A Grad Student's Proposal For Senate Reform

Method of Electing Senators -The Senate should be elected through a system of proportional representation: -On Senate Election Day, separate senatorial elections should be held in each Province and Territory in Canada. -The Senate elections shall be held on a fixed day (The first Saturday in October, for example) every six years. If elections are impossible due to a declared national emergency, the election can be held on a different day chosen by the Queen. -The ballots will contain a list of candidates peculiar to that province/territory. -Each candidate will appoint senators to the Senate based on the proportion of the total vote that s/he receives. -S/he may appoint his/herself to the Senate as one of the appointees. Election Process Explained -Let us assume a hypothetical election involving three candidates named ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ -Receiving 35% of the popular vote will entitle candidate ‘A’ to appoint 3 senators, leaving him/her with a 5% Popular Vote Remainder (or P.V.R.); -Receiving 57% of the popular vote will entitle candidate ‘B’ to appoint 5 senators, leaving him/her with a 7% Popular Vote Remainder (or P.V.R.). -8% of the popular vote is not sufficient for candidate ‘C’ to appoint any senators, and therefore this candidate is left an 8% Popular Vote Remainder (or P.V.R.). -In this example 2 Senate seats are still remaining to be filled. These remaining seats will be filled one after the other in sequence starting with the candidate with the highest P.V.R.. Thus, candidate ‘C’ with an 8% P.V.R. makes the appointment for the first of the remaining seats, and candidate ‘B’ with a 7% P.V.R. makes the appointment for the second of the remaining seats. The 10 seats allotted to the province have now been filled. There are now no more Senate seats left for candidate ‘A’ with a 5% P.V.R. to make another appointment. -We therefore have candidate ‘A’ (with 35% of the popular vote) making 3 appointments, candidate ‘B’ (with 57% of the popular vote) making 6 appointments, and candidate ‘C’ (with 8% of the popular vote) making 1 appointment. Eligibility to Become a Senator -One must be at least 18 years old and a Canadian citizen to be eligible to be appointed to the Senate. Replacement of Senator in Case of Resignation or Death -If a senator resigns/dies during his/her term in office, the candidate who appointed this resigned/deceased senator will choose a new senator to replace him/her. -If a senator resigns/dies who was a candidate in the Senatorial Election and appointed him/herself to the Senate, a person chosen by him in writing to be his/her successor shall fill his/her seat in the Senate. -If he/she had not chosen a successor in writing before the time of his/her resignation/death, a person to fill his/her seat in the Senate will be chosen in the following way: Each of the senators appointed by the resigned/deceased will submit the name of one candidate, and they (the senators appointed by the resigned/deceased) will chose a new senator to replace the resigned/deceased, by means of a plurality vote (i.e. the candidate with the most votes wins) amongst themselves in front of the Senate. If they cannot, in this situation, arrive at a plurality decision amongst themselves (i.e. no candidate receives a largest share of the votes), the candidates who are tied for first place in this vote shall have their names submitted to be voted on by all 10 senators from the province in question (5 if a territory). If still no candidate receives a plurality of the vote, the candidates tied for first place will have their names submitted to the Senate at large for a plurality vote. If the Senate at large is equally divided between/amongst the candidates in its vote, the names of the candidates will be submitted to the Queen, and the Queen will appoint a senator to fill the vacant seat from this list. -If it is the case that the resigned/deceased senator did not appoint any senators besides him/herself to the Senate, and s/he has left no successor chosen in writing, a senator to fill his/her seat should be chosen by plurality vote of the senators from his/her province/territory as outlined above, and if there is no winner, the same procedures to break the deadlock will be followed. Powers of the Senate -The Senate should have identical powers with the House of Commons, with one exception called the Special Right of the Commons to Break Parliamentary Deadlock (the S.R.C.): -The Special Right of the Commons to Break Parliamentary Deadlock can be invoked by the House of Commons after the Senate has twice vetoed a bill which has originated in the House of Commons. Upon the invoking of this right, the Commons may pass this bill with a two-thirds majority. If the two-thirds majority is not reached, the bill dies. Why Canada Needs This Form of Senate The House of Commons is well-equipped to bring forward the local concerns of individual ridings through its Members of Parliament elected in the ridings. A Member is responsible to the people residing in his/her riding and thus can represent these local concerns. This is a good system in this respect. A member, however, is elected by plurality in his/her riding alone, so the total popular vote in the nation at large is of little consequence in the forming of the government, since the government is formed by majority consent of the House of Commons. A candidate can be elected to the House of Commons with a very small minority of votes