Pearson-Shoyama Institute
Place du Canada

The Canadian Senate

Why not replace the Canadian senate with a body that would better represent the various regions of Canada. Rather than having the Federal Government appoint senators, why elect senators at each provincial election. Each province would recieve twenty seats or the same number of seats the province holds in the House of Commons. A province's representation in such an assembly could rise to a maximum of twenty seats.

In this way smaller provinces would not be represented on an equal basis as the larger provinces, yet there would still be the opportunity for equal representation to be achieved in the future. Senators would be elected during provincial elections. Each provincial party would publish a list of twenty prospective senators in order of precidence. Senators would therefor be elected using a proportional representation system where a political party winning fifty percent of the seats in its assembly would send fifty percent of its candidates to Ottawa to sit in the new senate (ie ten). In this way the views of the respective provincial governments would be represented in policy making.

A revamped senate should not have an absolute veto over government legislation originating in the House of Commons. It would have a suspensory veto of three months over money (ie budget) bills, and a semi absolute veto over other pieces of legislation. In order to overcome a semi-absolute veto, the House of Commons would have to either ammend a peice of legislation so as to satisfy the concerns of the senate, or pass it twice over the space of two consecutive sittings of the House.

In my view, such an upper house would be able to have an important influence over Federal policy, but would at the same time be unable to completely block a government's efforts to pass important legislation. I realize that this is a pretty rough picture I'm presenting here and it requires some fleshing out. Still, it seems to me that such a system just might work.

Jason Braida
Dept of History
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario

braidajr@mcmail.ca