REGINA - Saskatchewan will likely introduce draft legislation this fall to become the second province, after Alberta, to elect senators.
The new Saskatchewan Party government would then seek public feedback on the bill and hold a vote on the legislation in the spring, said Don Morgan, the province's justice minister and attorney general.
"I have always found it troubling that our Senate has been appointed rather than elected," Morgan said in an interview.
"So when the opportunity started to manifest itself that we could have the potential for elected senators without going through full constitutional reform, I thought 'this is a good idea.' Our premier thought it was a good idea, so we started to go forward with it.
"My sense is that the people of our province will welcome it."
Morgan said the province would look at the system Alberta has used, where voters have chosen senators in waiting and then submitted a list of the top candidates for the federal government to choose from.
Saskatchewan may rank the candidates according to how many votes they receive, he said.
The idea would be to hold such a Senate candidate vote in conjuntion with either civic elections or a provincial or federal election to avoid the cost of a stand alone contest.
Morgan said the federal government has welcomed Saskatchewan's overtures about holding a Senate candidate election.
"I've had my ministry officials in touch with them. I think our premier has had a discussion with the Prime Minister on it as well. They were very receptive," he said.
Saskatchewan has six senators. One of those senators, Conservative Leonard Gustafson, could retire by the end year or next year.
There has been increasing criticism over Prime Minister Stephen Harper's refusal to fill Senate posts. There are now 14 vacancies in the 105-seat chamber.
Last fall the federal Conservative government reintroduced two Senate reform bills: one to impose a term limit of eight years on senators and the other to create a process to elect senators.
With one exception, the bills are identical to those introduced in the last session of Parliament, which stalled in the face of objections from opposition parties and provinces.
Senators are currently appointed by the prime minister and may sit in the chamber for up to 45 years until mandatory retirement at age 75.
The Senate election bill, which was allowed to languish on the order paper last session, remains unchanged. It creates a process by which voters in each province would elect nominees to the Senate, with the winners to be appointed by the prime minister to fill vacancies in the chamber.
Both bills have drawn criticism from a number of provinces, including Quebec and Ontario, which contend that changes to the Senate require a constitutional amendment approved by at least seven provinces.
