It is not often I get to talk about issues related to the monarchy on this blog. I mostly keep that on the other blog I write
for. However the Monarchist League of Canada recently surveyed the main federal parties on their views towards the
Canadian Monarchy. One of the answers was curious though. The NDP's reply was thus:

Now there are a few things to address here. First, yes they are. The NDP has stated that if elected they will abolish the
Senate which, last I checked, was still a part of our parliamentary system. Now, it could be that the NDP means they have
no plans over the next four years. Senate reform is complex and some feel it could take anywheres from 5 to 10 years to
abolish the Senate completely. So the answer is either less than truthful or very limited in scope.

​The second issue with the response is the fact that it doesn't mention either the monarchy or the sovereign. Giving an
answer to a question without referring to the topic of said question is...odd. More odd when you consider that had the
NDP wrote that they weren't planning any changes to Canada's 'constitutional monarchy', rather than 'parliamentary
system', they could have avoided any potential confusion.

​The third issue is the entire second sentence. It is nice to know the NDP is focusing on these issues but it has nothing to
do with the question asked. Whether you can read a sentiment of "why are you bothering us with this?" into their reply
depends on what you think about the NDP to begin with.

Finally there's the quality of this response compared to all the other ones. Frankly, it was the worst of all four responses.
The Conservative Party have a solidly supportive reply. This is to be expected. While nice to see, for a variety of reasons I
can't vote for them. The Green Party reply is interesting as it merely points to Elizabeth May's comments in the House of
Commons back in 2012. Not that I mind this as to my knowledge it is the most supportive speech ever given for the Canadian Monarchy on the floor of the House of Commons. Indeed, I've not had a problem with Mrs. May's views on the
monarchy. However, the Green Party candidates I've talked to are a different matter. It makes voting Green a very risky
proposition. The Liberal response is the second on the issue I've seen from the Liberals since Justin Trudeau took over as
leader. I had a hand in getting the first one from Justin only a year after he took over as leader (I actually tried to get his
views during the leadership race but, alas, he probably had a lot of correspondence). Here is what he wrote in reply: 

The more recent quote is more clearly supportive. Now, I take any statement made during an election campaign with a
grain of salt but since the local Liberal candidate has also been positive on this issue it seems I will be voting Liberal this
time around. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

With the Supreme Court of Canada's recent ruling on the logistics of Senate reform Prime Minister Stephen Harper has nixed the idea. Basically he has proclaimed reform to be too much of a bother to deal with. Given Harper's dislike for having to negotiate its not a surprising stance for him but any prime minister would likely hesitate to move forward given the circumstances. The fact is that Canada is really, really bad at doing constitutional reform. The issue is mainly one of focus: the provinces see any attempt at reforming the constitution to be a chance to leverage their own interests. The reform bloats until eventually someone walks away from the whole mess. We would be better at this if we could keep the discussion to the one issue we actually want to handle. So how do we do that?

Despite the Premier of Saskatchewan stating that not even a referendum would help Senate reform to move forward there is a way that it could. Senate reform remains hugely popular among Canadians. What needs to be done is to leverage that support for reform and use it to counteract the provinces interests in addressing every issue they have with our constitution. You do this by crafting the referendum question in a particular way:

"Do you support the federal and provincial governments entering into negotiations to amend only the sections of the constitution that deal with the Canadian Senate?"

Premiers are not idiots. If 75% of voters in their province don't want them going off-topic they won't. Abolishment would still be hard to do, as it should, but there would be a real chance to negotiate reform. Requiring 7 provinces representing 50% of the population leaves plenty of wiggle room once the fear of another Meech Lake is removed.

I happened upon an interesting page on Wikipedia today showing every by-election in Canada since Confederation. Assuming the information is accurate it presents a fascinating snapshot of how Canadian political culture has changed over the years.

The Link

First off I'd like to admit that I was honestly surprised that the current Parliament hasn't gone much above average number of by-elections. It certainly feels like they are occurring more often. Although at 13 by-elections with a year to go in this Parliament it is slightly above average for the preceding ten Parliaments. The last Parliament to have more by-elections was the 30th (1974-1979) with 25!

41st Parliament (2011-present) Summary

By-elections so far: 13 (9 completed, 4 pending)
Parliament's Term: 3 years and counting
Causes: Resignations 12, Deaths 1

Just for fun lets compare with the 1st Parliament (1867-72) to see what differences there were.

1st Parliament (1867-72) Summary

By-elections: 46 
Parliament's Term: 5 years
Causes: Appointments 16, New riding 9, Deaths 9, To become a cabinet minister 6, Voided elections 1,
No election due to riots 1

The large number of appointments gives you an idea how much patronage was going on back then. I've included senate appointments in this total (although the technical terminology is 'being called to the Senate'). Regardless, of what you think of patronage appointments it is arguable that the ones made during this term kept Nova Scotia in the Dominion as one Anti-confederate was appointed to the Senate and Joseph Howe, a leader in the movement, joined the Conservative cabinet.

Nine by-elections also had to be held when Manitoba and British Columbia joined Confederation. Results were pretty evenly split between the Conservative and Liberal Parties with the addition of one independent rounding out the total.

Interestingly one of the nine deaths during the 1st Parliament was Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Hughes McGee, the only federal politician ever to be assassinated. He was killed by a radical Irish Fenian after leaving Parliament late one night. 

The six by-elections held because the MPs became cabinet ministers were due to an old rule that required you to run in an election if you were named to the cabinet. The theory being that voters should get to decide if they were ok with
their representative splitting time between the riding and their cabinet portfolio. In practice these by-elections were not usually contested. The practice was finally done away with in 1931 after a previous government was brought down because of them (part of the King-Byng Affair).

