OTTAWA—NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair signalled his party will try to make the future of Canada’s troubled Senate a key issue in the Oct. 19 federal election.

“We’re going to be looking first and foremost for a mandate from the Canadian voting public in October. We are in favour of Senate abolition,” Mulcair told reporters as the auditor general’s scathing report on senators’ spending reverberated on Parliament Hill.

But Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau accused Mulcair of trying to win votes with a catchy but unworkable approach to the Senate.

“The fact of the matter is, when I sit down with the premiers, Canadians won’t want us to be arguing and haggling over the Constitution,” Trudeau said. The public wants action on such issues as the economy, jobs and climate change, he said Wednesday at a press conference.

The Conservatives repeated their position that the issue of reforming or doing away with the Senate must be on hold for now as far as the federal government is concerned.

But the explosive audit of Senate expenses opened up a broad debate on parliamentarians’ accountability, with some saying the auditor general should be asked about a possible investigation of MPs’ expense reporting and office spending.

HOW THE PARTIES SEE THE FUTURE OF THE SENATE

Conservatives:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has long favoured making the upper chamber an elected body. Failing that, he has suggested scrapping the institution. But, in response to a government reference, the Supreme Court of Canada said reforming or doing away with the Senate cannot be accomplished without agreement by some or all of the provinces. Harper said he was disappointed in the “status quo” stance of the court.

“Our position has always been that the Senate should be reformed, and if it cannot be reformed, then it should be abolished, but the Supreme Court has ruled on that, on the necessity of having unanimity among the provinces to abolish it,” Tim Uppal, minister of state for multiculturalism, said Wednesday. Referring to the NDP call for ending the Senate, he said, “So essentially, that argument itself is one that is not going to work.”

New Democrats:

The party’s MPs say that, despite the constitutional hurdles, the Senate must be scrapped because the public is demanding it.

“Across the country, Canadians are telling me that they want us to work towards Senate abolition,” Mulcair said.

If the NDP gets a mandate in the election to terminate the upper chamber, “I’m going to work non-stop” to make it happen, Mulcair said. “I’m not going to be like Stephen Harper and throw in the towel on Senate abolition.

“I’ll be talking with the provinces and I’ll be talking with people like (Saskatchewan Premier) Brad Wall who doesn’t have a lot in common with me on many other levels, but he agrees that we should be getting rid of the Senate.”

Liberals:

Trudeau said Canadians want “real change” in the Senate but the Conservative and NDP approaches aren’t helping things. “Mr. Harper has promised for years that he was going to change the Senate, with no ability to keep his promises. And now we have Mr. Mulcair doing exactly the same thing as Mr. Harper, which is: Promise what people want to hear but know full well that he is not going to be able to deliver it.”

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With the Senate scandal bubbling last year, the Liberal leader pushed 32 senators out of his party’s national caucus. And he has proposed a new appointment process for Senate seats in which an independent panel would appoint eminent Canadians to the institution on a non-partisan basis.

“We put forward a concrete plan to remove political favouritism and partisanship from the Senate and that’s what I’m proud that we moved forward on,” Trudeau told the media.

Green Party:

Elizabeth May says her party favours turning the Senate into an elected body “with a lot more accountability.” But that would require very difficult constitutional change, she added: “Everything about that question is a perfect political football for people who don’t want to get anything done because it will require opening up the constitution.”

In the meantime, the parties should focus on improving the democratic integrity of the Commons, May said.