in his/her riding. Thus, a government with a minority of popular support can come to wield power over the vast majority of people who oppose this government wielding power. In a democracy, decisions should be made by majority vote, not minority vote. Clearly, in this sense, this is a bad system. At the time when the House of Commons was first created, it met very infrequently, and at the behest of the King. The House of Lords was convened together with it. Never was it thought that the House of Commons should choose the government of the nation. The King himself was the government. The executive was at his sole discretion, and power delegated only insomuch as it pleased him to do so. The House of Commons was designed as an advisory body to represent the will of localities to the King in order to help him make decisions and gauge public sentiment, and was not designed to choose a government which controls the executive, makes laws and directs the country. The House of Commons on its own is ill-equipped to choose a government on behalf of the people. It was designed as a meeting-place where the concerns of localities could be brought forward to the King. Democracy had nothing to do with this arrangement. According to the modern democratic sentiment that the King should not himself be the government, the selection of the government is left to majority decision by the House of Commons. The King chooses as his executive individuals with the majority support of the House of Commons. This means, as explained above, that the government is, the vast majority of the time, chosen in opposition to the will of the majority of voters. It might be thought that the first-past-the-post system (the victory-by-plurality system) in electing Members of Parliament is democratic enough to ensure responsible government, but this is not so. It is quite un-democratic and somewhat absurd. An immediate solution to the problem would be to have a second vote, and a third, dropping off the candidate with the least votes until a clear majority is reached. A reasonable and efficient approximation to this would be to allow only the top two candidates to run in the second vote. This would ensure that a majority of the voters in the riding have in the end given their consent to one of the candidates. If this were the case, the House of Commons would truly represent the democratic will of the electorate. As it now stands, it does not. Still, even with this proposed system of repeat ballots, third-in-popularity political parties will be ridiculously underrepresented, or not even represented at all in the Commons. This is a gross representation of the popular will and of the need for all large blocks of public opinion to be heard and to matter in the Ruling Forum that is Parliament. Thus, even though it is necessary that individual Members of Parliament be elected on a local constituency level to ensure that local concerns are represented in Parliament, it is also necessary to bring members to Parliament through a system of proportional representation. Proportional representation is needed to ensure that third and fourth-in-popularity blocks of opinion, represented by political parties, can have their voices heard in Parliament and have an effect on the governance of the country. This system of proportional representation cannot produce members who will be responsible to local concerns, since the members will be responsible to the party which selected them, and the party to the national electorate at large. Local and individual concerns will be passed over in a unicameral House elected by proportional representation. However, national concerns affecting the entire country are best dealt with by such a proportionally elected House, which is responsible to the entire country’s electorate. It is in our best interests to have two Houses: one House of Commons elected at the local ridings level with members responsible to the electorate of their individual ridings, and one Senate with members responsible to the nation’s electorate at large. In fact, this would be ideal, if it were not for the fact that Central Canada would remain so heavily predominant, due to its vastly larger share of the electorate. This predominance of the Centre, while democratic, obscures the very important fact that regions of a nation remain part of that nation by their own consent. Also, little participation in government by those people inhabiting the vast majority of the country’s landscape means that these vast lands will be badly managed since those administering it are responsible to those living in the Centre and not to those living on the landscape themselves. Territory is a crucial element in nationhood. A nation without land is merely a poem. It is essential that the vast landscape of Canada be better managed through greater representation for those living on it. With greater representation, more resources and better decisions can be had for these growing regions of the country, and they can be made to grow faster and in ways more in accord with the wishes of those living in them. Therefore, the Senate ought to be elected through a system of proportional representation where all provinces have an equal number of senators. This better representation of the Regions of Canada afforded by each province having an equal number of representatives in the Senate is an important moderating influence on the Centrally-dominated House of Commons. However, if the two Houses are absolutely equal in their powers, deadlocks