When it comes to Stephen Harper’s plan to reform the Senate, the Prime Minister isn’t just playing with fire. He’s running through a barn that’s stuffed with dry straw, waving a torch and sending embers off in all directions. It’s difficult to imagine anything good coming from his dangerous game.The latest batch of Senate appointments includes Betty Unger, giving Alberta two “elected” senators. All seven of the new appointees have agreed to abide by the government’s attempt to remake the Senate without the bother of a constitutional free-for-all, a plan that includes limited terms and more elections. The government has a bill giving effect to these changes that is winding its way through the House. The mystery is why a government — any government — would be so intent on fiddling with something that can only bring the country more grief, at a time when it’s pretty evident we have plenty enough grief to go around.
Consider:
• Why would a government that has just struggled through five years of minority government be so intent on creating a system that could, in effect, institutionalize minority government? The Tories blamed their lack of a majority for many of the problems they endured: the inability to pass legislation as promised, the partisan meddling and delaying tactics adopted by the opposition, the constant pre-occupation with tactics and strategy over matters of substance, the stagnation and gridlock that takes place when everyone is eternally jockeying for position. Yet here they are trying to establish the Senate as a second source of independent power that would inevitably represent a challenge to the authority of the House. Elected senators will claim they have an equal right to represent constituents a do MPs, and if that means blocking the House, they’ll block the House. Is Canada’s current system of government so wildly efficient that it needs more hurdles, complexities and sources of delay?
• If the Prime Minister thinks it’s a good idea to have a second powerful legislative body involved in the process, maybe he could just place a call to his friend Barack Obama in the White House, and ask how things are going down there. Since the mid-term elections divided control of Congress between Republicans and Democrats, serious work in Washington has ground to a halt. The president couldn’t even win agreement to pay the country’s bills without the U.S. almost tumbling into default. Reports indicate Obama’s re-election campaign will revolve around an attack on the “do-nothing Congress”, urging voters to re-establish Democrat control if only to break up the gridlock. Given this example, why is the Prime Minister so intent in establishing a system that could similarly divide government authority and result in a partisan quagmire?
• Everything may be ducky for the Conservatives now that they control 61 of the 105 Senate seats. But what happens when a Prime Minister comes to office facing a newly-empowered Senate stacked with a healthy majority of opposition members? In that case, who runs Canada, the elected Senators or the elected MPs?
• An empowered Senate with elected senators would become a powerful new voice for the provinces. Yet one of Mr. Harper’s goals is to more firmly delineate the responsibilities of the provinces from those of the federal government. He is even now engaged in an effort to push health care decisions onto the provinces, on the understandable basis that health care is a provincial responsibility. Why then establish the provinces as a second front in Ottawa, where they could intrude regularly in those affairs that are a federal responsibility? Mr. Harper doesn’t even like to meet with the premiers — he prefers one-on-one sessions that can prevent them from ganging up on him. Yet here he is inviting them to send permanent representatives to Ottawa where they can question his every move.
• The Senate now has two elected senators and 103 non-elected. Only Alberta elects senators, though other provinces say they may follow suit. Which raises the prospect of a second branch of government divided not only along political and regional lines, but also according to their fundamental view of their own authority. Should elections spread, with Quebec and Ontario both strongly opposed, you get a chamber in which the members don’t even agree on their role. Elected senators may strongly feel the right to pursue the provincial issues on which they were chosen, while unelected feel more beholden to the federal authority and the party that appointed them. Committees will be divided not only on the issues, but on how deep their authority even extends to deal with the issues.
Abraham Lincoln, referring to the threat represented by the split between North and South, famously said: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Canada’s prime minister is working towards establishing two divisions at the very heart of the federal process: a Senate divided between elected an unelected, federal and provincial; and a government divided into a powerful House on one hand, and a newly-empowered Senate on the other.
It’s a monumentally bad idea, maybe the Tories’ worst. There are plenty of other problems facing the Tories. They don’t need to create a new disaster for themselves, or for the country.
Original Article
Source: National Post
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