If you think you can stay
excited about senatorial expense accounts for the next 2 years and have
enough material to make the words “transparency and accountability” ballot
issues in Canada’s next election, don’t bother to read anymore. This is about
abstractions.
The enterprise, however,
entails political conflict and risk—and could lead to election drama. It doesn’t start with a leak, but with the
restoration of an idea that still scares many away in the finest salons in
Canada: every one of Canada’s legislators should be elected by the people.
After more than 2 centuries
of experimenting with progressively stronger doses of popular democracy and
anticipating that Canada’s federal government—just like its neighbor’s—will
again have to make decisions that strain the federation (and not just the polling
numbers of its leaders), it’s important that at long last Canada create an
effective upper house by electing its 105 senators, in provincial and
territorial elections, from coast to coast.
This can’t be accomplished immediately.
That would definitely require extensive constitutional amendment and a huge, politically
unpalatable buyout for today’s senate incumbents. As a minimum, however, the Harper
government should more aggressively promote, nationwide, the senate nomination
process that is now working in Alberta.
(Last year, 2.7 million
Albertans participated in the 4th senate nominee election. British
Columbia supports the idea in principle; just last week, the new Premier of
Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, declared in favor of senate reform and against
abolition. Big players with differing interests are available as potential
allies.)
This proposition doesn’t ask
any sensible person to stop worrying or complaining about their politicians—or
other voters, for that matter. It doesn’t say that there needn’t be effective checks
on popular opinion and its too-indulgent political representatives. Certainly,
it doesn’t say Canada needs to make federal governance more complicated to
appease a rebellious region. (It doesn’t even surrender my optimism that North
American federation is a workable, if not a topical, endgame.)
It stands simply on the
insistence that we should only be led by people we elect and the happy observation
that elected federations are resilient and effective.
The $100 million figure that Canadians
spend now on an unelected senate isn’t scandalous. After all, we’ve been doing it
all our lives. But scandal does cloud a more embarrassing problem. Unlike all the significant democratic
federations in the world, Canada hasn’t been able to put in place all the
democratic machinery of a modern federal democracy—it’s incomplete.
Holding more press
conferences and hiring more accountants will not finish the job of making Ottawa a
first-rank federal capital. Furthermore, teaching Stephen Harper how to explain
himself to insiders will not re-elect his dull government. He’s declared himself,
committed a conservative party, and tabled legislation to steadily transform the
Canadian senate into a fully elected upper house. It’s time the idea became a
popular issue, an objective that will divide politicians and give Canadians an
important choice.
The grand alternative to
reform: outright abolition of the one legislative body that pretends to represent
small provinces and the minority “nation” of Quebec would definitely—and
appropriately—require the consent of those provinces and their legislatures. It
would leave Canadians with 1 constituency assembly much like the US House of
Representatives.
It would not be a good-faith
idea without conceding something substantial for the provinces in return—like
sovereignty-association for Quebec or substantive federal powers for the House
of the Provinces, for instance. Furthermore, it favors the more streamlined
decision-making preferred by central planners and, at the same time, it would inevitably
elevate the vicarious interest of provincial governments in solving Canada’s
problems as well as their own.
The strongest arguments
against an elected senate are antiquated in every respect.
The best case against the
idea of transforming today’s senate into an elective body is that its
representation is unrepresentative; small provinces have too many senators, and
growing provinces too few. As it became more legitimate by being more
democratic, it would feel freer to “interfere” with the legislative prerogatives
of the House of Commons—an assembly elected roughly on the basis on
one-person one-vote. This concern is over-rated.
Why would the House of
Commons voluntarily surrender their sole authority to initiate money bills and
create and dissolve the governments of the day? How would they be bullied into
it? The senate would remain noticeably under-represented in the most populous and
the growing regions of the country, where federal governments are elected and
defeated. It makes no sense that the people
in those regions would want to or could be tricked into weakening the House of
Commons—the popular assembly they dominate.
It is not certain, in fact, that senate under-representation of Western provinces would be fixed after creating
an elected senate. Fifty US states have been electing US senators for over a
century and the US senate still gives 2 seats to Vermont and 2 to California.
Concern about inequitable
representation, however, overlooks: first, that one of the most disadvantaged
under the status quo—Alberta—is already electing its senators; second, that
the House of Commons itself still happily over-represents small provinces and
sparse regions and territories despite its one obligation to represent
individuals equally; and, third, it completely ignores the value of having one
national assembly of politicians elected by millions of citizens and not just
constituencies within each province.
To put it simply: alongside
the Prime Minister’s House of Commons majority, there would soon be numerous
politicians with the talent and ambition to campaign amongst and speak up for many
different communities and diverse interests.
The US Senate, historically,
has been considered the West’s pre-eminent legislative assembly not for its
constitutional powers but for the caliber of those who get there—often from
relatively small as well as very large states.
Justin Trudeau and those who write
worried books and op-ed pieces about the imperial Prime Minister’s office and
the bias in all parliamentary democracies to concentrate too much power in the Executive offer puny, illusory solutions. They talk about attitudes and good
character; more independent-minded backbenchers, more researchers, a more
laissez-faire Prime Minister; and a press that doesn’t report caucus opposition
as a "rebellion."
If they’re serious, they
should join the campaign for an elected senator; a senate of individuals who
account to voters, who might want to run again for the senate or for higher
office, and who have the back of hundreds of thousands when they address the
policies of the Executive.
In politics, power is only checked
by other individuals with political power and political promise of their own.
A democratic center of power
has more legitimacy to execute controversial decisions after various sources of
independent political power—in that city—have debated what to do.
For those reasons—for power
and for the people—it’s high time to declare for senate elections.
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