The Senate of Canada
The big political news in Canada this past week: the Senate, and the shenanigans going on there. What a mess, eh? Entertaining, in a morbid, cynical way, but what a damn mess. What a bunch of entitled jerks. Partisan hacks, the lot of them, who care only about padding their own pockets, and now that sugar daddy Harper is pulling them out of the trough, they’re turning on the hand that fed them taxpayer money for the past few decades in an ugly, childish schoolyard brawl. Yet here I am, arguing that we should keep the Senate.
Wait, what?
You heard me. Indi – Indi the anarchist, Indi the enemy of the entitled elite, Indi the progressive federalist who wants to abolish the Queen – Indi says we should try to save the Senate. What gives?
Well, let me start by saying the obvious. The Senate as it stands right now is a joke. For decades it’s been stacked with partisan hacks as a cushy reward for effective fund-raising or other services to their party – their party, not Canada.
The net result of this strategy is obvious: witness one of the stars of the hour, Patrick Brazeau, whose public record since being appointed not only includes domestic violence against women (for which he has not (yet) been charged, or else he might be jailed and lose his Senate seat even if the audits go his way), but whose sparkling wit is such that when CBC journalist Jennifer Ditchburn criticized him for having the worst attendance record in the Senate, Brazeau’s response was to tell her to change the ‘D’ in her name to ‘B’. Yeah, really.
There are those who say that the problem is really only “the more recent appointees”. What they are referring to is the fact that Harper – despite being outspoken about the need to “reform” the Senate prior to 2006, even tabling a bill in 2004 to limit terms to 8 years (the bill died a quiet death and was never mentioned again – for a laugh, here’s an editorial hilariously trying to spin Harper’s blatantly partisan appointments as part of some master plan to reform the senate) – has singlemindedly stacked the Senate with Conservative cronies. Every single one of his 59 appointments has been a member of his own party. Not counting PMs who only held office for a few months (like Clark and Turner), no PM has done that since Sir Mackenzie Bowell (1894–1896, 13 of 13 Senators appointed were from his own party). Actually, 3 of the first 5 PMs did it, but then for almost a hundred years PMs appointed at least a few senators who were independent or from other parties… until Clark and Turner, though to be fair, they didn’t have much chance in their short terms. Every single PM in Canadian history whose term was more than two years appointed independents or people from other parties, except for two: Alexander Mackenzie, who, to be fair, was only able to appoint 16 in total because the Senate had only been created like five years before… and Stephen Harper. By comparison, Paul Martin was PM for just over 2 years, and he appointed 17 senators: 12 Liberal, 2 Conservative, 1 NDP (not recognized by the NDP, later became a Liberal), 2 Progressive Conservative (1 switched to Conservative, the other is independent). Not only have his appointments been shamelessly partisan, Harper even managed to dumb down the Senate in the process. And they haven’t even been shy about their partisan agenda: they notoriously killed a climate change bill in 2010 without even bothering to debate it – the first time in 70 years a bill was killed in the Senate without a debate. But while it’s certainly true that Harper holds the lion’s share of the responsibility for the current mess, he is not the only person who deserves blame.
So yes, the Senate is a mess. The recent revelations of all the misbehaviour, the pettiness, and so on… really, they come as no surprise. Canadians are understandably pissed off about it all, rallying behind the cry to just abolish it altogether, chanting the mantra about how bad it is to have “unelected” people overruling our democracy.
But here’s the thing: I don’t actually have a problem with the senators being unelected.
I’m not just saying that to be contrary, either. As big a fan of democracy as I am, I recognize its shortcomings.
Politicians whose careers depend on popular support are required to pander to the public to get that support. Even when the public is being monumentally stupid – which can and does happen, tragically often, too – politicians have to cheerfully go along with that stupidity, or they’re out of a job. It’s a fact often forgotten by zealous proponents of democracy, but some of the most horrific things done in history, and some of the most horrible people who ever lived, came with the full-throated support of the public.
Consider this, fellow secularists and atheists: Is it not true that our best friends in government are in fact usually not our elected representatives… but rather the unelected – appointed – justices of the Supreme Court, and fundamental rule sets like the Charter which can not be simply overruled by popular vote?
This is true in Canada, it is true in the US… it’s true just about everywhere: When you want sense to prevail, elected representatives are almost always a poor option to count on. Fundamental rule sets (like the International Bill of Human Rights, or the local constitution) and high courts are almost always more likely to do the right thing. Why? Because fundamental rule sets like constitutions, charters, bills of rights, etc., generally aren’t created unilaterally by a small group of people; generally speaking, they tend to be very carefully drafted to be appropriate in the broadest way possible. (Put another way, when people are writing a fundamental rule set, they’re usually writing it very carefully to avoid the irony of being hoisted by their own petard down the road.) The same effect makes courts usually more amenable to reason, too, because they rigorously stick to the guidelines laid out in these fundamental rule sets. When interpretation is necessary, they usually take the weight of setting precedent seriously, and interpret carefully.
