“One of the big objections or concerns about the government’s ongoing agenda of the last six years and a lot of other Senate reform efforts, is that what exactly would a new, enhanced, Senate do?” said Jonathan Malloy, chair of Carleton University’s political science department. “The government doesn’t really have a good answer.”
Bill C-7 is the eighth bill of this type in the six years since Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) has been elected. Both the Senate and the House have initiated reform legislation, though no attempt has gone past second reading.
Kate Davis, spokesperson for Minister of State for Democratic Reform Tim Uppal (Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Alta.) said that the bill is a priority and opposition delay tactics have been holding the bill up.
“Minister Uppal has, on a number of occasions, called for the opposition to stop stalling the Senate Reform Act and bring the Bill to a vote before all members of the House of Commons,” said Ms. Davis via email.
Mr. Uppal introduced the bill in June 2011. It has been called for debate in the House seven times at second reading. It has been debated for more than 15 hours, and at least 35 NDP MPs have spoken to the bill, compared to about six speakers each from the Liberals and the Conservatives. The New Democrats would like to see the Senate abolished outright.
But the government has often used closure or time allocation to limit debate and opposition objections, and pass bills through the legislature speedily.
“The minister says that it still remains a high priority and yet they’re not doing anything to push it forward,” said Liberal Nova Scotia Senator James Cowan, the opposition leader in the Senate.
The proposed legislation outlines a voluntary framework for provinces to establish Senate elections, based on Alberta’s model. The proposed legislation obliges Senators to retire after either a nine-year term if they were appointed after October 2008 or retire at the of 75, whichever comes first.
Prime Minister Harper has appointed 46 Senators since his election in 2006, and 42 are still sitting. Everyone but Sen. Brown, who is set to retire in 2013 at the age of 75, would be subject to the term limit. The countdown on nine-year terms would start when the legislation is passed. If it’s passed this fall, affected Senators would have to step down in 2021.
There are currently 58 Conservatives, 40 Liberals, one Progressive Conservative, and two Independents in the Senate. There are four vacancies, for a total of 105 seats. There is one vacant seat in Nova Scotia, one in New Brunswick, and two in Ontario. There will be one in Quebec on July 21 when Conservative Sen. David Angus retires at the age of 75.
Three Senators—one Conservative and two Liberals—are due to retire by the end of 2012.
Alberta Conservative Senator Bert Brown, who was the second Senator appointed after a provincial nomination election, said that Senate reform remains “very much” a priority for the government. Stan Waters was the first Senator appointed after an election in Alberta, but he died shortly after that time.
Sen. Brown said that the delay in passing the federal legislation is due to the fact that British Columbia and New Brunswick are considering their own reform legislation.
The Prime Minister’s “comment has always been that if the province in discussion has a bill to elect a Senator for a vacancy, he will not touch that until the bill has gone through and a Senator has been elected from that province,” said Sen. Brown.
“The provinces are getting every opportunity to go forward with their own bill,” he added.
Sen. Cowan said that while he personally supports the idea of term limits for Senators and is not opposed to the idea of Senate elections, the bill neglects to deal with a number of fundamental questions surrounding how the process would work.
The purpose of provincial Senate elections is to create a list of “Senators-in-waiting,” as Alberta calls them, who would be appointed by the Prime Minister when a seat representing that province becomes available.
The bill leaves it up to provinces to decide how to administer Senate elections, whether the provinces do them at all. Sen. Cowan said that leaving it up to the provinces is “ridiculous.”
“We’ve got 10 provinces and three territories. We’d end up with a number of different means of how people got elected to the Senate,” he said.
Sen. Cowan also pointed out that the rules on campaign fundraising and spending would vary from province to province. The bill also leaves the provinces footing the bill for Senate elections. The Alberta Senate elections of 2004 were run simultaneously with provincial elections and cost the province $1.6-million.
“Why would provincial taxpayers pay for an election to a federal House?” he said.
“We would be foolish to rush headlong into that without thinking that through and coming up with a solution,” he stated.”
Prof. Malloy said that he believes technical issues could be solved.
“There’s a lot of mechanical things that are unanswered and that are important, but in the end I think you could probably come up with answers,” Prof. Malloy said.
At the same time, he said that these open questions could be one of the factors in the lack of progress on the bill, even though the Conservatives now hold a majority in the House and the Senate.
“I’m not quite sure why they haven’t moved forward. It could be because they are a bit reluctant that they don’t have good answers, it could be simply that it’s not a priority on their legislative agenda, I think that’s certainly a part of it. It could be that there are objections within the Conservative ranks,” Prof. Malloy said.
