While New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair is visiting Victoria today with his campaign to abolish the Senate, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is still awaiting the Supreme Court鈥檚 opinions on what Parliament can and can鈥檛 do regarding the red chamber.
But Harper already seems to be on the path to abolition, however unintentional. If future prime ministers follow his example, Senate reform would be achieved without the necessity of constitutional wranglings and interprovincial disputes.
We speak of abolition by attrition.
During his recent tour of the North, Harper said he had no immediate plans to fill five vacant seats in the Senate, including one from sa国际传媒 The vacancies now total six 鈥� Mac Harb has since resigned after repaying more than $230,000 in questionable expenses.
Without prime ministerial replenishment, the Senate would shrink to 71 members by the end of 2018.
If the trend continued, the Senate would disappear on Nov. 11, 2049, when Patrick Brazeau, the last senator standing, reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75. That鈥檚 assuming that Brazeau, now under investigation by the RCMP for allegedly filing inappropriate expense claims, is still a member and is not absent from the Senate that day. (He played hooky from the Senate 25 per cent of the time between June 2011 and April 2012.) And by then, he might have explained where he actually lives.
Of course, it鈥檚 not going to happen that way and it shouldn鈥檛. There鈥檚 a place for a chamber of sober second thought, aloof from crass politics and popular clamour.
And that鈥檚 one of the problems with the Senate. It has failed to live up to its original purpose of providing calm and thoughtful review to legislation passed by Parliament.
While many good people become senators, they are appointed for blatant political purposes, or as a reward for working on behalf of the party in power.
They are unelected, unaccountable to the public. They are like the chuckwalla, a desert lizard that lodges itself in a safe spot and puffs itself up so it can鈥檛 be removed. An under-achieving member of Parliament can be removed at the next election; a do-nothing senator, unless found guilty of an egregious crime, can sleep in red-velvet comfort until the age of 75.
The Senate was also supposed to provide regional representation, but that has long been out of whack. Prince Edward Island, with a population not much larger than that of Saanich, has four senators. (Or three, depending on where Mike Duffy actually lives.) The Maritime provinces, with about half the total population of sa国际传媒, have 30 seats in the Senate, compared to sa国际传媒鈥檚 six.
Electing senators would only exacerbate the inequity 鈥� provinces with many senators are not likely to yield any seats in favour of those that have few.
An elected Senate implies a Senate with authority. Parliament is supposed to be supreme in sa国际传媒 (although the Prime Minister鈥檚 Office is a little wobbly on that concept), and a Senate with real powers would challenge that supremacy.
Tinker with the Senate, and you have to redefine the role of the House of Commons.
The Senate is an awkward, outdated appliance in our system of government, not easily upgraded with a little tinkering. It needs more than a coat of paint or some new wiring, but any change to the Senate will necessitate a chain of changes involving the whole system.
It鈥檚 tempting to encourage Harper to continue to do nothing about Senate appointments, but the Senate still has an important role to play in sa国际传媒鈥檚 government. It just needs to be made more relevant and democratic.
Achieving that will be difficult, but worthwhile.