Obviously these aren’t absolutes, and there are cases where the courts or the constitution are wrong and the elected officials are right. (An obvious example of that is the situation that led to our elected officials creating the Charter to begin with, to repair the flaws in the Bill of Rights that came before it.) But it’s generally true. Which sounds like the more likely situation: that the courts and constitution are granting undue privileges to religion while the elected officials are trying to stop that… or that the elected officials are giving undue privileges to religion while the courts and constitution forbid it? I think the latter case is far more common.
I am not opposed to elected officials creating the laws that guide our society. Given that we’re unable to create a perfect society mathematically, there is no better way to come close than by letting the people guide themselves through their elected representatives. Democracy works, when it works. I just recognize its limits. We can’t give absolute power to the popular vote. Some of the important stuff – justice, rights, and reality – can’t be determined by popular opinion. Democracy is great, but it needs restraint. It needs to be kept in check by the powers of reason. It needs sober second thought.
You might argue that we have the courts for that. But that’s not entirely correct, and even where it is correct, it is misguided. Firstly, the Supreme Court, can only veto bad laws when they actually violate the fundamental rules of our country – such as the Charter, and other Constitutional documents. They can also only react after a bad law has been passed, and it’s been applied, and they have a case with a plaintiff with standing. In other words, they can’t touch horrible laws that don’t actually violate the Constitution, or that no one’s actually managed to bring a case to them about. And bringing a case as far as the Supreme Court is expensive, and can take years or even decades. So the courts don’t really prevent problems, they just fix problems that have already gotten huge, after the fact.
I’d like you to try a thought experiment. Pretend, for a moment, that the Senate is not just a bunch of partisan hacks sitting on their asses and slurping up public money they were granted as a reward for helping their political party of choice, who don’t give legislation any thought – let alone a sober, second one – and merely vote the way their party leadership whips them to. For the sake of the thought experiment, pretend the Senate actually works… that it’s actually a bunch of educated and thoughtful intellectuals who take their responsibility to keep watch over our democracy seriously – who recognize that they should not overrule the democratic will unless they have a damn good reason. I know, it sounds crazy given the current situation, but just bear with it for the sake of the experiment.
Imagine what would happen if there was a public moral hysteria about, say, sex-selective abortion – abortions by parents who, for cultural reasons, want boys and not girls (for example). Now this is a very real problem (though there are questions about how prevalent it is in Canada), and we should be concerned about it. But if some kind of hysteria were triggered – say, for example, by a single very high profile case, or a sudden flurry of cases – people would probably, understandably, be pounding on the doors of their elected representatives to do something about it. If there were enough public outcry (or if politicians sensed it was a good issue to play up), elected lawmakers may be pushed into passing a law against any abortion after the parent knows the sex of the foetus. And who could blame them for passing that law? They have to obey the will of the public, or they lose their jobs. That’s our system.
And it usually works fine, but this is one of those cases where it has failed. That bill, while well-intentioned, is much too far-reaching. Yes, it will stop abortions made for reasons of cultural misogyny… but it will also make it more difficult to have abortions for legitimate reasons. Imagine a woman who knows she can barely afford to raise a child, but wants one badly and is prepared to risk it if the baby is a girl… but if the baby is a boy, she does not feel comfortable raising a boy without a male influence in the boy’s life. We can question her reasoning, and cluck our tongues at being so fixated on traditional gender roles, but she’s not doing anything wrong, really. Under this law, she, too, would be declared to be acting illegally.
So the bill gets passed and it comes before the Senate. Now the Senate is not beholden to public opinion. Their jobs are secure, so long as they actually do them and don’t break the law. There is no pressure on them. They can sit down, and carefully consider the law. And they realize that it’s flawed. So… they veto it, and pass it back down to Parliament, and say, “here are the problems that made us reject it”. Parliament may then modify the law to make it smarter – so that it now properly targets only people who have abortions for stupid, misogynistic cultural reasons – and send it back. Or they can just give up, and turn to the constituents that pressured them with a shrug and say, “sorry, we tried”. The chamber of sober, second thought would have protected us from a horrible, sloppy law. Before it destroyed peoples’ lives.
