The long, uncertain path to Senate reform

 "Two of the most controversial cases heard by the Supreme Court of Canada recently both happen to involve lines of work not always held in high repute. There was the prostitution case, in which the court ruled last month that laws around the sale of sex violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by exposing prostitutes to grave danger and gave the federal government a year to reform the laws. And then there’s the matter of the Senate. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has asked the judges, in what is called a “reference,” to give their opinion on his plan to set term limits for senators and appoint them based on the results of elections. The key question is: Can the federal government make these reforms unilaterally, or does it need most, or even all, of the provinces to agree?"

http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/03/public-enemy-no-1/

Manufacturing Con-Senate

How could one make a Senate that is non-Partisan? Jean-Rodrigue Pare has an idea.

A non-partisan Senate

The NDP's position on the Senate is that it should be abolished.  Here is the NDP proposing some sort of reform.

7/50 majority

British Columbia joins in.

Distraction Obsession

Dylan Jones, President and CEO of theCanada West Foundation talks about The Senate reform obsession.

Obsession with Senate reform is a costly distraction. The true cost of the endless debate over how to modify or eliminate the Red Chamber is how much it has diverted attention from governance reforms that would actually improve the lives of Canadians. The idea that the Senate is an essential forum for representing regional voices reflects the bias that the only government that matters is the federal one. In reality, as has been well argued by Premier Brad Wall of Saskatchewan, it is the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments that actually shapes how our country is governed.

The dominant fact of Canadian federalism is that provinces are strong and important actors. This fact is overlooked by the many academics and journalists enthralled by the political theatre in Ottawa.

If it's the obsession of anyone, I suspect it's only of a few, otherwise the chamber would have been reformed by now, or at least be making some sort of progress.  Most people don't concern themselves with the components of our legislative institutions.  The Senate rarely gets noticed until there's a scandal.

Potential costs to Abolish the Senate

OTTAWA — Abolishing the scandal-plagued Senate would cost taxpayers $10-$30 million in golden parachute payoffs, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said Monday.

The CTF said the severance payments for $135,200-a-year senators would likely be limited by legislation or regulation, and wouldn’t approach the massive amount discussed by some senators in 1992 — the last time Canada seriously considered getting rid of the current Senate.

Marjory LeBreton, the Conservative government leader in the Senate, raised the possibility Sunday of killing the upper chamber, which will cost Canadians $91.5 million this year to operate.

Read the rest: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Abolishing+plum+Senate+posts+could+cost+estimated+million/8441745/story.html#ixzz2ckqUX8ru

Why Canada needs the Senate

Eugene Lang explains why we need the Senate

A conventional wisdom has emerged that goes something like this: Canada’s Senate is an anti-democratic anachronism stuffed with self-absorbed party hacks who care more about their perks than the public interest. The Red Chamber operates like the worst kind of private club and is rife with corruption and possibly criminal conduct. The Senate serves no useful purpose, costs lots of money, and if it cannot be reformed it should be scrapped.

The outrageous expense habits and grotesque entitlement mentality of a handful of senators lend credibility to such generalizations. Nevertheless, Canadians cannot afford to scrap the Senate because it serves an increasingly important function in our increasingly dysfunctional Parliament.

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Diseased Senate

Michael Bliss would like us to remove our diseased Senate from the body politic.

Senators for Life

Andrew Coyne: Senators are partisans, appointed for life. How could that not go wrong?

 The longer it goes on, and the more people it engulfs, the more it becomes apparent that the Senate scandal — for in truth it is one scandal, not several — really is about the Senate. The Senate’s defenders (there are some) like to say that a few misbehaving senators do not make the case for reform or abolition, any more than a few corrupt individuals would condemn any other institution, in toto. But what if the conduct in question cannot entirely be chalked up to individual fault? What if it’s endemic to the place, part of its very nature?

Like any other crime-ridden public housing project, the Senate is an example of the importance of environment in human behaviour. The observation does not mean everyone inside should be considered a criminal. Nor does it absolve the individuals involved of their own personal responsibility. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t rules that should have been followed, or that conscience should not have sufficed in any event. There are some things you just don’t do, for which the complaint that the rules “weren’t clear” or they were “applied retroactively,” even if true, would be no defence.

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The Senate is a three ring circus

Paul Wells writes more 

They seem so far away now, the days when Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy were just nice people on TV bringing you the news.

Now both of these former journalists are senators embroiled in an expense-account scandal that threatens to end their late-blooming political careers in disgrace. More important, the uproar over the Senate scandal threatens to bring down the entire upper house of Parliament, the stately red-lined chamber of what used to be called “sober second thought.”

