{Power/Lines]

The Government of Canada announced in early July that it was accepting applications to fill vacancies in the Senate, one of the two legislatures—the House of Commons, which is elected, being the other—that must approve all federal government laws.

Maryam Monsef, the Minister for Democratic Institutions and the Member of Parliament for Peterborough-Kawatha, remarked on announcing the changes that the new application process was “an important innovation that not only better involves Canadians in our parliamentary democracy, but also enhances transparency.”

Unfortunately, Senators still have to own property of at least $4,000 and be at 40 years old, and there are only 105 positions in total, so the announcement is unlikely to have a significant impact on Peterborough’s seemingly permanent unemployment problem. But inviting the public to apply to sit in the Senate is a novel approach to legislative reform.

The change is undoubtedly well-intentioned, but making the Senate democratic will take a lot more than introducing an application process.

The Senate was always a job in the sense that the people who did it got paid to do it, but now it’s also a job in the sense that you can send a letter in explaining why you think you’d be good at it, and you probably won’t get it.

The change is undoubtedly well-intentioned, but making the Senate democratic will take a lot more than introducing an application process. And besides, there are easy ways to make the Senate work better that don’t involve changing the appointment process at all.

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To dispel any initial confusion, Senators in Canada are not elected as they are in the United States and elsewhere. They are appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, so basically by the Prime Minister, serving until age 75. Appointees are generally either fiercely loyal partisans of the party in power or late-career policy nerds, or both.

Canada’s Senate is not, at its root, a democratic institution. It was established by the framers of the Constitution explicitly to provide a check on irresponsible action by the House of Commons: ‘sober second thought,’ it was called, at a time when almost everyone believed pure democracy would result in the eradication of private property.

The Senate is a partisan legislative body, though it tends to be less partisan than the Commons—as it should be. The members represent parties, but they usually represent the party that was in power when they were appointed; shortly after a change in government, the Senate mostly represents the opposition.

Which is probably a good thing. Our electoral system, which operates on a plurality basis, exaggerates shifts in public opinion and inflates the power of the winning party. While this has some advantages in providing a clear mandate within hours of elections, it marginalizes parties that represent very large minorities of voters almost completely.

The obvious solution to the problems of the Senate is for the Prime Minister to simply stop appointing terrible, corrupt people, and start appointing people who would do a good job.

A massive majority, such as that enjoyed by John Diefenbaker in the late 1950s or Brian Mulroney in the mid-1980s, can easily become drunk with confidence in the popularity of its mandate. Having Senators around to delay and derail it is often helpful, as it was under Mulroney with the Free Trade Agreement, and under Harper with his attacks on unions.

Most of the time, the Senate works very quietly, making minor tweaks to legislation in areas of their expertise. In many instances it functions as what Colin Campbell called “a lobby from within,” subtly buffing the edges off legislation that would harm companies whose boards they’re on. And in many instances Senators do nothing at all.

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The obvious solution to the problems of the Senate is for the Prime Minister to simply stop appointing terrible, corrupt people, and start appointing people who would do a good job. This is, by and large, how judicial appointments work. And it’s how the new process will work: Justin Trudeau will be presented with a list, and he’ll choose people from the list.

The government uses the Senate to make flamboyant gestures that score them media points, and don’t answer the pressing problems posed by the Senate.

But the government is not interested in simply doing a good job of things, not when there’s a showy alternative available. The Prime Minister famously kicked all the Liberals Senators out of his caucus in 2014—which was pointless and constitutionally confusing, but certainly got people’s attention.

Rather than making the Senate work better by appointing better people who’ll take their constitutional role seriously, the government uses the Senate to make flamboyant gestures that score them media points, and don’t answer the pressing political, constitutional, and procedural problems posed by the Senate.

If people volunteer to be in the Senate, and are appointed with much fanfare, what will their relationship with the government be? Do Senators who get the job have the legitimacy or the courage to stand up to a pushy Prime Minister? Is the Prime Minister their boss?

Procedurally, what happens to deliberation and process, which is what the Senate is best at, if it is to be a democratic body? Arcane policy debates can’t be democratized away: if the people appointed understand the finer points of tort law and port regulation, they aren’t plain folks; if they don’t, what use are they in the Senate?

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It really isn’t possible to have an elected Senate in Canada. You can change the appointment process and you can change who gets appointed, but you can’t make it any more democratic than the Prime Minister, who has a popular mandate based on support in the House of Commons, appointing people.

It’s interesting, though, that the government believes a good model for democracy, in the absence of elections, is the job market. Have these people ever had a job? Having a job usually means having a boss, a person who, for better or worse, controls how you spend most of your waking hours, and determines whether you get to eat well or eat poorly. Is that democracy?

We live in a deeply unjust society in which merit is accumulated much more easily by those with access to money and cultural capital. Merit is only as democratic as society is; which is to say it isn’t.

The human resources logic here is that jobs are given out based on merit, whereas political appointments are capricious and corrupt. But we live in a deeply unjust society in which merit is accumulated much more easily by those with access to money and cultural capital. Merit is only as democratic as society is; which is to say it isn’t.

If we find ourselves looking at the job market and thinking it should be the model for how democracy should work, we should give our heads a good long shake.

Illustration by B Mroz.