Senator Raoul Dandurand: Champion of an Independent Senate.

• Author: Price, Peter
• Position: Sketches of Parliaments and Parliamentarians Past

As the number of independent, non-partisan senators has grown, Canadian parliamentary observers have been increasingly mentioning the name Raoul Dandurand in conversations. The author of this article suggests the legacy of Senator Dandurand, who long ago advocated for an independent Senate that was more of a dispassionate reviewing body than a replica of the partisan House of Commons, is particularly relevant to the Senate's contemporary discussions and debates on its procedures and practices.

After Mackenzie King's Liberals formed government following the 1921 election, the new Government Leader in the Senate was wary of changing his seat in the chamber. To Raoul Dandurand, the electoral reconfiguration of the House of Commons and the formation of a new government had little bearing on the work of the Senate. "I disliked the idea of crossing the floor," he said in his first speech as Government Leader. "What did that action purport? Its meaning was there were in this Chamber victors and vanquished." (1) This made little sense for a legislative chamber that he understood to be more of a dispassionate reviewing body than a replication of the partisan politics of the House of Commons.

The principle of the Senate's independence and its functioning as a non-partisan chamber were hallmarks of Senator Dandurand's approach to the upper chamber. Appointed to the Senate in 1898 by Wilfrid Laurier, he served in the upper chamber for 44 years, including two decades as either Government Leader or Opposition Leader in the Senate and one term as Speaker between 1905 and 1909.

Dandurand often expressed concern that the Senate had become something different than originally imagined, shaped increasingly over time in the image of the partisan environment of the House of Commons. The solution that he proposed was to eliminate the conduits of partisanship in the Senate altogether. He envisioned a chamber without party cleavages and without official government and opposition sides. In its place, he proposed that the Senate be run by a "floor managing committee," consisting of around 15 senators that would oversee the carriage of legislation through the chamber. For government bills, ministers would select senators to sponsor the legislation in the Senate, ensuring that responsibility was diffused in the Senate rather than concentrated in the hands of a Government Leader.

He was never successful in convincing Prime Minister Mackenzie King to support his ideas...