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Why the Senate should be abolished

Maclean's March 8, 2013

7-9 minutes

Let's begin with a trivia question for constitutional experts: name all the federal states worldwide with a single, or unicameral, legislature.

It's commonly held that federations-countries marked by overlapping powers of national and provincial or state governments-must have upper and lower houses in their legislatures to ensure effective regional representation and prevent power imbalances. And yet some federal states manage to govern without a second legislative body.

The answer to our question? United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Micronesia, the Comoros Islands and St. Kitts and Nevis. Oh, and don't forget Canada.

Canada does have a Senate, of course. And yet this is a distinction in name only. On a daily basis evidence piles up that reveals our upper house to be neither useful nor necessary. An incessant string of scandals and disgraceful conduct by senators has turned the red chamber into a national embarrassment. Its functionality has been eroded to nothing with little prospect for change, despite claims from the Harper government to champion Senate reform.

While the Senate may have been a good-perhaps even critical idea during the founding of Canada, today lt serves no real purpose other than to bring itself into disrepute. From a practical perspective, Canada already has a unicameral legislature. Why not

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make it official?

During the Quebec Conference of 1864, which set out the future structure of Canada's political system, John A. MacDonald, then attorney general and not yet a Sir, observed, "In order to protect local interest, and to prevent sectional jealousies, [Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes] should be represented in the Upper House on the principle of equality." In fact, the shape and power of the Senate was one of the main topics of consideration at Quebec City, occupying six of 14 days.

It now seems ludicrous to imagine the Senate should take up even an hour of serious discussion. Rather than a place for sober second thought or regional balance, the upper chamber has become a repository of political cronies, former media personalities and many other depressingly unserious characters.

Consider the legal troubles of Patrick Brazeau, recently charged with assault and sexual assault. Or the sad affair of recently resigned senator Joyce Fairbairn, declared legally incompetent as she dealt with Alzheimer's disease but still allowed to vote. Or the ongoing residency and travel expense scandal in which various high-profile senators have had trouble identifying where they lived. Or the fraud conviction of former senator Raymond Lavigne. Or, or, or ...

Of course the Senate has long had a reputation for cronyism. And it's no stranger to impropriety. Witness the Beauharnois scandal during the 1930s, in which two Liberal senators personally benefited from the government's construction of a hydro dam on the St. Lawrence River. Lately, however, the pace of scandal has picked up at the same time as the Senate has found itself with even less do to.

The dramatic centralization of power in Ottawa into the hands of the Prime Minister's Office means the Senate can no longer play any significant role in the mechanics of Canada's political system. Where it was once conceived as a forum for providing scrutiny and financial oversight of government business, the rise of public watchdogs such as the auditor general and the Parliamentary Budget Office has entirely supplanted this role; And the Senate's lack of democratic legitimacy prevents it from pushing back against government initiatives in the name of regional fairness.

Added to all this is the popular perception, fuelled by the current

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expenses scandal, that senators seem to work their hardest when maximizing their take from the public purse; finding new and inventive ways to claim travel and living costs or otherwise skirting the rules.

Such a situation is troublingly ironic, given that Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to power in 2006 promising to make the Senate relevant and respectable again by ending political appointments and implementing a process to elect new senators.

Unfortunately, and despite the appointment of two elected senators from Alberta, Harper appears to have been seduced, as were all his predecessors, by the prospect of using the Senate to reward friends and consolidate his own political power. Where he once derided the Senate as a "dumping ground for the favoured cronies of the prime minister" Harper has thus far made senators out of a passel of failed Conservative candidates, several major party donors, his former communications adviser and various others who appear out of their depth, such as Brazeau and former newsman Mike Duffy.