Here’s a second example, of even more relevance to us here on Canadian Atheist. Suppose – oh, hypothetically speaking – that Parliament got it into their skulls to pass a bill granting honours to Pope John Paul ⅠⅠ. I think we can all appreciate and understand how that might come about. It’s quite obviously pandering to a large voter base, and opposing it – even though it’s stupid – is a political landmine. It’s not hard to imagine how, hypothetically, such a stupid bill could be passed almost without opposition. The Supreme Court could hardly do anything about that, either (how can there possibly be a case brought before them against Pope Day).
Now imagine a functioning Senate got a hold of this bill. With sober second thought, they would quickly realize the bill was a) unnecessary, b) incendiary, and c) honouring a foreign head of state who actually did nothing for Canada, and ultimately oversaw the coverup of the abuse of thousands of Canadian children. Not to mention it’s a gross violation of the spirit of secular government (though, technically, not actually a violation of law). Once again, since the senators don’t have to pander, they can veto the bill with complete impunity. (And this idea even occurred to us, in fact.)
You can see how non-partisan, sober, second thought can actually be a boon to Canada, and particularly to secularists and atheists. Ours is a platform of reason, so anything that injects more reason into the lawmaking or governing process is good for us.
Obviously I’m not going to say the Senate is just fine as it is. I think it’s obvious by this point in the essay that I’m not impressed with the current state of affairs. I am a vocal advocate of Senate reform. The problem is that the current fad for Senate “reform” is a call for outright abolition. The reason I wrote this for you is to call for “sober second thought” about abolishing the Senate. Outright abolition may be a step too far – a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, serious reform is needed, and yes, we should really kick all the rascals sitting there now out (at the very least, most of them should be sent packing). But completely scrapping the Senate may be a bad idea.
If you are one of those people calling for abolishing the Senate, let me urge you to take a “sober second thought” with the following consideration. Right now, for all its flaws, the Senate is a check on the power of the Parliament. It’s currently non-functional, because our current PM and his predecessors hves stacked it with partisan hacks who simply agree to any law their party wants (and, really, the current “crisis” is really just what you get when the quid pro quo between the party and their pigeon dries up), but if the senators got off their asses and did their jobs, it does have the potential of reigning in the powers of the PM and Parliament. If you want to abolish that potential check completely… consider this.
If your problem with the Senate is that it is, in fact, non-functional and stacked with bonehead party hacks who vote along party lines without any actual “sober second thought”… stop and consider for a minute what you will be doing by abolishing the Senate. Because the people who actually created that problem… are not the senators. The people who actually created that problem… are the ones who appointed the senators. Which, coincidentally, are the same people you will be giving more power to when you abolish the Senate.
Catch that? If you’re abolishing the Senate because it’s so partisan and corrupt, what you’re actually doing is giving more power… to the very people who made the Senate partisan and corrupt – the corrupt and partisan people who used Senate appointments as a gift for party loyalty. Abolishing the Senate might actually make Canadian politics worse, not better.
This essay is not about how to fix the Senate. It’s about urging Canada – and particularly Canadian atheists and secularists – to give Senate reform a sober second thought. If the problem is the chumps being appointed, perhaps the appointment procedures could be changed. Certainly it seems to make sense to take that power away from the elected politicians – if the point of the Senate is to give the laws written by Parliament a second thought and possibly overrule them, it seems idiotic that Parliament should be responsible for appointing them. There are other reforms that could be considered – such as term limits, and rules against politicking or partisanship. But simply tossing the whole thing out seems like a bad idea. It’s just giving more power to people who answer only to popular opinion (and money), and who, frankly, created this whole freaking mess to begin with. It’s another step toward taking reason out of our government.
I would point out, too, that this current fad of being against senators because they are “unelected” is silly. It’s the same rhetoric Tea Party nutjobs in the US use to disdain their Supreme Court, which ensure (US) Constitutional protections are not overruled by popular opinion (which the Tea Party loves to appeal to). We don’t elect the most respected scientists in their fields. We don’t elect the most successful business men. Being elected is not that big a deal; being unelected is not that big a problem. Indeed, much of the problems with our Senate stem from the fact that they are being appointed by our elected officials, so if merely being elected fixed everything, why are we in this mess to begin with? It’s our elected officials creating the problem, after all. I don’t have a suggestion for a better way to select our senators, but I don’t see election as a panacea.
So, fellow atheists and secularists, give the Senate sober, second thought. If it were running properly, it would be a powerful ally – the more thought in our government, the better. At the very least, it can’t do any harm, because even if they let every really bad law pass, that’s no different than if they weren’t there at all. Yes, reform is necessary, but that does not have to extend to outright abolition. We should be all for sober second thought; we will always benefit from having more thinking in government.