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The expense scandals, the epic confusion that followed the government’s half-considered reforms, the repeated episodes of brinksmanship as the newly envirtued Senate threatened to defeat this or that bill, these rate barely a mention, in Harder’s account, beside the Senate’s “robust bicameralism,” its “positive track record” and contributions that have been “effective, policy-oriented and always respectful of the role of the representative House of Commons.”

Ah yes. About that: if the Senate were so “always respectful” of their respective roles, it’s curious Harder should feel the need to spend 51 pages explaining what those roles are. But then, that is because it is so exquisitely complicated, so delicately subtle, requiring such a delicate balance.

Photo by Justin Tang / The Canadian Press

On the one hand, there are those who believe a clutch of appointees, even if they sit together in the same room, should have no power to defeat legislation passed by the elected members of the House of Commons, a position he admits has the support of at least one previous government, plus “a number of pundits, academics and former senators,” not to say much of the public. These are the critics who worry that a less partisan, more “legitimate” Senate will increasingly challenge the authority of the Commons.

On the other hand, there are those who believe the Senate should be both partisan and powerful, and who fret that if it is not the former it will not be the latter, but rather a largely impotent “advisory committee” — a position he attributes to exactly one person, the former Conservative leader in the Senate, Claude Carignan.