Hon. Joan Fraser:

Honourable senators, I would like to thank Senator Cowan for launching this inquiry. Lord knows we have all spent a great deal of our time thinking about questions involving parliamentary reform; perhaps more about Senate reform, but Senator Cowan's point is vital, that we should think about the whole system.

We talk a lot about reform of the Senate, and we all have our own notions of how this place could be reformed in ways large and small. We all have our own views about the term that would be appropriate for senators, about the way in which senators should be appointed. One of my own areas where I would like to see work done is a way in which we could improve our regional role, our duty to represent regions within the Parliament of Canada.

I want to speak today because I want to utter a bit of a plea that when we talk about reform of the Senate, we bear in mind that the Senate is one part of an immensely complex and delicate mechanism. Honourable senators, any changes made to one part of this complex and delicate mechanism, no matter how simple and desirable they may appear on the face of matters, may have dramatic implications for the other parts of the mechanism and for the functioning of the whole.

In talking about what should be done to reform the Senate, I have always actually preferred the words to "modernize" or "improve" the Senate because "reform" sounds as if we are in an absolutely dreadful place, a pigsty that needs to be cleaned out. In fact, I think this is a wonderful institution. It can use some positive change, but I would rather avoid the word "reform."

Honourable senators, when we talk about change to the Senate, we need to think seriously about the implications of those changes for the House of Commons, for the provinces, for the regions we are supposed to represent and for the minorities that we have in recent years taken great pride in representing. When you start to think about those implications, it all becomes much more complicated. It is made even more complicated by the fact that so much of what is currently discussed and thought about this institution is based on myth rather than reality.

Honourable senators, for a long time I have thought that one of our starting points should be to look at how the Senate has evolved in the past 143 years. We should not look at just as it is on paper, or just as it was in 1867 when the Fathers of Confederation, as has been said in a broader context, built it better than they knew. We should look at how the Senate fits into the broader system. Lord knows, that is a vast subject and I will not have the time to cover it, but here are just a few thoughts.

Honourable senators, a great deal of what we are comes from two, almost clichéd, facts: we are not elected and we have job security until age 75. We cannot be fired for displeasing the boss. Sometimes we do not understand when we first get here — certainly I did not — what a profoundly important element that is of this place. We cannot be fired for displeasing the boss. We have, of course, because we tend to be here for quite a long time, a great collective institutional memory.

Senator Munson: I was fired.

Senator Fraser: You were not fired from the Senate.

Those facts have implications, which we know about, but which have implications for the whole system, not just for us.

We are the chamber that tends to be less partisan. We are not saints. We are a political institution and we are proud of it. We are proud of our loyalties to our parties, those of us who sit in party caucuses. However, we are, on a day-to-day basis, on average, less partisan than the other place. That means that our debates and committee work can focus less on scoring partisan points, because we do not have to worry about getting elected tomorrow. It means we can focus more on substance and on longer-term implications, and it means that we can tackle subjects that the House of Commons is reluctant to address for political reasons. Let me mention, for example, euthanasia, decriminalizing drugs, and mental health, all fields in which the Senate has done very important work and that the House of Commons did not dare to tackle.

Honourable senators, because we cannot be fired easily, we can speak truth to power, in public, in committees, outside the chamber and in private, particularly in our own party caucuses. I have often thought that one of the great rites of passage for a senator occurs the first day that the new senator says something to make his or her leader very angry. My first leader, the Prime Minister who appointed me, was the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien. Let me tell you, an angry Jean Chrétien was quite something, but I was able to tell him what I believed needed to be said because I did not have to be frightened — not because Mr. Chrétien is frightening, but because he is a strong, powerful personality and a man of great conviction.

We can, when our conscience calls for it, vote against our party line. That is much harder to do in the other place. Because of the nature of this place, our Rules of the Senate are and can afford to be more flexible than the rules in the other place, which means that we can go more deeply into subjects than the government of the day would frequently like to see us do. We are free to do that. No one can easily force us not to examine something.

