Stephen Harper introduced his Senate reform bill which plans to make the upper chamber a more democratic entity. While that may sound like a good idea, it deserves a sober second thought like all other legislation brought to the Senate.
This legislation outlines two major reforms to the red chamber: provincial elections would occur to elect senators and senators will be limited to serving for 9 years. The first problem is that this contradicts the constitution. The constitution says that senators serve until they are 75. This was changed by amending the constitution, which previously said they serve for life. The new bill should also have to go through the amendment process – not just breeze through parliament because of the Conservative majority.
Constitutional contradiction aside, this bill does not seem like a good idea. Right now, the Senate is actually productive, which is something that people forget. The Senate revises and amends every piece of legislation passed by the House clause-by-clause. Look at the recent Canada Post legislation: senators had representatives from the government, union, and company speak and be questioned. The law was still passed, but at least it was thoroughly scrutinized and all parties involved got a chance to plead their cases and answer questions from the senators.
Elected senators will cause a huge gridlock in the legislative process. If senators are elected, they would start being more aggressive, causing bills to take exponentially longer to pass if some senators disagree with the House. Another problem is that our system would start to become the mess that they have in the United States where legislation is sometimes impossible to pass because the upper and lower houses are ruled by different parties. How could a law ever be passed if the House of Commons was controlled by the Conservatives while the Senate was controlled by the NDP? Nothing would ever get done!
Having senators with limited terms is not only unconstitutional, but also illogical. Among the reasons why senators stay for so long is their experience and it keeps them unbiased. This is the sober second thought that the senate is all about. It lets people with years of experience in various backgrounds make sure that the legislation is sensible. It allows every bill to be thoroughly scrutinized by unbiased people with different experiences, not just lawyers and political scientists. Having term limits will cause senators to start scrambling for a job when their limit is almost up, which could cause them to vote a certain way in order to please potential employers.
Overall, the Senate reform bill proposed by Harper is not the best thing for Canada. The Senate has served Canada for 144 years and everything seems to have turned out fine. That’s not to say there have not been a few things that I’d like to see changed, proportional representation of the provinces, for instance, but this bill is not the proper way to go about it. It’s probably going to be taken to court by Quebec because it violates the constitution where, hopefully, it will die. There is talk now of a referendum, and if that happens, please think twice about the repercussions of Senate reform before you vote on it. It’s the least that can be done for an entity where “Sober Second Thought” is the slogan.