THERE is a way, and only one way, for the Conservative government to significantly reform or abolish the Senate.
It is not the way prime minister Stephen Harper and various Senate critics suggest.
It would not be unfair to put all the recent proposals and threats against the Senate into the Conservative file marked “electioneering” or maybe “being able to show we have not abandoned our core principles.”
This Conservative government could not abolish the Senate, no matter what a national referendum proposed. When Harper threatens that senators either accept his proposed changes or face extinction, he is speaking from a position of weakness.
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This Conservative government could not pass a bill to force Senate elections.
This Conservative government cannot even force a change as minor as setting Senate term limits.
So next time Harper or some other Conservative talks about Senate reform or else, take it for the political rhetoric that it is.
These goals may warm the heart of the Conservatives’ Reform core and they may be laudable. They simply aren’t going to happen in the near term.
Here’s why. The Canadian Constitution, approved by the British Parliament in 1867 as the British North America Act and updated in 1982, requires the Senate to approve any change in the constitution. Significant Senate reform, including elections and abolition, would require constitutional amendment.
With this Senate, dominated by Liberals appointed until they are 75, significant change is not going to be approved anytime soon.
It no doubt makes Senate reform zealots want to spit on Pierre Trudeau’s grave and Jean Chrétien’s doorstep since those two prime ministers are responsible for the vast majority of appointments that make the Senate overwhelmingly Liberal for several decades to come.
But that is the law of the land and no court would set aside the constitution to allow the advance of a political agenda.
So what is the way forward?
The Conservatives and Harper will succeed only when appointments set in place enough reform-minded senators like Alberta’s Bert Brown to approve government reform legislation. That would require many years of Conservative government, which is far from a sure thing.
Or it would require such a change in public opinion that a prime minister of any stripe would want the legitimacy of an election to choose new Senate appointments. That is how the American Senate moved from a patronage haven for state governors to one of the most powerful elected bodies in the world.
But to suggest there is a shortcut is simply electoral politics to give the Conservatives another forum to attack the Liberals for their ‘culture of entitlement’ stance.
Still, all those frustrated Senate reform advocates who think that without reform this 19th century creation should be abolished might want to think again.
It is properly noted that without an Upper House, undemocratic as it is but still a chamber of sober second thought, the House of Commons run by a majority government becomes a virtual dictatorship for five years.
At least 95 percent of the time, the majority government is elected with a minority. Without at least one parliamentary balance, how democratic would that be?
