A house divided
Elected senators are a 21st century no-brainer
By Bruce M. Hicks
Photography by Reuters: Chris Wattie
The federal general election has just returned a new Parliament. But the only thing "new" about this Parliament is the lower chamber; all the Senators are the same.
Had Stephen Harper been able to convince the last Parliament to pass two pieces of legislation aimed at reforming the Senate, this election would also have seen one-quarter of the Senators elected, with eight-year mandates. Another quarter would be elected in the following election.
This doesn't seem like the most unusual or unreasonable proposal. After all, south of the border, simultaneously with our election, all of the members of the House of Representatives and one-third of their Senate have been out asking the people for a mandate.
Electing representatives to a legislature in the 21st Century seems like a no-brainer. So why was this change not adopted? For that matter, why did it not get the support of even long-time advocates of Senate elections such as myself?
My objection lay in the fact that the government has been attempting to do by stealth that which it is prohibited from doing by the Constitution, namely, holding Senate elections without the agreement of the provinces.
Senate reform is one of those issues which divides each of the political parties and the levels of government.
The two social "democratic" parties in the Canadian parliament — the NDP and the Bloc — both oppose any measure which would introduce democracy to this chamber.
The NDP supports abolition. Abolition would let the political party which has a majority in the Commons, which the NDP has never had and, in spite of Jack Layton's ambitious goal throughout the recent election campaign, is not likely to get anytime soon, govern unfettered by Parliament. The logic of this position is unfathomable, particularly with a "united" and more ideological right now forming governments.
The Bloc wants the Senate to remain an appointed body, though it feels that the Quebec government should be in charge of the appointments for its province. Uniquely giving the Quebec government direct representation in Parliament would severely weaken the already decentralized federation.
The party championing not just election, but proportional representation is the Conservative Party. PR is normally favoured by political parties of the left in other countries.
Ironically, the Conservatives' ideas come from Australia, where a Labour government rammed through this change to its Senate as it left office so as to ensure that right wing governments in the future would not be able to govern without opposition.
The form of PR advocated by Harper — single transferable voting — is specifically designed to weaken the hold political parties have over candidates and thus increase opposition to the government. As the Conservative Party now has aspirations of being elected as Government repeatedly, and not occasionally, this Senate reform plan may or may not stay front and centre of their political agenda. An effective Senate is attractive when you are a small Western protest party, but not when you are actually the government.
The fact that Senate reform has the potential to hamstring future federal governments explains the mass of contradictions in the Liberal Party's positions. It was the Liberals who first identified the Senate as being in need of reform and it was Pierre Trudeau, a prime minister accused of being a centrist, who opened the Senate can of worms by offering this chamber up as a possible future "House of the Federation," to give provinces a voice at the federal level. It was the Liberal Party which first proposed abolition and it was this party which first proposed election. But after decades of using this chamber to reward the party faithful, who then thwart the dismantling of social programs by subsequent Conservative governments, it is this party which now seems the least committed to change.
Canada needs a bicameral federal legislature, just as it needs strong provincial governments. Each are designed to check government and to protect the bilingual, sectional and regional distinctiveness of Canada. So these institutions should not be altered without some level of federal-provincial agreement.
Get the provinces to sit down and agree to the distribution of Senate seats and everything else, including election, will fall into place. That is what happened at Confederation in 1867, and that is what is required today.
With the federal government unwilling to meet the provinces and tackle this issue head-on, it seems unlikely that Canadians will be voting for Senators anytime soon — nor should they.