could ensue where senators from regions representing a minority of the nation’s population wield enough power to continually defeat legislation put forward by Members of Parliament representing the majority of the country’s electorate. Because of this, the Senate’s power of veto must be able to be overruled by a strong majority in the House, since the well-needed influence of the regions in governance must not walk roughshod over the will of the vast majority of the people of Canada. This right of the House of Commons to overturn a second Senate Veto can be labelled the ‘Special Right of the Commons to Break Parliamentary Deadlock’. Giving the House of Commons the right to overturn a second veto by the Senate still gives the Senate the important power of delaying legislation that the Centrally-controlled House should think twice about, and in cases where the government does not have a vast majority of seats, the Senate can, quite fairly, be instrumental in blocking legislation which it and a particularly large Opposition in the House of Commons believe should be blocked. If the Senate is elected at fixed intervals of six years, as recommended here, Senate elections will be staggered with those of the House of Commons, the maximum term of which is five years. This allows for a greater frequency of national input into governance, and this will force the government to be more attentive to national mood at all times. The somewhat lengthy term of sitting for the Senate, six years, is justified in its comparative weakness to the House of Commons due to the Special Right of the Commons to Break Parliamentary Deadlock. While the maximum amount of time between the election of one or the other house of Parliament would be five years, statistically we must expect it to on average only two or three. This means that on average, every two or three years, a national election for one or the other house of Parliament will be held. This means that the people of Canada will be involved in national elections with much greater frequency than is the case now, while at the same time giving the individual houses of Parliament long enough lives to allow for long-term goal-setting. The Senate, with this Simple Senate Reform, will be fully independent of the House of Commons. In fact, even in cases where a senator resigns or dies, there is provision made to replace him/her by a decision made in the Senate, as outlined above in the proposals. The Prime Minister is not involved. One added benefit of the proportional representation system being used in the Senate is that it increases the chance of senators who remain popular with the electorate serving long terms and thereby accruing a great deal of experience in governance. This experience will contribute to the strong advisory role the Senate plays in its symbiotic relationship with the House of Commons. In this way, the benefits of deep experience that the current senators bring to weigh on legislation will not be lost in this elected Senate. Indeed, one can easily picture parties retaining a number of their senators from the old Senate into the new Senate. In fact, the Senate this new system of proportional representation produces is still an Appointed Senate, but one where the senators will be appointed, in effect, by the party leaders, according to the amount of the popular vote each party receives in the election. Indeed, not only the Prime Minister (as leader of his/her party), but all party leaders will appoint senators, and based on their party’s proportion of the popular vote in each province and territory. Thus, each party might have several highly skilled and experienced senators that they will want to appoint election after election. As senators can also serve as cabinet ministers, when parties come to power, they might want to draw on some of this expertise to help in their cabinet-decisions and in their control of the executive. In cases where a senator becomes at odds with his/her party over a matter important to his/her province/territory, there is nothing to prevent that senator from running independently of his/her party’s endorsed candidate in the next Senate Election, and if s/he receives even as little as 8-10% of the vote, can retain his/her own seat. Thus, with this proportionally elected Senate, we benefit both from the long experience that senators ought to bring to the parliamentary process, and from the responsibility and effectiveness that election entails. We have the best of both worlds. There is no reason why the Senate should not be allowed to introduce money bills, since it will be elected, and the House of Commons, with its representation by population, holds a somewhat greater degree of power. The current property and age requirements to become a senator do nothing to improve the Senate and rather on the contrary hurt it. A younger individual coming to and staying with the Senate for a long time can apply his/her depth of experience to the benefit of the nation. Property-ownership does not in itself bestow any special abilities in governance. Restricting membership in the Senate based on these two criteria is detrimental. The Senate’s traditional role as a chamber of primarily ‘sober second thought’ is retained with this proposal, but it is now a chamber that reaches out to the people of Canada, that allows for muffled voices to speak forth, that allows the Regions a more equitable share in governance but not overly so, and that gives voters a more frequent chance to be heard.