• Home
  • Blogs
    • Politics & Policy
    • Just for Fun
  • Where I Stand
  • Letters
    • A Modest Proposal For Electoral Reform
    • Question Regarding May 22nd Article
    • Looking for a Critique of an Electoral Reform Idea I Had >
      • Prof. Andrew Heard's Reply
      • Prof. Tom Flanagan's Reply
  • SM-PV
  • Albert
  • Fundy Royal
The Tory Pirate

Moving Forward With Senate Reform

4/25/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
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.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    James Wilson

    Likes: Government Transparency, Constitutional Monarchy, Politics

    Dislikes: Political Dishonesty, Canadian Republicans, Intellectual Property

    Ambivalent Towards: Pears, the Green Party 

    Archives

    November 2017
    June 2016
    May 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

    Categories

    All
    2015 Election
    Alberta
    Albert County
    Assassination
    Brexit
    Britain
    By Elections
    By-elections
    Campaign
    Canadian Monarchy
    Climate Change
    Conservatives
    Convention
    Copyright
    Debate
    Democracy
    DPR
    Economy
    Education
    Elections
    Elections Canada
    Facebook
    First Nations
    Free Speech
    Fundy Royal
    GhostVolunteer
    Greens
    House Of Commons
    Independents
    Intellectual Monopoly
    Japan
    Just Not Ready
    Language
    Liberals
    Libertarian
    Link Storm
    Media
    Medieval History
    Mincome
    Minor Parties
    Monarchy
    NDP
    New Brunswick
    PANB
    Pirate Party
    Policy
    Poverty
    Prime Minister
    Progressives
    Provinces
    Quebec
    Quotes
    Random Thoughts
    R.B. Bennett
    Referendum
    Reform
    Republic
    Scotland
    Senate
    SM-PV
    Speaker
    Srsly Wrong
    Supreme Court
    Symbolism
    Technology
    The Tory Return
    Thought Experiment
    Unanswered Questions
    War
    Xkcd
    Yellowhead

    RSS Feed

Powered by
✕