CALGARY – Dan Hays seems a most unlikely Senate reform advocate because he and his father spent almost four decades in the unelected chamber.
For 23 years until he voluntarily retired last year, seven years before he had to, the 69-year-old Calgary lawyer and rancher sat in the Senate as a Liberal in key roles including speaker and opposition leader.
Before that, his father, former agriculture minister Harry Hays, spent 16 years in the Senate.
However, Hays says he has concluded that without serious reform, the Senate will one day die.
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“I think it has to be modernized before a political crisis atmosphere arises that could lead to growing sentiment for abolition,” he said on the 37th floor of the downtown Calgary office tower where he now practices law.
“And I think abolition would be very unfortunate. I came to believe over the years that the upper chamber does very good work.”
However, it is little changed from the bulwark against democracy that the fathers of Confederation constructed in 1867, and Hayes said in modern democratic Canada, that makes it an undemocratic relic with little legitimacy.
However, he said he recognizes the obstacles that lie in the path of Senate reform, including premiers who are uninterested in seeing the Senate become a more legitimate voice of the regions and some provinces who are overrepresented in the existing mix and see no reason for change.
“There are many hurdles and I do not minimize them at all,” he said.
“It will take bipartisan agreement, a return to the spirit of 1867 when compromises were made to create a great nation. A partisan approach to this will not work. But I’m 69 and I’m optimistic reform will come in my lifetime.”
Senate reform, while not yet an election issue by Conservative candidates in Alberta, is a key part of the party policy base.
When he visits the Prairies during the campaign for the Oct. 14 election, prime minister Stephen Harper is expected to once again promise Senate reform.
He will rail against the “Liberal-dominated unelected” Senate for blocking Conservative legislation in the last Parliament, including a proposal to limit Senate terms to eight years.
Legislation to require a provincial consultation election to express popular opinion about who should be appointed to fill a vacancy did not move through the House of Commons.
Hays, a former Liberal Party of Canada president, believes Harper is making a mistake by trying to make Senate reform a partisan political issue.
“It is the prime minister’s tactic, but I don’t think it really serves the cause of reform well,” he said.
Instead, Hays thinks Harper should work with opposition parties to try to find a package of reforms that could win wide parliamentary approval.
At the same time, the government should issue a report that puts the case for Senate reform in a broader context of why it is needed.
The last step would be negotiations with the provinces to find a compromise that would end the status quo.
For his part, Hays has modest proposals of his own, changes that he said Parliament could make without involving constitutional change and federal-provincial negotiations.
They would include ending the 1867 requirement that a person must have $4,000 in property assets to be eligible for an appointment and cleaning up such Senate rules as attendance requirements and the process for expelling a senator who falls afoul of the law or the public trust.
Only then should the much trickier questions of regional representation in the Senate, the powers of the Upper Chamber and the selection process be tackled.
