Senate reform: reprise

Given new Senator Runciman's comments of today, which seem to indicate a certain ambivalence about the value of an independent Senate, I am reprising this blog post of a few weeks ago (**And relatedly, update-ishly, I should also hail this useful, well-researched  post from Kady O'Malley.) Pasted in full, below, is what I had to say on the business of Senate reform earlier this month:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making clear that he wants a new Senate and he will be appointing five new senators soon as part of his bid to get one. But let's be clear -- the new Senate he wants bears no resemblance to the old dream of Reform Party idealists.  To wit:

1. I keep hearing Conservatives say that they need a majority in the Senate so that they can carry through their legislative agenda from the House of Commons. Excuse me?  You need to appoint a majority in one place because you can't get a majority in the elected legislature? If Liberals did this during their minority rule (when Paul Martin appointed non-Liberals to the chamber), we would (appropriately) have seen a revolution in the West;  triple Es carved into every field past the Ontario border.

So, one question  no one's answered for me yet: Why should you have a majority in the Senate if you can't get one in the Commons?

2. The larger point, though,  is that the Senate isn't supposed to be a mirror of the House of Commons. It's supposed to be a check on the tyranny of blunt representation by population. (So that we weren't passing bills only that suit Quebec and Ontario, with their huge, Central Canadian  domination of the Commons.)

When Harper and others were calling for Senate reform in the 1980s and 1990s, they were asking for a chamber that would be different from the House of Commons; one that would  challenge legislation passed by the majority. It's supposed to be a check on the Commons, not a rubber stamp. Again, imagine the outrage from smaller provinces if the Liberals, while they were in office, argued that they had to fix the Senate so that it blindly adhered to their strength, based mainly in Toronto and Montreal. 

That leads to the next question: if Harper's new idea of Senate reform is just to have a chamber that does what the Commons orders it to do, then why have a Senate at all? Abolition is a much cheaper option, in the long term.

Comments

[RustyB]

Unfortunately logic seems to be missing in any "con-bot reasoning.

[jenna]

The Liberals had a majority in the Senate at the time of the 2004 election, and that majority has continued even though the Liberals in the House of Commons have gone from minority government to opposition over the last 6 years.

So what's your point here ?

[I'll turn this country around...]

I watched Runciman's press conference. He refers to his Liberal counterparts as "unelected." So what is he, sent by God? His first statement as a Senator trivializes his own legitimacy. If young people like myself tolerate such attitudes, our institutions will have no legitimacy left by the time we inherit them. Does Runciman, by extension, question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court because its justices are "unelected"?

[Jim M]

I thought only other countries had such problems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQMN-7WphwE

[MJH]

Liberal dominated Senate--Good

Conservative dominated Senate--Bad

[anonlinereader]

Harper kicking folding chairs again ?

" Stephane Harper's attempt to increase penalties for young offenders will be a formidable adversary: Jacques Demers. In an interview with LCN, the conservative senator voted against this key measure of his own party.

Asked about this by the host Denis Lévesque, Jacques Demers has been unequivocal. "I believe in rehabilitation. I am all for it. (...) Should be given a chance, even more opportunities to people. "The former Canadiens coach also believes that sending the young offenders prison would do more harm than good. "I will not send a boy of 14 or 16 years to be assaulted in prison."

According to documents obtained by the agency QMI, the Conservative government is preparing to table a new draft law on young offenders. This would include stiffer penalties and revoke the bans publication given to serious sex offenders.

Jacques Demers also said that if the Liberals had approached before the Conservatives for Liberal senator, he would have accepted the offer."

[Kevin Dallaire]

Many dismiss the Senate as either a roadblock to government legislation or nothing more than a rubber stamp, depending on your point of view. What they fail to realize is that our legislative process involves the submission of a DRAFT bill (first reading) which then undergoes debate and committee processes to fine tune any errors, etc.

Once passed it goes to the chamber of "sober second thought" for further critique, and following that back to the Commons for final reading and usually passage.

The Senate's job is not to rubberstamp legislation but to improve upon it so that instead of simply "good" legislation it is actually the "best" legislation it can be.

Senators are free from worries of having to get re-elected and are therefore able to deliberate and vote based on what they think is actually in the best interests of Canadians. This is actually in our favour. It de-politicizes the process, or at least it should.

Check the constitution (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/2.html#anchorbo-ga:s_9) and it is apparent that abolition of the Senate and changing the term limits both would require Constitutional amendments. Not likely to happen.

However, Mr. Ignatieff has suggested that an independent commission could be struck to advise the Governor General. The constitution clearly indicates that it is the Governor General's authority that is used to call citizens to the Senate. Mr. Ignatieff's suggestion would, if implemented, help to alleviate the partisan nature of senate selection.

One final thing that would be beneficial would be to have a requirement that all Senators must resign from any political party they may be members of.

The Senate IS valuable. We just need a process for it that all Canadians can support and yet doesn't require a constitutional amendment to achieve.