Committees of the Parliament of Canada, and some individual senators, have conducted more than a dozen in-depth studies on “reform” of the Senate over the past couple of decades.  These have contained carefully-thought-out proposals for change, arrived at by people who, with all due respect to everybody else, have a pretty good understanding of how the Senate actually operates, as opposed to the cartoon version that is in the minds of most of us.   Each of the studies has contemplated substantive constitutional reform of the Senate.

These proposed initiatives have all been turned aside by successive governments of both stripes, who have not had the will to pursue them because constitutional change is, to put it mildly, difficult.  But without constitutional amendments there can be no real reform of the Senate or of other aspects of Parliament including the current significant disparities in representation.  The present proposals before Parliament do not, either individually or taken together, amount to the reforms we need if we want substantive change.  

The Liberal Party of Canada has for some time had a clear policy; that this kind of real change will be made by a Liberal government just as soon as the Provinces can agree among themselves at least on a beginning, and on the process of constitutional amendment that should be followed.  The agreement of the Provinces, or at least of a substantial  majority of them, is needed to make meaningful reform, because meaningful reform will require constitutional change; and constitutional change can’t happen without the concurrence of the two orders of Government – first the Provinces and then the Government of Canada.  

The proposals by the present government – one to limit the terms of senators to eight years, and another for indirect senate elections – are not real or meaningful reform, in that they do not propose to alter the Constitution in any way.  In fact, they have been painstakingly designed to avoid doing so. 

If this Prime Minister were serious about Senate reform, he would get at it; do it for real.  The present proposals are paper shams.  They are mere garnish.  Real reform needs meat and potatoes.  Real reform would address the role and powers of the Senate and the means of directly electing senators.  If we’re going to talk about electing senators, that is what is needed.  That is what many Canadians want.  That is the kind of reform that I would be able to consider supporting.

If we’re going to reform it by electing its members, the Senate needs to be re-made into an elected institution that is able in the current confederal landscape (which was not foreseen in anything like its present form by the framers of our Constitution) to actually represent the interests of the provinces, the regions, and minorities.  Without substantive constitutional reform, that redesign can’t happen.  The present government’s proposals are mere tip-toeing around the edges.  And they are poorly thought-out.

For example, under the terms of Mr. Harper’s present proposals, any Prime Minister representing any party would be able, over the course of only two Parliaments, to appoint – yes, appoint – senators to every one of the 105 Senate seats.  And to re-appoint them at the end of their first 8-year terms.  Talk about a rubber stamp!  Any semblance of the institution’s independence would be gone, because of senators’ need (if they sought re-appointment) to please their leader.  We don’t have to do that now, and sometimes we in the Senate do not please our leaders.  

And under his current proposals the Prime Minister retains the traditional role of recommending (to the Governor General) persons for appointment to the Senate. The Prime Minister would be under no legal or constitutional obligation whatever to recommend the appointment of any persons under an “indirect” election/selection process.  She/he could simply ignore the process, she/he could recommend (as is the case now) whomever she/he would like, and could decline to recommend the appointment of an indirectly-elected person who the Prime Minister of the day simply didn’t like.

I have to add that the present Prime Minister, Mr. Harper, has demonstrated very clearly that he is not bound by any mere statute, even including his own law setting out fixed election dates, so long as he can resort to the constitutional prerogatives that have existed since Confederation.  Mr. Harper has professed the point that it is simply wrong that a Prime Minister has the power to, in effect, appoint persons to the Senate.  Well then, if that is so, we’d better remove that power.  If we are going to remove that sole prerogative of the Prime Minister – any Prime Minister – then we must remove that prime ministerial prerogative from the Constitution.  The present proposals leave that prerogative securely intact and the Constitution untouched.

I’m sorry, but that’s not reform.  No thinking Canadian could possibly believe that this would or could improve the Senate.  It would in fact make the Senate far less-effective than it is now.  Maybe that’s the real intention.  The present Conservative government seems to regard Parliamentary process as an inconvenience.  They seem to forget that the government is a function of Parliament, and not the other way ‘round. 

There is a very long list of unintended consequences and of things that are absent in the present government’s proposals that are masquerading as “Senate reform” legislation.

If you would like to read some good, careful and informed thinking about Senate reform, I suggest you read a report (Number 83) by the Fraser Institute, a conservative think-tank, entitled “Challenges in Senate Reform: Conflicts of Interest, Unintended Consequences, New Possibilities”.  This report is available on the Fraser Institute’s website: www.fraserinstitute.org.

If we genuinely care about the prospect of Senate reform, I hope that Canadians will examine all sides of the question.   Most of us have not.  If we’re going to tear down the house we have now, we should be sure that the one we build in its place will be a better one.

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