Is Senate reform a dead issue?

• Author: Grimard, Normand

A lawyer, Normand Grimard was appointed to the Senate in 1990. He is author of L'indispensable Senat: Defense d'une institution mal aimee, Editions vent d'ouest, Hull.

The Conservatives formed a majority in the Senate before February 1, 1996. The resignation of Conservative Senator John Sylvain and his replacement by Liberal Shirley Maheu then reversed the proportions. At the time of writing, the political make-up of the Senate is as follows: 51 Liberals, 50 Conservatives and three independents, for a total of 104 senators. While a majority of one or even several votes in the Senate does not necessarily mean a nerve-wracking balancing act, the possibility of defeat is always there, especially in important votes on matters of principle. Party discipline can always break down. This article looks at some recent developments in the Senate and considers whether Senate reform should be put back on the political agenda.

The Senate seems to provoke a mean-spiritedness so obstinate, so close-minded, so doctrinaire, that it verges on caricature, and this is true even when the aim is its reform. Mordecai Richler, an author not often cited by French-speaking Quebeckers, wrote of the Meech Lake Accord that was reached in 1987 and rejected in 1990: "each Canadian province would now have a role in choosing its senators, which is to say it could reward its own superannuated bagmen and other political nonentities rather than those favoured by Ottawa." (1) I begin my remarks on this negative note as a contrast to four or five examples demonstrating just how well Canada's Upper House retains its valuable qualities in the contemporary context.

Over the past year, the Senate has "made the news" (according to people who do not make a practice of covering us) several times. The first was the vote on the Pearson Airport Bill, on June 18, 1996. This bill limited the right of private investors to claim damages as a result of the government's decision to cancel the deal they had made. Because Liberal Senator Herbert O. Sparrow voted with the Opposition, the outcome was 48 votes in favour, 48 against, undoing a victory the government majority had assumed to be a foregone conclusion.

A little later, on November 26, 1996, the support of four Liberal senators and two independents gave the Conservative Opposition enough of a majority (46-35) to block the constitutional amendment doing away with the denominational school system in Newfoundland. In constitutional matters, however, rejection by the Senate holds for only six months, as set out in section 47 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and the Commons can vote to reverse the Senate's decision. In this instance the Chretien government requested and got such a vote in the House on December 4, 1996. The loophole provided by section 47 was also used by the Mulroney government in 1987 to revive the Meech Lake Accord, which had been blocked in the Senate by the Liberals one month earlier. As I wrote in 1995, "Although new in law, this provision is no longer a theoretical one." (2)

Was the...