The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Speculation of a federal election this fall is in the air. It is beginning to look like the Conservative government might be defeated or die at its own hands after Parliament resumes on September 15. One sleeper issue in a fall campaign could be Senate reform. Why? Because we are heading for a very serious institutional crisis. Stephen Harper is the first prime minister to explicitly tackle Senate reform by introducing legislation to limit Senatorial terms and provide consultative mechanisms, a.k.a. elections, for Senate appointments. These initiatives, however, have been brought to a standstill in the House and Senate, and in the meantime the prime minister has refused to make new appointments other than Bert Brown. As a consequence, attrition is whittling down the number of Senators to the point where the functionality of the Senate will soon be brought into question. There will be legal and political challenges to fill Senate vacancies, and as legislative conflicts between the House and Senate increase, the wheels of government will turn even more slowly. Simply put, we are getting into an institutional mess. We realize that the existing Senate is increasingly at odds with a democratic society, but alternative visions are slow to emerge. The Conservative government has taken some provocative first steps, but neither the ultimate destination nor a roadmap for getting there has been articulated. What the country needs from political leaders is a commitment to proceed with institutional reform, to map out a destination, and to sketch in a process to get there. It is far too premature to fight a campaign around different reform models, but it is not too soon for our leaders to recognize an institutional problem and to commit themselves to its resolution. We have to throw more creative talent at the tough institutional design problems, including innovative methods of election/selection and the distribution of seats to meet a new Canadian demography. Canadians also need a plan to make the existing Senate work while we map out more fundamental reform. We need a way to fill existing vacancies that does not choke off the prospects for reform. We need a Senate that contributes to the civility of parliamentary behavior at a time when this civility is strained by minority governments. As you prepare for the fall and campaign to come, spare a thought for Senate reform. This dog can no longer be left to sleep in the sun.
