Styling The Senate

One of the most despised political institutions in Canada gets a new look

- Simon Lewsen

Canadians can’t stand their Senate. In a Nanos Research poll from March 2018, one in five respondents reported that, when they hear the phrase “Senate of Canada,” the words ineffective and pointless immediately spring to mind. Others described the Senate as corrupt, outdated, and a waste of money.

The upper house of Parliament was created in 1867 as a kind of review board to scrutinize bills before they became law — and to enable what John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, called “sober second thought.” The country’s 105 senators are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the PM. Technically, they have the power to kill parliamentary bills outright, although they haven’t done so since 1939.

While the Senate doesn’t have public opinion on its side, it does have the constitution. In a 2014 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that abolishing the Senate — a move favoured by nearly a quarter of the country, according to the recent Nanos survey, and at least one political party, the NDP — would require unanimous consent from all ten provinces, the House of Commons, and the Senate. (Yes, the Senate would have to vote for its own demise.) As long as the Supreme Court’s judgment stands, the Senate isn’t going anywhere.

Even reform is hard to pull off. In 2006, Stephen Harper took office as prime minister with a plan to populate the Senate with elected officials. To this end, he introduced a bill that never became law. Justin Trudeau opted for a less-ambitious overhaul: rather than being chosen via prime ministerial fiat, the candidates now have their names submitted by an independent advisory board to his office for approval. This idea drew criticism — could senators really be nonpartisan if their tenures had been blessed by the prime minister? — but at least it was feasible.