Canadian Senate Reform

Secondly, the Canadian Senate has been considered a controversial institution due to the belief of it being a place of privilege and patronage. From that belief emerged the reform ideas of how to counteract the controversial reputation that the Senate had gained, especially in response to unfair province representation. From the reform proposals there are those that are popular and those that are not in addition to the different views of the political parties on what they consider the right Senate reform is. The idea of Senate reform was most prevalent during the 1980s as the disapproval of the Senate reached a new high point. The most popular reform proposals were that of the Triple E, having elected senators, and abolition. The people argued

The 1979 Pepin- Robarts Commission and 1980 Quebec Liberal Beige Paper argued for increased representation of regional interests in the federal levels of government though the use of appointed Senators by provincial governments. (Stilborn 1992, pg. 31) Provincially appointed Senators would have allowed the provinces to influence federal actions that impact provincial areas. The original idea for the Senate was to offer a second opinion to bills that the House of Commons passed. With having provincial appointed Senators, it would cause the Senate to move away from representing Canada on a whole to being more focused on representing Canadians on a provincial basis. Another reform proposal was the idea of having term limits, as done in the United States of America. Term limits would reduce the amount of corruption, create a less stagnant and more fresh decision making body, and allow the senators to be more effective since they only have a few years to make a change. Problems with term limits is that more inexperienced people could be appointed/ elected and not many potential Senators in their 30s-50s would want to run for Senate. The latter is the main problem as with term limits the Senators would be limited to having their position for only a certain amount of time and thus have

A constitutional amendment is a very tricky task to accomplish and is not something most Prime Ministers wish to take on. Not only that, but the political parties in Canada have different views on what reform is best for the country, few of them are favored by seven provinces. While under the leadership of conservative Prime Minister Harper his government attempted to submit two Senate reform proposals to Parliament without getting constitutional amendments. His first proposal never became law due to being refused by the then liberal dominated Senate while his second proposal Bill C-7, the Senate Reform Act, was also refused due to needing a constitutional amendment to implement it. (The Canadian Encyclopedia, Senate) The Senate Reform Act would have limited terms to nine years and allowed provincial elections for senators. In 2014 the Supreme Court of Canada made it clear that parliament could not engage in unilateral constitutional reform and that the provinces must be considered in Senate structural change. (Supreme Court 2014, pg. 707) After the rejection of his proposals Harper decided that he would not appoint any more senators, he did so in order to convince the provinces to agree to his reforms, which never occurred as he lost the next election. As for the New Democrats Party, they would prefer the proposal of abolishment of the Senate. There has yet to be a NDP Prime Ministers