Senate Reform, Part II

If there is one thing that most Canadians agree upon, it's that the Senate in its present form can't continue. Unfortunately, the consensus ends there. While the Triple-E Senate definitely has its supporters, there are others who will argue just as passionately that the Senate should be abolished. The latter group is reputed to include more than a few federal Members of Parliament. It is perhaps understandable that democratically elected officials are frustrated on those (admittedly infrequent) occasions when legislation they helped create is held up or even defeated by an unelected body. (A secondary argument is that increased funding for parliamentary researchers means that the Senate's role of reviewing legislation is no longer as important as it used to be).

While their methods are very different, both the advocates of Triple-E and the abolitionists want to rid Parliament of an institution that the majority of the public perceives as lacking legitimacy. However, support for a "new and improved" - as opposed to an abolished - Senate comes partly from a growing dissatisfaction with the federal government's lack of responsiveness to regional concerns. In addition to providing a house of "sober second thought," one of the Senate's original purposes was to represent regional views. While, Triple-E supporters are also disgusted with the use of Senate appointments as a "patronage plum," they want a reformed Senate that will fulfill its original mandate of regional representation.

Besides agreeing that change is necessary, most Canadians feel that if the Senate does continue, Senators must be elected. In fact it is the first E, "Equal," that is the most contentious. There is very little agreement about how the Senate seats should be distributed. As noted in the previous article, Triple-E supporters believe Senators should represent the provinces, with an equal number of Senators coming from each province. On the other hand, many people, particularly in Eastern Canada, feel that regional representation is sufficient. The main argument against equal provincial representation is the disparity in provincial populations. The example most commonly used is to compare the populations of Prince Edward Island and either Ontario or Quebec: why should a province with a population of under 150,000 have the same number of Senators as a province with a population of over three million?

While both the west and the Atlantic provinces are upset with what is seen as the domination of central Canada in the House of Commons, the idea that this must be counterbalanced by an equal number of Senators for each province is more popular in the west. Several interesting alternatives to equal representation have been put forward. For example, it has been suggested Canada adopt a representation system similar to the German Bundesrat, where there are three seats for smaller Lander (provinces), and four and five seats medium and larger size Lander respectively. Even the Canadian Alliance (formerly the Reform Party) has been rethinking some aspects of Triple E. Pointing out that equal representation of the provinces might conflict with Reform's fiscal policies, Dr. Ted Morton recently proposed a rather complicated arrangement based on regional equality, with some adjustments for population disparities. While individually Ontario and Quebec would have more Senate seats than any other province except British Columbia, the remaining regions together would control seventy percent of the Senate seats.

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