Does the Senate need Fixing?

[bcholmes]

A headline in the Toronto Star reads: "Next step in fixing Senate unveiled", talking about Prime Minister Harper's (*ptui*) bill to allow voters to select "preferences" for Senator positions. In theory, the Prime Minister would take these preferences into consideration when appointing Senators (the idea that Canadians could elect Senators would require a Constitutional amendment, if memory serves).

In Harper's speech, yesterday, he said something to the effective of "after a century and a half, democracy will finally come to the Senate". (I suppose that makes it a bit like Iraq).

My preferred party, the NDP, has stated its platform that, really, the Senate should simply be abolished. I can't say that I really agree with them, there.

The stated objective of the Senate is to provide a "sober second thought" about legislation, and in that sense, I view it as similar to the way judicial appeal works. A court case is often (but not always) heard by a jury of one's peers. But an appeal is usually heard by a "learned man or woman of law", because sometimes juries (who aren't required to be familiar with the nuances of law) make bad decisions. I think the same is true of the parliamentary process. While I'm all in favour of a democratically-elected House of Commons, I'm not sure I'm sold on the idea that the Senate must be "fixed" by making it democratically elected. To my ears, that sounds as weird as suggesting that Supreme Court Justices should be democratically elected.

And I guess I'm annoyed at the a priori assumption that everyone believes that the Senate is broken. Damn media chasing sound-bytes, rather than doing real reporting.