When Albertans go to the polls Nov. 22 to vote for their provincial election candidate, they can also vote for at least four people they hope will be elected, then appointed, as senators.
It’s the third time Albertans have voted for a senator-in-waiting, hoping the prime minister will appoint the candidates they choose.
In 1990, Stan Waters became Canada’s first elected senator when prime minister Brian Mulroney named him to the Senate. Waters died a few months later.
Since then, Ted Morton and Bert Brown, the two elected senators-in-waiting, have waited while prime ministers have filled Alberta’s six Senate seats with their own candidates.
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This is Brown’s third election for the senator-in-waiting position. The retired farmer from southern Alberta said he would continue to run and lobby for Senate reform until the way senators are chosen is changed.
“I think this is the most important thing for our country,” said Brown, chair of the Canadian Committee for EEE Senate (elected, equal and effective).
Brown said he has watched as a string of federal governments have destroyed Canada. He believes an elected Senate would add checks and balances, especially to deal with the growing concern that Ottawa is eyeing up Alberta’s wealth.
“We contribute $9 billion a year to confederation and confederation doesn’t even give us a voice,” said Brown, referring to the equalization payments Alberta sends to Ottawa to be redistributed to poorer provinces.
“People in Canada have wanted senate reform since the days of Sir John A. McDonald,” said Brown.
“It’s not a subject you’re going to see Canadians marching in the street over … but they do want this.”
It costs the province about $3 million to hold the senate election. Some people feel it’s a waste of money since the chances are slim that prime minister Paul Martin will appoint the winners.
Alberta premier Ralph Klein said earlier that his party couldn’t afford to run candidates.
“It’s very, very costly and despite the fact that we’re fairly well off … it’s very expensive to fund a senatorial election.”
Pressure from within the party forced Klein to change his mind and the Progressive Conservatives endorsed five candidates.
The terms of the two existing senators-in-waiting, Brown and Morton expired Sept. 20. Morton is running as a Tory candidate in the election.
Brown has spent the past few days driving to MLA offices to gather signatures for him and the other four PC-endorsed candidates. Collecting the 1,500 signatures needed to run as a senator-in-waiting is one of the hardest things the candidates need to do.
“Fifteen hundred signatures is an incredibly onerous task,” said Brown.
By comparison, MLA hopefuls need 25 and MPs need 100.
Lori McKee-Jeske, Elections Alberta spokesperson, said senatorial candidates must also have a $4,000 deposit, be at least 30 years old and own at least $4,000 of property.
About 10 people picked up the candidate information packages, but no one had filed nomination papers as of Oct. 29.
Nominations close Nov. 8. Alberta voters will vote for the senators-in-waiting the same day they vote in the provincial election, Nov. 22, but on a different ballot.
Four of the candidates will be elected as senators-in-waiting for the three vacant Alberta seats. The fourth candidate would be a spare. Alberta has six of the 105 Senate seats.
The other PC-endorsed candidates are Betty Unger of Edmonton, who ran an Alberta nursing services company and ran as a Reform party candidate against Liberal MP Anne McLellan, David Usherwood of Cochrane, a farming consultant, Jim Silye, a former one-term Calgary Reform MP and local businessperson and Cliff Breitkreuz, an Onoway, Alta., farmer and two-term Reform MP.
The Alberta Alliance party has endorsed Michael Roth of Red Deer, a former Reform party candidate and businessperson Gary Horan of Edmonton, president of the Alberta Alliance and Vance Gough, a professor at Mount Royal College who ran in the last election as an independent and came in third.
Former Edmonton publisher Link Byfield and economist Tom Sindlinger, a former Calgary MLA, are running as independent senators.
Usherwood doesn’t believe there’s much chance the senators-in-waiting elected from Alberta will be chosen by the prime minister to fill the vacant seats, but he believes the election is important.
“It’s part of the process of changing the belief that senators are best elected as opposed to best appointed.
“It’s a principle thing,” said Usherwood. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Breitkreuz said that after two terms as a Reform MP, he believes it’s time to jump back into politics to promote the cause of senate reform.
“I wanted to get back into the fray to promote Alberta’s interests and defend Alberta’s interests in Ottawa,” said Breitkreuz.
He believes Albertans send too much money to Ottawa, in the form of equalization payments, with little to show for it in return, especially in rural areas.
“The resources that are in Alberta are Alberta resources,” he said.
Byfield said while some people may dismiss the senate race as unimportant because the prime minister has ignored the earlier senate candidates, the election adds another legitimate voice to politics.