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Documents from the coming court battles over Senate reform

From Paul Wells

In my column for the issue of Maclean’s that started to appear on newsstands today, I write about the uproar over the Senate that began with Mac Harb and Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy and is headed straight to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Most Canadians are not aware that the federal government has asked the Supremes’ opinion, via a so-called “reference” case, on a set of reform options. Still fewer are aware that there’s another reference, in Quebec Appeals Court, over the Quebec government’s challenge to the latest (of eight!) bill from the Harper government on Senate reform, C-7. The cases substantially overlap — so much so that the feds sent lawyers to invite the Quebec Appeals Court to drop its reference while the Supremes heard the federal reference. No dice. The Quebec reference will be argued in oral hearings in Montreal on Sept. 10 and 11. The federal reference will be argued at Ernest Cormier’s beautiful Supreme Court building on Nov. 11 to 13.

Senate abolition party crasher

Is Harper, once an advocate of reform, switch camps?

John Ivison posits that the Harper government might, depending on how the Supreme Court rules, decide to push for abolition of the Senate.

The Conservatives argue that the Senate can be abolished under the constitution’s amending formula — section 38 — which states that any changes to the Senate would merely required resolutions in the House of Commons, Senate and seven provinces, representing 50% of the population (rather than unanimous approval).
If the Supreme Court agrees, it seems to me that we will see the Conservatives launch a full-on campaign for Senate abolition, in an effort to insulate Mr. Harper from accusations of being the Red Chamber’s patron. There appear few lengths to which this prime minister will not now go to distance himself from Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin — three of his 59 Red Chamber appointments.

On Senates and Scandals

Senate scandals teach us about senate reform

In 2009, the United Kingdom was rocked by scandal, after the Telegraph revealed that MPs were abusing taxpayer funds. As it turned out, MPs from all parties were claiming illegitimate expenses for personal gain. The public outcry that resulted did lead to a change in policy. But more importantly, it caused many elected officials to lose their jobs. Knowing that voters would boot them out of office as soon as they got the chance, many decided not to run in the next election; others resigned before the writ was dropped; a few ran and lost; and some were charged with crimes.

Canada is currently in the midst of an expense scandal of its own. Over the past few months, we have been learning about how Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy and Mac Harb have misused their Senate expense accounts, with each one looking more crooked than the last as details continue to emerge.

Reform Impossible, Abolition Necessary

Jeremy Harrison, MLA and Government House Leader in the government of Saskatchewan and former Conservative MP, explains how the Saskatchewan government came to its abolition position.

 In Saskatchewan we know what to do with machinery that’s broken down and impossible to repair. In the Aug. 2 edition of the National Post, Senator Bob Runciman wondered why Saskatchewan advocates abolishing the Senate and why my party hasn’t called senatorial elections as we’d originally hoped. The answer is simple: the Senate is too broken to serve Canadians and it’s impossible to fix. Holding elections for a broken Senate is a waste of money, as the Upper Chamber itself has become.

People are frustrated with the Senate. Our government has heard that frustration and recently put the question to a vote of our Saskatchewan Party members. The members voted to change our party’s position from reforming the institution to abolishing it. The majority was 86%. We believe this sentiment to be widely shared among the people of this province.

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Gridlock

F.H. Buckley, professor of law at George Mason University, believes an elected senate is a recipe for gridlock,

Here’s what section 24 of the Constitution says about the way Senators get picked: “The Governor General shall from Time to Time, in the Queen’s Name, by Instrument under the Great Seal of Canada, summon qualified Persons to the Senate.” What that really means is the prime minister does the picking — on just about any basis he pleases. And he may, if he wants, pick people who have won an election in their respective region.

Or not. Nothing stops a Tory prime minister, even one who has sworn up and down that he’ll respect the voice of the people, to ignore an inconvenient senatorial “election” in Quebec. Or a Liberal prime minister who doesn’t really care much for the duly elected senator from Alberta.

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Partial Precedent for Senate Reform through Abolition

I have my doubts that the Senate of Canada could be reformed by direct means.  The 7/50 rule, the veto power held by BC, Ontario, and Quebec, and the tendency of regionalism in Canada to trump good policy.  I'm not alone.  Some, such as Andrew Coyne, have suggested that to reform it, it should be abolished first, then reformed (or, at the point, recreated).  It turns out that there is at least one precedent for it, the Senate of the Philippines.  One might even count it as two precedents.  It was effectively abolished in 1935 and restored in 1945.  It was shut down in 1972, and restarted again in 1987.

The circumstances in the Philippines are quite different from the ones in Canada, though.  The Philippine Senate was shuttered the first time because the country drew up its own constitution and opted for a single legislative chamber.  The second phase ended when the president declared martial law, which shut down both houses of Congress.  Canada is not drawing up its constitution, nor has martial law been declared.  Thus, the precedent is only partial.

Perhaps the most relevant part of this comparison is the first time their Senate was reestablished.  They went for a time without one, like Canada would if we were to abolish ours, but decided it was desirable to have one after all.

I have my doubts that the Senate of Canada would be reestablished if it were ever abolished.  The same regionalism that keeps it from being reformed directly would likely prevent it from ever being formed again.