The right way to reform Canada's Senate
There is a cynical aspect to the opposition campaign against the Tories' Senate-reform plans. Most critics claim the government's proposals to elect senators and limit the length of time they may sit in Parliament's upper chamber are invalid because they would require Constitutional amendments -even though such changes could almost surely be accomplished through simple acts of Parliament. Meanwhile, the critics' favoured option, Senate abolishment, would not only require an amendment, it would need the consent of all 10 provinces, something that will never happen.
The government of Stephen Harper has introduced two bills, one that would allow provinces to hold Senate-selection referendums; the other that would impose a nine-year term limit on senators appointed from 2008 onward. As Conservative Senator Hugh Segal points out elsewhere on these pages, imposing a limit on senators' tenure is nothing new. In the early 1960s, Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson imposed a retirement age of 75 on Senators (before that, Senate appointments were for life) and no one called for a first-ministers' conference to negotiate an agreement.
Moreover, the senators appointed since 2008 -Tories all -have had to pledge to leave in less than a decade, so no one affected by the term limit can now claim to have been misled.
Furthermore, while Mr. Harper and his government want provinces to hold elections to pick a new senator when one leaves office, the results of these votes would be non-binding. Each new elected senator still would have to be appointed by the Governor in Council, as is the case now. Voters in a province with a senate vacancy might choose who they want in the post from a list of nominees selected by political parties, but the final appointments would still rest with the PM, as is the case under our longstanding constitutional scheme.
Of course, in practice, few prime ministers would run the risk of bringing the wrath of voters down on their heads by ignoring their democratic choice. But the truth is that, in technical terms, what the Harper government is proposing is not really "elections," but "consultative referenda" that, over time, should lead to a parliamentary convention by which no prime minister would dare appoint a senator who had not been endorsed by his or her province's electorate.
As noted above, these changes are timid compared to the option favoured by the NDP and the Quebec and Ontario governments -getting rid of the Senate altogether. While most constitutional amendments can succeed if they find the backing of seven of 10 provinces representing at least 50% of the national population, getting rid of one of our fundamental political institutions would require all 10 provinces to agree. That is just not going to happen; Alberta would block such an effort, even if no other province stood with it.
In any event, getting rid of the Senate isn't the right choice: A federation as diverse and far-flung as Canada's, with so much of its population highly concentrated in its two central provinces, needs a counterbalance to representation-by-population in the Commons. But it is also important that such a body has democratic legitimacy, which is why Mr. Harper's initiative is so important.
Despite all the caterwauling to the contrary, the Tories' twin reforms are not a threat to Canadian democracy nor its constitutional scheme. Indeed, some might argue that they don't go far enough. But short of a new round of painful, risky constitutional negotiations, they go as far as they can. And, with time, they might just set in motion an evolved Senate that is provincially equal, elected and effective.
As the PQ crumbles
Though it is too early to book the hall, federalists are getting ready to celebrate what appears to be the imminent implosion of the Parti Québécois, the separatist provincial political party founded by René Lévesque in 1968.
Four MNAs already had quit by the time a fifth, Benoit Charette, followed suit on Tuesday morning. Mr. Charette said that he tried to convince the party to shelve the holding of another referendum on separation, at least for a first mandate, but found that the idea was "written in the party's DNA" and could not be changed. Quebecers aren't ready for a referendum, he told the media, and a third unsuccessful referendum would be "disastrous."
Mr. Charette's case is interesting because he can't be lumped in ideologically with the four others who quit the PQ in recent days -Louise Beaudoin, Pierre Curzi and Lisette Lapointe, later joined by JeanMartin Aussant. That group generally is as strongly prosovereignty, and impatient with the go-slow approach favoured by party leader Pauline Maoris. Mr. Charette, on the other hand, is in the opposite camp: He realizes that, as the Bloc Québécois' disastrous performance in the May 2 federal election shows, most Quebec voters want noting to do with separatism. Indeed, Mr. Charette (age 34) was one of the 12 younger members of the PQ who recently signed an open letter addressed to former PQ premier Jacques Parizeau, a sovereigntist hardliner, asking him to stop meddling in party politics.
Meanwhile, the three original PQ defectors have held a public meeting to explore alternatives to the PQ -a "parallel" party which, of course, would be headed by someone other than Pauline Marois.
Ms. Marois, whose receipt of a 93% approval rating at the party's April convention now seems eons ago, has become the scapegoat for the party's troubles. But as political observer Joseph Facal has noted on his blog, the PQ's problems pre-date her tenure. "Since 1994, the PQ's election results show a steady erosion of its vote: 45% in 1994, 43% in 1998, 33% in 2003, 28% in 2007," he wrote. "With four successive leaders at the helm. It is in fact Ms. Marois who stopped the slide in 2008. It is therefore too simple to blame everything on her."
The reasons for the slide run deep. For one thing, many Quebec voters now are recent immigrants who want nothing to do with parochial separatism squabbles animated by a nativist conception of Québécois identity (a conception that Mr. Parizeau epitomizes). Moreover, even many erstwhile Quebec nationalists now shrug their shoulders at the separatist cause -because the province has won so many powers and fiscal prizes from successive federal governments (including Mr. Harper's) that there seems little left to fight over.
The schisming of the PQ likely would do little do increase the prospects for separatism. But the move would shake up Quebec politics: A recent poll suggests a new party headed by former PQ cabinet minister François Legault would get 33% of the vote, sweeping to power and crushing both the PQ and Jean Charest's scandal-ridden Liberals -despite the fact that many of Mr. Legault's views seem quite fuzzy (though he has been clear in saying that he would put the question of Quebec's identity on hold). Just as the orange wave washed away the Bloc federally on May 2, a demand for change seems poised to sweep the province in advance of the next provincial vote in 2013.
If federalists want to get out in front of this wave, they have to present a credible alternative to the status quo as well -and the obvious one is a departure from Quebec's love affair with statism. Last year, the well-attended kickoff of the Réseau Liberté Québec, or Quebec Freedom Network, shows that energy is building amid the province's long-dormant conservative cadres. Indeed, the poll cites above suggests that a rightward tilt in the province, in the form of a merger with the free-market-oriented Action démocratique du Québece, would give Mr. Legault's as-yet-unofficial party 41% of the vote.
Perhaps there is hope not only for federalists, but small-c conservatives, in Quebec's changing political landscape.
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