As we have often noted, because we are appointed, our membership is wonderfully varied and many people who would not stand for election but who are ornaments of public life serve here in this chamber. Not to mention present senators, but I think back to past senators, people like Sister Peggy Butts, whom Senator Cowan mentioned; Lois Wilson, former moderator of the United Church of Canada; the artist Viola Léger; the television personality Betty Kennedy; the Metis elder Thelma Chalifoux; the journalist and Royal Commissioner Florence Bird. None of these people would have sought election. That is just a small sampling of the women. In case you noticed, they were all Liberals. I note that I did not mention any Conservatives largely because so many of my favourite Conservatives are still here, and I am confining myself to senators who are no longer serving in the Senate.

We all know of the massive contribution to Canadian public life that has been made by people like Senator Keon and Senator Gérald Beaudoin, to name just two recent members of this place.

It is true that since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted, we have increasingly been proud of our focus on our role as defender of human and minority rights. We are not beholden to majorities of electors and are able to place our focus where we feel it is needed. I grant you, 143 years ago, Sir John A. Macdonald said, probably in jest, that the minority we were here to represent was the rich; but that is not who we have taken pride in standing up for in recent years, except very rarely. We have stood for minority rights, for the rights of women, and for the rights of other parts of the great Canadian population who are sometimes overlooked in the other place.

It is true that because we are not elected, we are cautious in the exercise of our quite vast powers. That is not a bad thing. We have tended to observe what is known in Britain as the Salisbury principle. If a government is elected with a specific, explicit element in its platform, the upper house will tend to respect that, at least in principle. Senator Murray is looking at me with a jaundiced air as I mention that. However, we do.

All these things I have just rhymed off, many of which are familiar to us, have tremendous value in the whole of our parliamentary system. I have tried to mention some of the things about this place that, at the moment, in the system we have, are less evident in the other portions of our system. That is doubly true, to mention just two factors, in the case of women and the fact that in Canadian politics, for reasons I cannot quite grasp, the glass ceiling seems to be thicker — "sturdier," someone said the other day — than in so many other countries. The appointments process here has been able to help to right that balance, because we have proportionately more women than ever seem to get elected in the House of Commons.

Another thing that is important is that because we are the way we are, and we do not have to have such strict party discipline, we can perhaps cast a fresh eye on the regional tensions that are an eternal part of this country. A country that is as huge and as diverse as Canada has regional tensions. That is one reason there is so often such strict party discipline in the House of Commons. In order to achieve good government for all Canadians, one must sometimes make decisions that people in specific regions will not much like. In the House of Commons, they do that by party discipline.

We do it in slightly different ways. In other words, in ways that Sir John A. Macdonald perhaps may not have foreseen, we can, and do, provide sober second thought on a wide front.

I am not suggesting we are perfect. Lord knows we are not. We are a human institution. No human institution was ever perfect, and certainly not one designed 143 years ago.

When we set out to change ourselves, we have to think not only about what may be gained from the change. For example, it is clear that in the 21st century, electing members of a parliament tends to have more legitimacy in the public eye than appointing them. That could be in many ways a gain. However, we must think about what we would lose — not what we, the individuals who happen to be here right now, would lose, but what we, as a system and as Canadians, would lose: the existence of an island of rather more sober, rather longer-term, rather less partisan influence within the Parliament of Canada.

If we lose those things, how will they be replaced? Will they be replaced? If they are not replaced, how will we compensate for the loss? Canada needs an institution doing what this institution, at its best, does. Whether it is this institution or someone else, those things need to be done. Who will do them if we do not?

I am just about out of time, so I will spare colleagues my own personal little wishlist of ways in which I think changes might be made.

I refer honourable senators to some of the suggestions that have been made by our former colleague Senator Hays, a man with more experience at more levels and in more elements of this institution than most of us. I do not agree with all of his suggestions, but they are thoughtful and they hang together.

Finally, I would urge honourable senators to take very seriously Senator Cowan's repeated warnings that we need to look at the whole system. We need to think through a strategy for the whole system of which we are a proud part and we need to do that in the terms of the 21st century, without losing the better values that have helped us evolve by and large well in the 20th and the 19th centuries.

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