When Mr. Harper appoints Senators, he asks them to commit to Senate reform. While all initially agreed, some have since gone back on their promises. In the lead-up to the current bill being introduced in Parliament, a number of Conservative Senators expressed their displeasure with the measures.
Sen. Brown said that while caucus support is still an issue, it won’t prevent the reform bill from moving forward.
“It’s like any other bill— it doesn’t matter, all you need is a majority vote. You don’t have to have unanimity,” Sen. Brown said.
The reform bill was introduced in the House rather than the Senate last year due to backlash in the Conservative Senate caucus, according to a CBC report. At the time, Sen. Brown wrote to his colleagues admonishing them for showering Mr. Uppal with complaints over the bill. Other Conservative Senators later stated publicly that their caucus was in fact not split over the reforms.
The most recent Conservative Senator to express his displeasure with the reform proposals was David Angus, who used his last speech in Parliament before retiring to make his views known.
“I seriously question…whether electing Senators is the right way to make us accountable to the people. We need to find a way to make us accountable. It is 2012: I think that is a no-brainer. However, I question whether we can maintain the quality and the high standard of 105 people from various backgrounds, with various degrees of expertise, who are here to provide sober second thought and careful consideration of legislation from the Commons,” he said June 20.
Quebec Conservative Sen. Pierre Claude Nolin, who was appointed by former prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1993, has also criticized the proposed Senate reforms.
Currently there are two elected sitting Senators: Sen. Brown and Betty Unger of Alberta. Sen. Unger was appointed to the Senate in January 2012.
If more elected Senators make it into the Upper Chamber, the mix of unelected and elected members could create “the house of Frankenstein” said NDP MP David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre, Ont.) during debate on the bill last fall.
“There would be people who would serve until age 75. Under this legislation there would be some people who would serve for nine years and some people who promised to serve only eight years who would get a free bonus year. Then there would be some provinces that elect people and some that would not,” he said.
Sen. Cowan said that the legislation would create a patchwork that would cause problems.
Prof. Malloy said that the consequences of having Senators of different provenance are unclear.
“It’s going to be hybrid, it’s going to be uneven, and, as I said, we don’t fully know what the implications of that are going to be, and to what extent we’ll see two classes of Senators or more,” he said.
Another serious problem is how disputes between the House of Commons and the Senate would be resolved. Sen. Cowan said that the government has yet to come up with a solution.
He added that based on the American experience with an elected Senate, and the fact that Senators would serve longer terms than Member of the House of Commons, the Red Chamber could start to overpower the House.
Because the act doesn’t force the provinces to hold elections, and it doesn’t modify the power of the Prime Minister or the Governor General to make Senate appointments, the government’s expectation is that the changes don’t require Constitutional consent.
Whether or not that this is the case is also a matter for debate.
Prof. Malloy said that there is no clear case as to whether or not these amendments would require the consent of seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the Canadian population.
“I think it’s one of the classic areas where it’s not absolutely crystal clear in the Constitution who has approval for these sorts of changes,” he said.
Sen. Cowan said that the changes are constitutional in nature and the government should consult the provinces before it passes the bill.
“At the very least, Mr. Harper should sit down with the provinces and say, ‘Look, this is what I want to do, what are your views?’” he said.
Alberta was the first province to hold Senate elections, in 1989. As this year’s provincial election took place, it also ran a round of Senate elections, voting Doug Black, Scott Tannas and Mike Shaikh as its newest Senators-in-waiting.
Saskatchewan passed legislation to allow Senate nomination votes in 2009, but has so far held off on holding an election because the federal government offers no funding for a vote.
In June, New Brunswick’s majority Progressive Conservative government introduced legislation that would lead to the province holding Senatorial elections. The province’s first Senate election is planned for 2016, but could be earlier if the federal reform act is passed, according to New Brunswick Premier David Alward.
British Columbia’s legislature is also considering Senate reform legislation.
Sen. Brown, who has championed Senate reform for more than 20 years and who is known for plowing the words “Triple E Senate or else” into a neighbour’s barley field, said that he has been in contact with the governments of Manitoba and Price Edward Island about Senate reform.
He told The Hill Timesthat on June 29 he received word from the P.E.I. government of Liberal Premier Robert Ghiz that the province would be putting together a committee to establish a P.E.I. plan for Senate reform.
Sen. Cowan said that the government should take a look at the whole of Canada’s Parliamentary system before focusing on Senate reform, and that it should address the deficiencies in its bill before it is passed.
“The time to deal with it is not later, the time to deal with it is now,” he said.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Jessica Bruno
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