Harper's Senate Reform Act, introduced in 2011, proposed to appoint senators elected through provincial elections and limit terms to a non-renewable nine years. Both are sensible suggestions that would go a long way to repairing the Senate. Yet it was only last month, with the Senate rocked by a string of scandals, that Harper went to the trouble of asking the Supreme Court for an opinion on the obvious constitutional problems associated with his proposed changes. As Mac/ean's Ottawa Editor John Geddes's lengthy investigation into the practicality of Senate reform makes plain (see" 'Contempt for the whole institution,' "), Harper's reforms will likely require the approval of seven provinces comprising at least half of Canada's population. It's a stiff requirement.

It is already the case, however, that provinces other than Alberta, notably New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, have already passed or are in the process of considering Senate election legislation. Nonetheless Harper continues to grind out appointed senators in these provinces rather than encouraging elections by offering to cover the costs. Two months ago, for example, Harper named Denise Batters, wife of deceased Conservative MP David Batters, as Saskatchewan's newest senator. Adding a further dash of irony, Batters was chief of staff to the provincial justice minister

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when Saskatchewan's Senate election bill was passed.

It's hard to escape the feeling that Harper's passion for Senate reform has been severely compromised by his seven years in power. This makes intuitive, if disappointing, sense. Regardless of any expressions of idealism when in opposition, what sitting prime minister would want to create a truly equal, elected and effective Senate that would have as its main purpose to counterbalance or limit his own powers? From this perspective, Senate reform may simply be an outsider's preoccupation, doomed to be abandoned once power is achieved. If so, then real, constructive Senate reform is not just a remote prospect, but an absolute impossibility. Is there a way out of this trap of hypocrisy?

It's worth noting that Harper's court reference also puts forth the option of abolishing the Senate altogether. The Supreme Court has been asked to consider three possible methods of achieving this: inserting an end date, eliminating all mention of it from the Constitution or simply taking away its powers. It's a strategy worth a serious look.

On paper, abolition appears as constitutionally difficult as reform. But at least it holds the promise of being attractive to the ruling party, since it does not entail any loss of political power. As such, it exists within the realm of possibility. And given the ongoing legacy of patronage, scandal and futility, getting rid of the Senate looks to be a better option than doing nothing at all.

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torontosun,com

Why I now support abolis ing the Senate

Jim Warren

4 minutes

The Upper House of Canada's Parliament no longer serves a useful purpose. It's time to get rid of the 105 members who are appointed till age 75 but some act like they are toddlers.

It's time to get rid of the red chamber that is supposed to create sober second thoughts but could drive a person to drink.

It's time to get rid of the people who create bureaucracy and duplication instead of regional representation. A waste of taxpayers' money and a waste of time, the Senate has outlived its usefulness.

For me there was no Eureka moment when it became clear that the end has come for the Senate. Rather the Senate's death has come by a thousand cuts.

Many people wanted to abolish the Red Chamber after the scandals of Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau. These scandals destroyed public trust in Parliament and government. The Senate scandals hurt the very institution it was created to support.

I was prepared to give the Senate one last chance.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to make positive reforms at the Senate level.

First he removed Liberal senators from the Liberal caucus. The idea was to make it less partisan. Trudeau promised once elected to appoint senators who were non-partisan and received their appointment based on merit.

The reforms were intended to clean up a political mess that has instead just gotten worse.

This past week the Senate inquiry into workplace harassment claims against former Senator Don Meredith resumed despite the fact he resigned. The inquiry has been going on for two years.

It is a reminder about everything wrong in Ottawa instead of all the

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great things that happen.

It is a reminder that the disgraced Senator gets to keep his pension because he resigned.

Last Thursday the Senate finally passed the Trudeau government budget bill. The current senators had been spending their time in Ottawa delaying the government's budget bill.

It is not the purpose of an unelected group of people to re-write the government budget bill.

There was no useful purpose for the Senate to be wasting time and money on delaying the passage of the budget.

What it does prove is that we do not need to be paying 105 senators $145,400 each to do what the Official Opposition already does - which is hold the government to account.

Perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back for me is the Senate delaying passage of Bill C-210.

This is the private member's bill of the late Mauril Belanger that changes the lyrics of O Canada to make them gender neutral.

The bill was passed by Parliament and its approval should have been completed by the Senate last summer.

