Senate reform, anyone? Anyone?

CBC News Online | March 31, 2006

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John Gray has worked for a number of Canadian newspapers, including most recently more than 20 years with the Globe and Mail, where he served as Ottawa bureau chief, national editor, foreign editor, foreign correspondent and national correspondent.

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There are many ways in which Stephen Harper is profoundly radical in his political thinking, but in one area at least the new prime minister is terribly conventional. Like just about every other Canadian who has ever dabbled in politics, Harper wants to reform the Senate.

Indeed, the rookie prime minister has committed himself to having "a senatorial election set in place" no later than the next federal election – as though with his brand-new minority government he has nothing else to do with his time.

Another complicating factor is that like most of the other people who have been keen on Senate reform for the last 100 years or so, Harper does not really know what he wants to do with the dusty red chamber that has been for so long the butt of Canadian political jokes.

To listen to Harper on the subject, Senate reform would seem to be a matter of simple housekeeping: "I raised it with the premiers in general terms. We haven't set timelines, but it is something I would like to get on with sooner rather than later."

The assumption: The Senate is Ottawa's to change

The casual attitude would suggest that perhaps Harper has a bit of a blind spot about the Senate, as though he just doesn't get it.

He was not even installed as prime minister when he picked Michael Fortier to be his minister of public works and government services – naming him to the Senate because Fortier did not have a seat in the House of Commons and had not bothered even to contest the recent election.

What was particularly egregious about that appointment was that in the aftermath of the Liberal sponsorship scandal, the public works portfolio should have been the cornerstone of government accountability, one of Harper's particular concerns. But nobody can be accountable to the electorate in a non-elected Senate. Indeed, it should be remembered that Harper had been harshly critical of Liberals bestowing power on unelected cronies.

The result was that the Harper government began life under a cloud. And the Senate flap would have been worse if at the same time Harper had not coaxed David Emerson to cross the floor and sit as a Conservative minister just two weeks after he was elected as a Liberal. With Emerson to kick around, the news media almost forgot about Fortier.

As for Senate reform, it is clear enough why the existing senate is judged unacceptable. There are many admirable senators, but most are named to the Senate not because of their admirable qualities but because of past service to the prime minister of the day or his party. In Fortier's case, the service to Harper was as the Conservatives' chief election organizer in Quebec.

The Reality: The Senate being all things to all people

In theory at least the Senate was supposed to be what Sir John A. Macdonald called the chamber of sober second thought, a serene check on the dangerous democratically-elected hordes in the Commons. In addition the upper chamber would be a sounding board for regional concerns.

The immediate impulse for reform of the Senate is that it is astonishingly unrepresentative of the country. For example: Prince Edward Island's 138,000 citizens have four senators, and Ontario's 12.5 million citizens have 24. That works out to one senator for every 34,500 Islanders, and one for every 525,000 Ontarians.

In the same vein, B.C. has six senators and 4.2 million people; Newfoundland has six senators representing 517,000. So it can be agreed the Senate is not representative, but what exactly is it supposed to represent? As a sounding board for regional concerns is it meant to represent the interests of particular provinces, or of particular provincial governments?

A lot of questions, too many answers

The questions are not asked frivolously, but they are asked in the firm belief there will be little or no agreement on the answers.

Provincial premiers are generally not keen on making the Senate a more legitimate representative of provincial interests because that would diminish the legitimacy of their governments. Some premiers like the idea of provincial governments nominating senators, but that's not exactly democratic.

Federal governments are equally hesitant about changes to make the Senate more legitimate because that would diminish the power and prestige of the House of Commons. As it now stands, the Senate can delay legislation from the Commons and can initiate any legislation except money bills. But the upper chamber has been hesitant about using those powers because it has no electoral legitimacy.

A measure of the complication of changing the Senate can be found in a recent CBC interview with Roger Gibbins, president of the Canada West Foundation and one of those westerners who began pushing for Senate reform in the 1980s as a way of reducing the West's feeling of alienation.

For the full interview see Canada West Foundation website.

Gibbins insists he would still like to proceed with Senate reform, but now he wants to proceed cautiously lest the country end up with "an election format that won't serve us very well in the long run." The country has changed in significant ways, Gibbins says, since he and others began championing an elected, equal and effective upper house: "So I think it's important that before we lock ourselves into a new model, we think through the different components, and particularly through the election process."

Clever politicians of every stripe have been trying to solve the Senate question since the upper chamber was created in 1867. In modern times, from Pierre Trudeau through to the efforts of Brian Mulroney in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, everyone tried. But one man's magic was another's anathema. They all failed.

Partisans of Senate reform will be watching Stephen Harper with interest.

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