Why would Canada abolish the one chamber of Parliament that functions in the interests of Canadians?

For a generation Canadians have been asked to consider abolishing The Senate of Canada, even by such intelligent people as Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, not to mention a cadre of lesser lights. It is an appealing idea for those who think we have entirely too much government, that Senators are freeloading fat cats, that a Senate appointment is “a task-less thanks” (as Senate wit Hugh Segal says), and that it is an obstructive carbuncle on the body politic.

Much of this criticism is based on a lack of understanding of what the Senate does, exacerbated by the media’s almost complete neglect of the Senate until something egregious surfaces, like the absentee record of Senator Andrew Thompson who was living in Mexico.

It also ignores the virtual abolition of the House of Commons by successive prime ministers, who have so concentrated power in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office that the House has become staged theatre. Every vote and debate in the House is so highly controlled and so forcefully whipped that individual members of parliament have been silenced, or scripted, and the House has lost its ability to function effectively for Canadians.

This begs the question: Why abolish one chamber of Parliament when the other has virtually abolished itself?

Which leads us to examine what the Senate actually does, to see if it is providing value to Canadians. An excellent book by Senator Serge Joyal, Protecting Canadian Democracy, contains a chapter by Queen’s professor emeritus C.E.S. Franks which illuminates the real work of the Senate.

In comparing members of the House and Senate, he finds that Senators have better life experience and qualifications, and are more diverse (for example over 1/3 of the Senate is women as opposed to 1/5 of the House). They come from a wide range of backgrounds, usually after a career of significance. There are professionals from law, accountancy, and medicine; social workers; journalists; athletes; and business people. They are not people who might have run for public office, but are willing to serve. Many have served the political process by supporting the apparatus of democracy in political parties. Some have held public office as MPs, provincial legislators, or mayors.

Contrary to the popular view of overpaid fat cats, Senators make less than judges, senior civil servants, high school principals, and stockbrokers. Their tenure in Parliament is much longer than members of the House who, with an average parliamentary career of just over four years, have much shorter political lifespans than in other parliaments around the globe and the U.S. Congress. The longer tenure, coupled with the relative absence of enforced party discipline, allows focus on key issues of public concern, and the building of cross-party relationships that contribute to productive investigations. As Franks says, “members of both sides work together to unravel knotty problems of public concern….” By contrast, many members of the House are still finding their way around when their terms are up, and at any rate have little encouragement to become expert or focused in policy areas.

The Senate record of useful investigations is impressive. Senator David Croll chaired two critical investigations, on Aging in 1966 and on Poverty in Canada in 1971. The Poverty report became a signal document internationally. In 1970, Senator Keith Davey chaired an investigation on concentration in the media, which has been revisited by the Senate several times since. The Standing Committee on Banking, Trade, and Commerce has studied Canada’s financial institutions regularly since the 1980s, contributing much to the stability of our banking system, which has stood out in the last two years.

The Senate has done useful work on euthanasia and assisted suicide, on health care for veterans, on foreign affairs including signal reports on Canada-U.S. relations and on NATO, regular reports on the state of the fishery, and a wide range of other issues that proved too controversial for the House of Commons or had too long a time frame for the shorter term focus of the House.

Almost all of these reports have been of high quality, and their recommendations have often created key building blocks for Canada. In this regard, the Senate has completely outperformed the House of Commons for decades.

The most controversial activities of the Senate have been their approvals or rejections of legislation that the House has passed, the so-called “sober second thought.” This has frustrated the prime minister of the day, no one more so than Brian Mulroney when both his GST and Free Trade bills were submitted to investigation, with the threat of defeat in the Senate. In fact, in almost every case the Senate approves the legislation, but makes sure that it has been aired publicly, even if the media is usually an unsuspecting agent in the process, more consumed with outrage than insight. In fact, both the GST and Free Trade were critical changes by a majority government, and without Senate delay would have not been so thoroughly debated.

In many other cases, the Senate has played a critical role in improving legislation, although this is less the case now than formerly when the House didn’t have as good drafting capabilities. Prior to recent decades, House-approved legislation often had either internal conflicts or clashed with other legislation that weakened it, but drafting has improved. The higher quality drafting of legislation, which is now the Canadian norm, has obviated the necessity for such detailed Senate scrutiny.

The Senate’s role of providing high quality investigations into issues of importance to Canada, and even its periodic imposition of sober second thought, provide great value to Canadians. In an era where governments have severely weakened the House of Commons, this is no time to consider abolishing the one chamber of Parliament that functions well in the interests of Canadians.