However because Belanger has died - he passed away from ALS last summer- some Senators are trying to delay the passage. If it is sent back to Parliament, MPs would have to unanimously agree for another MP to act as sponsor of the bill to oppose the amendment, something that is unlikely and would kill the legislation.

Bill C-210 has been at the Senate for over a full year, where it has been debated nearly 20 times, with several attempts to further amend and change the language of the anthem.

It's pathetic partisan politics and it's proof that the Senate no longer functions. It is time to abolish the Senate.

Jim Warren is a Liberal political strategist and media commentator. He worked for former Toronto mayor Mel Lastman and former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty and is currently a principal at grgadvisors.ca and CEO of Riseley Gaming Inc. His column · appears Sundays.

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macleans.ca

All the reasons to have a Senate

Aaron Wherry July 30, 2013

5-6 minutes

Lamenting that the discussion around the Senate has been over simplified, Dale Smith lays out all the reasons to keep our Senate.

The notion that the Senate is a stopgap against a "temporary dictatorship" is a fairly specious argument, but it cannot be denied that the Senate's role of "sober second thought" is integral to its role. The sobriety, however, stems from its appointed nature, free from the populist excesses of the elected House that sometimes get the better of its judgement. That appointed nature allows it to speak "truth to power" to the elected officials without fear of retribution. The protection of minorities - a hallmark of liberal democracies - was built into the structure of the Senate rather than rovincial interests ...

The Senate's appointed nature also allows for a greater diversity of backgrounds of its membership, as it can gather the voices of those who would never seek elected office otherwise, despite a history of accomplishment. This diversity of experience also lends to its role as a built-in "think tank" for government, where high-level policy can be explored and debated in an ongoing capacity with a permanent infrastructure in place to keep it cost-effective. When one considers that Senate reports are of consistently high quality, oftentimes higher than the reports of royal commissions without the costs associated with said commissions, and done in a cross-partisan manner, it produces results that the Commons is not able to, nor would be feasible coming from private sector think-tanks, the majority of whom are partisan by nature. As well, that same appointed nature and lengthy terms give Senators the ability to not only retain the institutional memory of Parliament, where there is a high turnover rate in the Commons, but it also allows it the luxury of long-term perspective, rather than one that is focused solely on the next electoral cycle. It also allows for greater continuity in joint committee work, such as the scrutiny of regulations, one of those technical and tedious areas where the Senate tends to do the

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"adult work" of Parliamentary oversight. These are yet more functions that cannot be replicated in the Commons. ' This is a useful defence of the upper chamber and the argument for keeping the Senate might serve as a good starting point for the entire discussion. Believers in a Senate should muster their best arguments for the chamber and then we should proceed with a series of questions.

Do you consider these attributes to be necessary to our official system of governance? Do we need a Senate that fulfills these duties and qualities? Does the current Senate adequately fulfill those duties and qualities? If not, why not? And finally, crucially, on what basis can we justify maintaining a chamber that is populated entirely with individuals appointed by the Prime Minister?

Even if you say yes to each of the first three questions-and I don't think I do-that last one is a doozy. Dale likens the appointing of senators to the appointing of judges, but I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. First, there is a question of process. Second, there is a question of result. (And maybe there is a question of purview.) If there are questions to be asked about the individuals being appointed as federal judges-and I won't pretend to know nearly enough about the legal system to begin to pretend to know whether there legitimately are-then that process needs to be reviewed. If there are questions to be asked about the individuals being appointed as senators-and I dare say there might be-then that process needs to be reviewed. But, ultimately, the answer can't be, "Well, the Prime Minister should simply stop appointing partisan cronies whose appointments subject the Senate to questions about its existence." So long as the appointment of senators is entirely at the whim of the Prime Minister, the appointments process will be philosophically problematic.

But there certainly needs to be a full and long discussion about the merits and utility of the Senate we presently have, the original purpose of the chamber, to what degree we absolutely require a second chamber and, if we do require one, what it should be like. And let us not be too limited by the idea that significant change is too difficult to achieve. Dream no little dream and all that.

