone's throats and the province as a whole is run as nothing but a big suburb of Greater Vancouver. This has wasted much of our potential here, and I believe this is due to a defect in our own provincial constitution. It's sure as hell not Ottawa's fault!

**smilingassassin** · 17 Dec 06,, 05:53

Originally Posted by ZFBoxcar

I see where you're coming from, but I disagree. I think there is room for an elected senate that represents the provinces the way the US senate represents states. Or senate seats could be allocated equally by region so that the West could be empowered without taking away so much power from Ontario and Quebec.

I agree and IMO it gives us ordinary people some more voting freedom.
All one has to do is look at the senate's members and which PM appointed them and you'll see quite a stark pattern. As currently set up the Senate is merely a tool for the party thats in power at any particular time.

**cape_royds** · 19 Dec 06,, 21:16

But one of the current Senate's functions is to serve as a "memory bank of past governments." It can, therefore, serve to delay or modify any swerves in policy.

For example, Canadian voters were only able to have an election called over the Free Trade issue in 1988 because the Senate promised to block it.
In the late 1980's was composed mostly of Trudeau-era Liberals opposed to Free Trade. They were a "memory bank" of a long period of fairly nationalistic economic policies.

Without that "memory bank" the FTA would have been passed without voters having had a chance to express their sentiment on such a major issue. Once the 1988 election was won by the pro-Free Traders, the FTA went through--but at least the country had a good debate first.

Such "ballast" is constitutionally useful. The Senate can't pass or block money bills, nor can it block something for more than one Parliamentary session. It can, however, cause a lot of headaches if the House of Commons is trying to make radical changes in a hurry.

For example, suppose a Socialist government were ever elected to the House of Commons. Having a bunch of 1980's or 90's era neoliberals in the Senate would temper any such radicalism in the House.

**smilingassassin** · 21 Dec 06,, 11:21

Your assuming Canada's a radical country. The chances of a socialist government taking root in Canada are astronomical.

As for Canadians having more voting power in reguards to government policy thats not always a good thing, case in point Afganistan. As soon as we 100 troop deaths in Afganistan, people will be screaming bloody murder, being so used to out dated "peace keeping" type missions of a much different era.

Steming change is usually not a good thing.

**cape_royds** · 23 Dec 06,, 02:49

I was merely raising a hypothetical example of the sort of radical change that could be thwarted by our current type of Senate.

The reason I raised the example of a left-wing radicalism blocked by our Senate, is that right now many of those demanding Senate reform see the Senators as too liberal.

My point is that our current Senate, consisting as it does entirely of lifetime appointees of long-incumbent governments, is intrinsically a conservative institution, i.e. one that is skeptical of change and resistant to radical change, of whatever kind.

That's not such a bad institution to have. A lot of civil strife can get saved that way over the long run. Remember that a country's constitution must be designed to withstand extreme cases, or it will break under any real test.

**smilingassassin** · 24 Dec 06,, 02:53

Personally my preferance is that the senate be represented by equal amounts of liberal and conservative elements, that way its fair an balanced. Afterall not all "Liberal" and "Conservative" minds have the same stance on every issue.