Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pledging to continue his efforts to reform the Senate, an ambitious feat that experience has taught him is much easier said than done.
For years, the Conservative leader has been pushing for several key changes to the red chamber, which he reiterated on the campaign trail this past week. He wants to:
- implement an eight-year term limit for senators
- give Canadians the chance to elect their senators themselves
- make the Senate subject to the same ethics code as the House of Commons
As prime minister, Harper has made several attempts to bring in legislation to change the Senate, but has so far failed to get his reform bills through Parliament.
But is it really possible? Can the top Tory make these changes happen? And can he do so without raising the ire of the provinces and plunging himself into a nasty fight?
When speaking with reporters in Ontario on Monday, Harper said the Conservatives remain committed to reforming the Senate while avoiding any thorny constitutional issues that "we're not prepared to undertake right now."
The modern Constitution Act of 1982 stipulates that any constitutional amendment to "the powers of the Senate and the method of selecting Senators" requires the consent of both Houses of Parliament, as well as the support of two-thirds of the provinces across Canada that contain at least 50 per cent of the national population.
Harper is insistent that he hasn't seen "a serious opinion suggesting that anything we're trying to do with the Senate is unconstitutional."
But there is no formal roadmap to revamping the way the Senate works and it is unclear how successful Harper could be in convincing his opponents to come on board with his plans.
With so many parties holding an interest in the Senate, it makes it difficult to come to any agreement on reform, said David Smith, a professor and senior policy fellow at the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy.
And any leader that tries to push through reform without consensus is setting himself up for failure by placing "the cart before the horse," Smith said in a telephone interview from his Regina office.
Not unless the courts say so
In pitching his overhaul plans to Canadians, Harper has argued that calls for Senate reform have been heard for more than a century and the time is ripe for change.
"I think it's overdue," he said, when speaking to reporters in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
"The first proposals on Senate reform were in the 1870s, so I think it's about time we begin."
But no matter how popular Harper believes the changes would be, he is going to face opposition from the provinces and quite possibly the courts in his quest to reform the Senate.
Ned Franks, a professor emeritus in the department of political studies at Queen's University, says Harper's likely game plan would be to bring in reform bills, to get them passed and then to do the same in the Senate.
Provinces that oppose his reforms will go to the courts "saying that they are unconstitutional because they are substantial changes in the Senate. That can only happen with the consent of the provinces," Franks told CTV.ca in a recent telephone interview from his Kingston, Ont., home.
"And Harper will argue that having advisory elections and term limits are not substantial changes. And so it will be up to the courts to decide," Franks said.
Under the current Senate set-up, the prime minister is able to appoint the candidate of his choice to fill any vacancies that come up. Harper, on the other hand, would prefer to see provinces choose their own senators through elections, whom the prime minister could then formally appoint.
While the election concept may appeal to some citizens, Smith said it prompts many practical questions. What kind of election expenses would be allowed under such a system? How would elected provincial senators affect the sway that premiers hold in Ottawa? Would voters follow federal or provincial election laws?
"I think there are a number of questions with regard to the proposal about elections, or advisory elections," Smith said.
Harper also wants to limit the amount of time that a person can serve in the Senate. At present, senators can work up until their 75th birthday, meaning that many end up spending decades as unelected parliamentarians.
But the view of the Conservatives, as Harper said in Sault Ste. Marie, is that it is "not appropriate and healthy in the modern age" for senators to serve for so many years in the Upper Chamber.
Smith said introducing a term for senators would likely not require an amendment to the constitution, though it would require the approval of the Senate itself.
Same Senate, same seat distribution
The plan for the Senate was first laid out in the British North America Act of 1867 (now called the Constitution Act, 1867), to create what Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, called a place of "sober second thought."
The Senate started out with only 72 seats, though it expanded over time and has 105 seats today. At present, Ontario, Quebec, the collective Maritime provinces and Western provinces each hold 24 seats, while the Upper House also has six senators from Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as a single senator from each of Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
But as time has marched on, the Senate seat distributions have stayed static, while populations in some provinces have grown significantly. Prince Edward Island, for instance, has two-thirds the number of Senate seats as British Columbia, despite having just three per cent of the population of the latter province. In a similar type of discrepancy, Ontario has the same number of seats as Quebec, a province that is half its population.
Franks said that Harper's proposed changes would do little to reshape this unequal distribution of the seats within the Senate, leaving it as "one of the least representative chambers in the world."
Ian Greene, a professor at York University's School of Public Policy and Administration, believes a Senate reform that takes place with the current distribution of seats will only make Parliament less functional.
"If his idea becomes law, we will end up with two similar elected houses of Parliament, except that the Senate will over-represent the Atlantic provinces, and under-represent Ontario and the West," Greene said in a recent letter he sent out to several newspapers.
"Having two chambers, both elected by the "first-past-the-post" system, will double the current dysfunction of Parliament."
Harper has also used his power to stack the Upper Chamber with Conservative representatives.
During his two terms as prime minister, Harper has appointed more than 30 Conservative senators, which has given his party control of Senate.
Harper's most recent attempt to reform the Senate occurred in November, when the Conservative government introduced a bill that sought to enact fixed term limits of eight years for senators.
The party asked for the unanimous consent of the House of Commons, but the opposition parties failed to support the measure and the bill died.
