The Mark 2010

Harper’s proposals for Senate reform would merely extend the patronage system the PM claims to revile.

In his latest weekly column, the Minister of International Trade Stockwell Day chimed in on the topic of Senate reform, and in particular Prime Minister Harper's latest round of appointments. Day wrote:

Then there's the little (big) matter of being unelected. The Prime Minister has invited Premiers to come up with a way of getting their own citizens to elect the person of their choice within their own province. Then the Prime Minister will promise to put them in the Senate.

However, the suggested mechanisms to fill vacant Senate seats are joke-worthy at best. For example, in all of the proposals put forward by the Harper Tories so far, winning a senate election would not necessarily result in assuming a senate seat.

When the Conservatives took their first crack at reform back in 2006, The Ottawa Citizen reported:

... the [Conservative] bill proposes to establish a procedure where Elections Canada, which has the legal authority to conduct a federal referendum as well as federal elections, would conduct a form of plebiscite, likely only within provinces that have Senate vacancies.

The results would be presented as information to a prime minister to consider when filling a vacancy.

The consultation could not be legally binding on Harper or subsequent prime ministers because the Constitution stipulates only the Queen, on the advice of cabinet, can name people to the Senate. Unlike all other government appointments, where the Governor General's approval is enough, Senate appointments continue to receive direct approval from the Queen.

Even in the case of Bert Brown, who Albertans chose as their upper chamber representative in 2007, the actual appointment was, in the end, a result of a Prime Ministerial whim:

So far only Alberta has responded by coming up with their own Senate election. They allow for the names of Senate candidates to be added to the ballots during their municipal elections. The province picks up the administration costs and the people decide who their Senator will be.

The last time they did this the winner was Bert Brown. The Prime Minister kept his word and appointed him to the Senate. He sits today in that Chamber, quite proud to be the only elected Senator in that place of over 100 appointees.

Had the Prime Minister chosen to break his word, something he has been known occasionally to do, the people of Alberta would have come up with bupkis.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there is no mechanism to determine who can run as a candidate for the Senate. With most reform proposals under consideration, I could put myself forward. If I won, the Prime Minister could ignore the result. A good outcome, I suppose, but only achieved through an absurd process.

In his column, Day also considers the PM's most recent attempts at reform:

To deal with the problem of it being a life-long position the Prime Minister takes an innovative approach. Whomever the Prime Minister appoints must vow to step down after 8 years, no exceptions, no excuses. So each person he recently appointed, along with the ones he appointed earlier, will be done in 8 years. That's a major change.

No, it is a reform technique that is only as good as the vows of the appointees. Not to be too cynical, but the odds of a Conservative government still being in power federally in eight years is low. The odds of Stephen Harper heading up that government are infinitesimal. Either way, if any of these Senate appointees wish to remain in the upper chamber past that date, there is not a thing Harper or anyone else can do about it.

Day concludes:

One more thing about the latest round of Senate appointees, each one has agreed to work hard from inside the Senate to push for reform. That means when the next federal election is called we may see senators stepping down from the Red Chamber and running for office. That’s progress.

Yes, or we may not see anything like that, in which case we have the status quo passed off as progress.