O ver the past year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed 32 senators, just about enough to seize control of the upper house from the Liberals.

To a man and a woman, the Harper senators have vouched to implement the government's agenda. As a result, when Parliament reopens next month, the minority government can expect few extra hurdles to stand in the way of its bills once they have cleared the opposition-dominated House of Commons.

In the future, Harper will also have the leisure to use the Senate as a safe launching pad for legislative initiatives that might be dead on arrival with the opposition majority in the Commons.

Both houses would still have to concur for those to become law but it could be good politics to use the more hospitable Senate to showcase them, especially in the lead-up to an election.

But what if Harper had had his professed wish of an elected Senate – a wish according to a just-released Harris-Decima poll that the Prime Minister shares with a substantial majority of Canadians?

A look at the fractured federal political landscape suggests that, far from acquiring more control over the legislative destiny of its agenda, the Conservative government would almost certainly have had to give some up.

Sheer logic dictates that achieving a government majority in an elected Senate would be no easier than securing one in the Commons, and certainly harder than crafting one through patronage appointments.

Over the past year, it is hard, for instance, to think of a scenario that would have seen the Conservatives win 32 senatorial seats spread out across Canada.

The pair of vacancies in Newfoundland and Labrador would more likely have gone to the Liberals or the NDP.

Among the eight new senators from Quebec, there might well have been four or five sovereignist members.

Somewhere along the way, the legitimacy card, which has always been the ace up the government sleeve in a showdown with the non-elected Senate, would have been diminished or lost.

For who could say that an elected senator was less representative of voters' views than an elected minister?

With a Senate opposition majority bolstered by electoral victories, the risks of legislative gridlock between the two houses of Parliament would be increased rather than the opposite.

Some could argue that the risk of more gridlock attendant to an elected Senate would be a small price to pay to put a check on future prime ministers and future majority governments. But there are other hidden political costs to the plan.

Take Western Canada, the region where support for an elected Senate runs the highest.

For a rare time in modern Canadian history, the West enjoys a defining influence on the current federal government.

But in the Senate, there are 10 New Brunswick senators for the six allotted to British Columbia, and Alberta and Newfoundland have the same number of senators.

Empowering a Senate that grossly over-represents Atlantic and Central Canada sounds like a sure recipe to blunt whatever clout Western Canada might have on Parliament Hill.

In logic, changing the makeup of the Senate to achieve a more balanced regional mix should be job one for anyone who wants to move to an elected upper house. But that cannot be accomplished without substantial provincial support and a constitutional amendment – a route that Harper says he is not contemplating.

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Until he does, the Conservative promise of an elected Senate is a poison pill both for parliamentary democracy and for Western Canada.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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