The Martlet

The Cord Weekly WATERLOO (CUP) -- I need a senate, particularly on bar nights. I would certainly benefit from a sober second thought about my decisions. And when he used those very words – “sober second thought” – to explain the existence of the Senate, I’m sure John A. MacDonald was drawing on the afterthoughts of his own famous alcoholic excursions. In 1867, this phrase was supposed to comfort concerned citizens. Today, such paternalistic sentiments are of little comfort to the masses. Now there is an increasingly vocal movement to revisit the existence of the Senate and whether it should be elected. To do so however would be detrimental to the functionality of our democracy. Based as it was on the British Westminster model, the Canadian Parliament is made up of two bodies – the elected lower house, or House of Commons, and the appointed upper house, or the Senate. Expanding on his explanation, MacDonald said the Senate was created to curb the “democratic excesses” of the Commons. On the surface of things, this is a sinister sounding justification. Looking at how the Senate has historically functioned, it’s clear the upper house has rarely blocked the Commons from doing its job. The rare exceptions typically occur when the government tried pushing through legislation falling outside its mandate. Take Bill C-43 for example, introduced by the Progressive Conservative government in 1989, designed to remove a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. The bill came on the heels of a Supreme Court decision and was nowhere to be seen on the Tory policy radar beforehand. Many interpreted this as an opportunistic attempt by social conservatives to entrench their beliefs without consulting the broader population. After passing in the Commons, the Senate blocked it in 1991 in a historic tie vote (don’t ask – the point is that it was blocked). Only this and three other bills were vetoed by the Senate, all in the 1990s. Each time, the government sought to pass a law which stood in contravention of the governments mandate. The Senate also admits when it’s wrong. After the senate shot down the NAFTA bill in 1988, the Tories called an election on the issue and were swept back into power. The bill then faced little opposition in either house. As its role regarding legislation has lessened, the Senate has also taken on other equally important duties. Its committees have produced innumerable useful reports on topics ranging from consumer credit to the state of science in Canada – hardly subjects at the top of most politicians’ to-do lists. The problem with an elected assembly of senators is it would draw much deeper into partisan politics than ever before. Combined with the geographic basis for their appointment, this creates a complex web of loyalties leading to a great deal of confusion and meddling by both party and provincial leaders. The mandate of an elected upper house would have to become fully engaged into legislation. This would reduce Parliament to the legislative efficiency of the American Congress. Also, those previously mentioned webs of loyalty might easily lead to the kind of pork barrel spending seen in US politics – that is, in order to pass a law, a senator might have to incorporate into a bill the completely unrelated projects of other politicians to gain or maintain support. Moving to an elected Senate would just throw a wrench into our political machinery, and abolishing it robs us of an extremely useful resource.