Rightly or wrongly, Mike Duffy has been found not guilty, cleared of 31 charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. But while the Trudeau Liberals continue to reform the Senate, Duffy’s trial has shed new light on its deep-seated problems.
During the Harper era, the Senate was notorious for its noxious partisanship. No fewer than 14 defeated Conservative candidates got jobs for life, and high-profile appointees like Duffy functioned as little more than fundraising apparatchiks for the party while disgracefully pocketing salaries paid by the public.
But that hardly represented a break from the historical norm. Prime ministers, both Liberal and Conservative, have long stuffed the place with party loyalists and those chosen from their own ranks and used it for partisan advantage.
It’s said that the Senate is “broken.” Adjectives like “moribund” and “anachronistic” are closer to the truth.
The institution’s foundational purposes were essentially twofold: to give Canada’s four regions representation in the Upper House and provide “sober second thought.”
Despite its reputation for scandal, in its nearly 150 years the Senate has more or less performed the latter purpose without fail.
Let me explain.
The Senate’s founding ethos was quite explicitly elitist. At the 1864 Quebec Conference, Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, made the case for an appointed Upper House by telling his fellow delegates, “We must protect the rights of minorities, and the rich are always fewer in number than the poor.” Those appointed to this Upper House had also to own property.
“Sober second thought” had an aristocratic connotation from the outset: the caprices of democracy were to be checked by a learned council of social and economic elites.
Given this fact, it’s unsurprising that the institution quickly became a vehicle for patronage. Now it’s being reformed, in theory anyway.
In January the Trudeau government named a nine-member panel charged with selecting “non-partisan” candidates appointed on “merit” to fill 22 vacant Senate seats.
On paper, the reforms and justifying arguments are fairly simple: to address the Senate’s lengthy history of bad behaviour and excessive partisanship, a panel of distinguished Canadians will provide the prime minister with a shortlist of five potential appointees for each vacancy after consulting with representatives from business, labour and the arts.
In March, Trudeau named the first wave of senators, a group of seven esteemed Canadians with undeniably impeccable credentials.
But while many are likely to celebrate these reforms, they may turn out to be more aesthetic than transformative.
Because the Senate’s institutional architecture is part of the Constitution, the appointments panel has no formal standing and could effortlessly be abolished by any future government.
More strikingly, the potential candidates the panel offers will remain secret from the public, and the prime minister will retain the power he currently has to choose whomever he pleases. Once appointed, senators will still be able to join a Senate caucus if they choose and, barring criminal conviction or voluntary resignation, are guaranteed a plum job until the age of 75.
Despite these obvious limitations, it’s easy to see why some still look favourably on the proposal: the idea of non-partisan senators selected on the basis of their merits seems attractive in post-Harper Canada.
Unfortunately, in an important respect, the proposed reforms represent a continuation of the Senate’s founding ethos rather than a break from it.
What exactly constitutes “merit”? What qualifies one person to be a senator and not another? In announcing the reforms, Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef said the individuals chosen would be “of the highest calibre,” but by what measure will such calibre be calculated?
If good public policy can really be made by a council of rational-thinking elites, what purpose does democracy ultimately serve?
Democratic politics is fundamentally about the clash of ideas on what society is and how it ought to be structured. Citizens elect people who represent and debate their differing views.
While it may be possible to reduce the level of formal partisanship in the Senate, there is no such thing as disinterested “expertise,” because the assumptions underlying public policy, not to mention its ultimate objectives, are the subject of deep disagreements.
The government’s proposed changes are less a “reform” than a reification of the institution’s founding premises.
Democracy doesn’t need to be checked by an unelected institution: it needs to be actualized in an elected one. Which is why, if we want real democratic reform, we should be trying to fix the House of Commons and abolishing the Senate once and for all.
Luke Savage is a Toronto-based writer and political commentator.
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