Conservative Barthélemy Pouliot's election was annulled and he stood in the subsequent by-election and won.

And finally there was one riding that did not hold an election in 1867 due to riots. As to what the riot was about I am not immediately able to find any information.

Hope you liked this look back at by-election history. In a short while I will post about Canada's unlucky 7th Parliament and its 83 by-elections.

Recent discussion about reforming the Senate in the media seems to have taken a backseat to the much sexier discussion regarding scandals in the Senate. Considering the media even has a rule of thumb that states 'if it bleeds, it leads' this is hardly surprising. Senate reform discussions are, afterall, nearly universally considered boring. However, being boring is not an excuse for a lack of ideas. There are currently three being proposed with each having pros and cons:



1. Get rid of the Senate entirely. This is the position of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the New Democratic Party.
2. Make it an elected chamber. This is the position of Her Majesty's Government, the Conservative Party.
3. Leave it alone but appoint better people. This is the position of Canada's Natural Governing Party, the Liberal Party.

While three clear options may seem like enough it has seemed to me from the start that once there were these three options people stopped thinking about alternatives. Actually, I should say after the first two were proposed. The Liberal option seems to exist simply so Trudeau doesn't have to support one of the reform measures his political opponents have advocated for far longer than he has been party leader.

So let's see if there are any innovative ideas left that have merit. I'm not claiming to be an expert on the Senate nor do I necessarily endorse any of the ideas discussed. These are merely ideas I threw up in the air to see what stuck to the ceiling. So lets begin!

 #1 Have the Senate selected via sortition. 

Yes, I wrote sortition. That is to say, the same method we use to choose people for jury duty. Sortition is a concept that seems distant from democratic thought but this was not always the case. Athens is considered one of the first democracies but did not use any kind of election to choose their leaders. Instead they used a mix of direct democracy and sortition. The Venetian Republic used a complex system of sortition using multiple rounds among a select group of
people. The advantages of such a system are two-fold: 

-It impossible to use a Senate seat as a patronage appointment since Senators would be chosen at random. This advantage is shared with electing Senators but as an added bonus Senators chosen via sortition are unlikely to belong to a political party (since only 1% of Canadians belong to ANY party). Advantage: Less partisanship and patronage.

-As the Senators would still not elected they wouldn't have the democratic mandate needed to become a competitor with the House of Commons. This is the main argument used against electing Senators. The fear being that we could end
up with the same kind of utterly stupid gridlock that takes place in the US Congress. However, the infusion of Canadians from many different backgrounds could potentially enliven the red chamber with new ideas. Advantage: A return to
the Senate being a body of 'sober second thought' without a dangerous increase in actual power.

Of course the devil is in the details as they say. Which is where many of the criticisms of such a scheme come in:

"We'll end up with a bunch of people in the Senate who don't know what they're doing"

The easiest way to avoid this would be to place restrictions on who can be a Senator. Obvious categories for exclusion include incarcerated criminals and those under 18 years of age. To those two groups you could add citizens not
resident in Canada, debtors*, and people who have not graduated with at least a high school education. We would have to play with these restrictions a bit and it would necessitate having a discussion on what qualities Canadians want in their legislators. Which by itself is a good discussion to have.

*Currently in place for Senate appointments now.

 "Due to not being elected it would be just as undemocratic as it is now"

Lets clear something up here: democracy cannot, and must not, be just about whether or not we hold elections. It should be a question of whether or not Canadians have the dominant voice in the running of the country. We do this primarily through elections but nothing says we cannot use other methods for increasing public control of government.

"A long term in office will make Senators corrupt"

Not a glowing endorsement of our current crop of Senators but there is an easy fix: term limits. I think the ideal limit sits at about ten years. Ten years is long enough for Senators to learn, and get good at, their jobs but not so long as to allow them to become overly corrupt. We should have better accountability of Senate expenses regardless. I would also add in that a person may only serve one term in the Senate. This is to establish serving in the Senate as a once in a lifetime honour for Canadians.

These are my thoughts on sortition as a means of selecting Senators. What is your view?

 #2 Have the Senate become more like the British House of Lords

This is actually a very old idea that goes all the way back to Confederation. John A Macdonald considered this but came to the conclusion that Canada lacked the environment suitable for a landed class and any aristocracy established would whither away. He choose instead to go with our current system of political appointments. Perhaps his theory was that Prime Ministers would be able to identify men of character and integrity and that the system would not be abused. If so, he was proven wrong pretty quickly.

Recently the idea surfaced again as a 'what if scenario'. Obvious problems include the methodology for creating an aristocracy in the modern world with every suggestion likely to anger someone. While Canada does have some nobles of its own they are concentrated on the East Coast for historical reasons and thus not representative of the country. Ennobling the wealthy runs into the duel issues of the wealthy not necessarily representing the best of Canada and the
practice being untraditional (nobles were originally selected more for their service than their wealth). Simply 'promoting' members of the Order of Canada would be unacceptable to people who feel the order has gained a number of unqualified members. In short, creating an aristocracy has problems.

But for the sake of argument lets say we did get by those problems. How would we select who was in the Senate at any one time? We could match the number of nobles to the number of seats but noble titles do die out. This means some future government may well get the chance to make a long-term appointment to the Senate. Alternately the nobility could elect the Senate from their own number. This latter option may have similar problems to simply electing Senators from the population.

However, the elephant in the room is that this solution would be highly unacceptable to Canadians and those supporting it as an option have some serious questions to answer, as I have shown. 

---

Let's hear what your proposal would be. Maybe you have the next great idea that will fix the Senate!