Prime Minister Steve Harper did it again last week. With little prior warning, he disclosed his intention of carrying out yet another promise he made during last winter's election campaign. He intends to launch a "step-by-step" reform of the Canadian Senate, arguably the most baffling and pointless legislative body extant in any Western democracy.
To Ottawa's seasoned skeptics his announcement was doubly shocking. First, unlike almost all his prime ministerial predecessors, Harper apparently takes seriously the promises he made back then.
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One of those predecessors, Liberal Jean Chretien, announced at one point that he considered it unfair to demand that politicians fulfill election promises, made in the heat of the battle for votes. Any elector would be a fool to expect they'd be acted upon, Chretien declared. An election is not the time to discuss serious political issues, said another predecessor, Tory Kim Campbell. Harper obviously has a somewhat different view.
Second, and equally amazing, the particular promise he's chosen to act on is Senate reform. He actually plans to change that venerable museum piece, the fossil remains of the compromise that put Canada together 139 years ago. It didn't work at the time, and has never worked since – in both senses of the word.
Canada's "Fathers of Confederation," in negotiating a form of government for the four English colonies and one French one, which had refused to join the American union in the 18th century, assumed they needed an "upper house" in Parliament. They had two models to consider: the British House of Lords and the American Senate.
The prime objective of the two most powerful entities in the confederation, the future Ontario and Quebec, was to establish what were effectually "colony" provinces to east and west– hewers of wood and bearers of water to foster industrial and financial growth in the central regions. The American model, designed to prevent big states from exploiting the small ones by giving each state equal representation in the Senate, therefore became an object of horror in Canada.
So what Canada adopted instead was a farce. Canadian senators were appointed for life by the government in power (though now they are generously pensioned at 75). It became an extended care home for party loyalists. It has great powers to amend or veto legislation, but the tacit understanding is that it will never exercise them, and it hardly ever has. The cry for "Senate reform" is as old as the country itself, but has never happened, nor even been seriously attempted.
True to the original plan, Ontario and Quebec (especially Ontario) grew steadily stronger and wealthier, with the others lagging ever further behind. As the populations of the two big provinces grew, so did their hold on the all-important House of Commons, which is elected on a rep-by-pop basis. Canadian elections are often decided before any votes are counted west of Ontario.
But in the 1970s something changed. With the formation of the OPEC oil cartel, oil prices began a wild ascent. Oil-rich Alberta began growing bigger and wealthier in a most unbecoming and un-Canadian way. Although resources and the revenues derived from them were technically under provincial control, the Liberal Trudeau government of the day simply seized much of this revenue for the benefit of "all," meaning chiefly of Ontario and Quebec.
The resulting rage in Alberta engendered a political movement that eventually produced, among much else, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. One of the other results was a massive outcry in the West for an American-style second chamber. Known as "the Triple-E Senate," it would be Elected, would Equally represent each province, and would be Effective in that it could veto or amend legislation– that is, could exercise the powers the Senate already possesses.
But Harper, once elected, was generally expected to quietly forget all this. Thus the shock last week when he made an unprecedented appearance before a Senate committee studying (what else?) Senate reform. There he announced plans to appoint only elected senators, and for a fixed term: six to nine years.
Since the Senate itself could veto this legislation, he appended a warning. There are only three possibilities for the Senate, he said: Leave it as is; reform it in stages as he is suggesting; or abolish it. The first is no longer acceptable to the public. The second, though difficult, is not impossible. If it fails, the result would be the third. In short, no more lifetime job. This is the kind of language political appointees can be expected to understand.