Defending the Senate. Sort of.

I'll defend the Senate if I have to. I guess.

Brian Lee Crowley argues that we need an elected Senate for the sake of regional representation. This argument seems to require accepting three premises: 1) that regional alienation is a real thing with real consequences, 2) that Canada has somehow made it this far without an elected Senate fulfilling this role and 3) that an elected Senate would mostly solve the problem of regional alienation.

One of Canada’s great political and constitutional weaknesses has been the inability of the Canadian Senate to play this vital role of providing a credible community counterweight to the rep by pop-based power of the Commons. Appointed senators simply can never have the democratic horsepower to be a real counterweight to the Commons. The federal government’s legislation therefore lacks the legitimacy of the double-majority system that other federations have found so indispensable, and this is at the root of many of the problems of regional alienation and suspicion of the national government that has plagued this country since 1867.

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