(As to Dale's suggestion that I drifted into myopia with my invoking of Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Korea, Iceland and Denmark all nations that seem to have avoided tyranny despite lacking

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bicameral legislatures-in this post, I would note in my defence that I was responding to a very specific concern: that to not have a senate is to invite dictatorship. The relative demographics of those countries and their applicability to the discussion of whether a senate is required is another discussion.)

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thestar.com

Canada needs the Se ate

By Eugene Lang

6-7 minutes

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 scrap the Senate because it serves an increasingly important function our increasingly dysfunctional Parliament.

What we do not need the Senate for today is one of its original purposes - to represent the interests of the provinces in the federal legislative/policy process. Federal "regional ministers," powerful voices within every Cabinet that have special responsibilities to represent their province at the Cabinet table, accomplish that function today. People like Lloyd Axworthy in the Chretien government, who ensured anything of significance that Ottawa did touching on Manitoba was subject to his scrutiny. Or Ralph Goodale, who fought hard for Saskatchewan's interest around the Cabinet table for more than a dozen years. John Baird, the regional minister for Eastern Ontario today, is a current equivalent. The provincial interest is taken care of by regional ministers in a way that no senator or group of senators could hope to match.

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The reason we need the Senate today is not to further amplify provincial views in Ottawa, but rather to compensate for the increasing marginalization of the House of Commons in the legislative and policy process, and the fact that the vast majority of MPs are unwilling to develop and voice expertise on key issues facing the country. Many senators and their committees, by contrast, have proven over the years to be quite capable of achieving fairly deep policy knowledge - and even technical legislative expertise - that can be important in shaping better public policy and improving legislation.

Some Senate committees - the committee on banking, trade and commerce, the national finance committee, the committee on social affairs, science and technology, for example - have enriched public policy thinking, sparked debate on important issues, and helped improve legislation in a way few House of Commons committees have in many years. Senate committees increasingly do the work the House can no longer do because of the bitter partisanship, permanent campaign mindset, and attendant unwillingness to do substantive policy work that characterizes the orientation of MPs. For many years now Members of Parliament have been complicit in this gradual debasement of their policy and legislative function such that we now need the Senate to do the work the House should be doing.

There is good reason for such behaviour on the part of MPs. There are few rewards for the backbench MP who becomes a recognized expert in his or her party in a particular field. Rewards - notably a Cabinet position or high-profile critic post- increasingly go to those who can score political points on their opponents, are camera friendly and satisfy geographic quotas, less so those who have public policy knowledge and the skills to work with their opponents to advance the public interest. As a result, fewer and fewer MPs with ambition aspire to develop such expertise. Senators, by contrast, only get rewarded, i.e. noticed, if they or a committee they are on does something important and of substance. And Senate committee reports are invariably regarded as far more objective,

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substantive and thorough than what comes from House committees.

The willingness of senators and their committees to delve deeply into issues, hold lengthy public hearings with experts to better grasp the nuances of policy, and write thoughtful reports that might not always align with the views of their party are positive attributes of this flawed institution. Senators, unlike their colleagues in the House, can act somewhat independently of the party line, secure in the knowledge that they never have to rely on the party leader to sign their nomination papers. Most senators are also realistic enough to know they have little chance of ever ending up in Cabinet (typically only one senator is appointed to Cabinet), obviating the need to play sycophant to the party leader and parrot whatever talking points are foisted on them by his or her staff.

In other words, membership in the exclusive club that is the Senate has its privileges beyond loose expense accounts. Senators, as distinct from their colleagues in the House, have a certain room to manoeuvre and freedom of thought that some senators choose to exercise. And senators are incentivized in a way MPs are not to develop knowledge that can improve policy and governance.

These are qualities Canadians cannot do without and are worth paying something for.

Eugene Lang is BMO Visiting Fellow, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Glendon College, York University He was a senior adviser to three ministers in the governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin and was an official in the Department of Finance.