Excerptcize

Senate Chamber, Centre Block, Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada (photo by Montrealais, used under Creative Commons Attribution and ShareAlike license)

In my haste to post on the prorogation of parliament, I completely forgot to mention one of the more tangible reasons for Mr. Harper to do so; Senate appointments. As I understand it, (mostly by way of Kady O’Malley) with parliament not in session, the Prime Minister will be able to appoint at least 5 new senators and possibly as many as 13 depending on his willingness to get out the old parliamentary playbook again. Five new Conservative senators would give them a plurality in the upper house (did you know that there are still 2 PC Senators?) along with more bargaining power on the allotment of Senate committee seats. If Harper invokes Section 26 of the Constitution Act (only previously successfully done by Brian Mulroney to allow passage of the bill that created the GST) then he could appoint 8 additional Senators to the 5 seats that are currently unoccupied, thus giving the Conservative Party an outright majority with 59 seats out of a total of 113 (there are 105 ‘regular’ seats with Section 26 allowing the temporary addition of 8 Senators, with attrition then being in effect until the Senate returns to the ‘normal’ level of 105 seats through retirements.)

This benefit is by far the most likely prize for the PM; shutting down the House to continued criticism on the handling of the transfer of  Afghan detainees and delivering a budget clean of opposition injections when Parliament reopens are ancillary bonuses to being able to get legislation that has cleared the House through the Senate unmarred by those lefty Liberals and NDP’ers (don’t forget the rump PC’ers!)

This puts me in an interesting position; while I don’t agree with the means that Harper is using, I can sympathize with the ends he is trying to reach. As one who spends far too much time enveloped in US politics, I have developed a healthy fear of an overly powerful Senate. Now obviously the two bodies are very different but as time goes by it increasingly seems that the Canadian Senate is also becoming a place for legislation passed by our elected representatives to go to die. My wikipedia tells me that “[...]as a matter of practice and custom, the Commons is by far the dominant chamber. Although the approval of both houses is necessary for legislation, the Senate rarely rejects bills passed by the directly elected Commons.” I need to do some more looking to qualify my feeling that the qualifier ‘rarely’ is becoming less appropriate as time goes by, but I certainly do feel that is the case. If any readers have info that supports or refutes that feeling it would be much appreciated. In my own humble (am I allowed to add considered?) opinion, Senate reform is something both the US and Canada need (the US much more so than Canada, but why shouldn’t we get ahead of a growing problem ourselves?)

I hope that by citing both the US and Canadian Senate as bodies in need of reform I am making it clear that I believe in the will of elected representatives and that this is not a partisan issue for me. While in the US the Senators are elected, it is in a hugely unproportional fashion to the makeup of the US populace (a holdover constitutional appeasement to slave owners in fact, that most recently wreaked havoc on the legislative process by leaving the fate of Health Care reform up to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.) Here in Canada our Senators are strictly appointed (with the exception of Alberta, sort of.) While I disagree with much of the legislation (most even) passed by the Harper government, I do not believe an unelected body should be wielding as much power as the Senate has currently chosen to exert. Ideally, I would like to see reform bring about some kind of mechanism whereby the House would be required to draft legislation based upon work done by the Senate (such as this report on Marijuana Prohibition). Additionally, Senate reform would ideally see the Senate remain as an important deliberative body, but one without the power to indefinitely send legislation back to the Commons or tie a bill up in committee forever. With those changes I do not see the need for Senators to be elected, although that potentially would not be a bad thing (unless it were to take the form that the Charlottetown Accord would have enabled, an equal number of senators from each province. No offense to the Maritimes or Newfoundland and Labrador, but you are already overrepresented in the House of Commons as it is.)

The PM is one who has played both sides of the Senate coin. A longtime critic when in opposition of the Senate appointment process, on the day his minority government took power, Harper appointed Michael Fortier to both the Senate, and his Cabinet as the Minister for Public Works. Since that time he has somewhat tacked back to his position when in opposition, stating that “[the Canadian Senate] as it stands today, must either change or — like the old upper houses of our provinces — vanish.” This is most likely due to the fact that the longtime Liberal dominated Senate has stymied much of the legislation that his government has put forth that has passed the House. Instead of coming out directly with some set of principles for reform of the Senate, Mr. Harper seems to be going the back alley route, by proroguing parliament and forcing a plurality (or possibly a majority) of Conservatives in the upper chamber. While I agree with him that the Senate as it stands needs to change, the manner he is currently forcing change through is most certainly not respectable. Canadians deserve to have their Parliament in session.

• Lil Harper and the Environment Seeing this news clip* over the weekend got me to wondering about Canada's current environmental policy.  I was getting ready to slag the governments inaction on this front over the past couple years but I figured...
• The New Shape And Direction Of The Canadian Senate Following through with what his spokesperson indicated at the time of the prorogation of parliament,  Prime Minister Harper made five new appointments to the Senate this past Friday, bringing the Conservative Party to a total...

• Senate OK's health care bill in victory for Obama - Yahoo! News WASHINGTON – In an epic struggle settled at dawn, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed health care legislation Thursday, a triumph for President Barack Obama that clears...
• Party of “No”? That is Just Garbage Populist Rhetoric I am not sure if this is beyond the scope of this blog, especially since my last post was a political quiz, but its my...

3 Responses to “Oh Yeah, That Whole Senate Thing”