An Insider's Look at Senate Committees.

AuthorParcasio, Marjun

When I first stepped into the Senate atrium and peered into the chamber, I recall experiencing a sensory overload of colour. Carpeted in a sea of red with gold leaf adorning the ceiling, the Senate is decorated in a style befitting a monarch, the colours hinting at the Upper House's regal connection. This connection is perhaps more explicitly made in the two thrones situated at the north end of the Chamber and the golden mace, symbolic of the authority of the Crown, sitting perpendicular to the crimson-upholstered seats of the Senators on both sides of the aisle.

With all the grandeur of the Senate chamber, it was sometimes easy to forget that the Senate also had a different face: one that was more modest, functional and certainly much less red. Elsewhere in the Parliament Buildings, in the East Block on Parliament Hill and even across the street in the Victoria Building, were simpler rooms with less pomp and circumstance but just as much a part of the Senate as the chamber itself. These rooms are the homes of the Senate committees.

Committees, in the words of the Senate's first female Speaker Senator Fergusson, are the "heart and soul of the Senate." While the Senate has been a much maligned institution in the eyes of many Canadians due to the unelected status of its members and in recent years as a result of scandals, the work of its committees is often underappreciated and overlooked. Similar to corresponding committees in the House of Commons, Senate committees hear from witnesses and review and scrutinize legislation. However, they also have the opportunity to study issues of public policy in depth and over a prolonged period of time, which is generally a luxury for the House whose members face much greater political and constituency pressures. Senate committees regularly produce detailed and comprehensive reports on both legislation and on other issues of public concern which have been lauded even by some of the institution's harshest critics. In this sense they play an important role in the legislative process, a nod to the idea that the Senate should function, in the words of Sir John A. Macdonald, as a chamber of "sober second thought".

Most Senators sit on two or three committees, often in areas in which they hold related professional expertise, or of particular importance to the provinces they represent. For instance, the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs currently counts among its members a number of...

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