Bill C-7 (Historical)

Senate Reform Act

An Act respecting the selection of senators and amending the Constitution Act, 1867 in respect of Senate term limits

Part 1 of this enactment establishes a framework for electing nominees for Senate appointments from the provinces and territories. The following principles apply to the selection process:
(a) the Prime Minister, in recommending Senate nominees to the Governor General for a province or territory, would be required to consider names from a list of nominees submitted by the provincial or territorial government; and
(b) the list of nominees would be determined by an election held in accordance with provincial or territorial laws enacted to implement the framework.
Part 2 alters the tenure of senators who are summoned after October 14, 2008.

Senate Reform Act

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the parliamentary secretary on her presentation and some of the clarification that has come over this long debate. Since 2006 when the Conservative Party formed government, it has been the mandate not only of the Prime Minister, but certainly of this caucus of moving ahead on being transparent and having accountability within the Senate.

One of the things that continually comes up is the question around tenure, and the member has talked about it already. Not only is there a question about the length of tenure, but about whether we can actually do it. We realize that in 1965 that was changed and it was constitutionally allowable. Now we are looking at a term of nine years. I wonder if there has been a discussion with the provinces about tenure and how they feel about the term of nine years.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Senate reform bill is an incremental approach to reform and reaffirms our government's commitment to make the upper chamber more democratic, effective and accountable. The bill is consistent with the government's efforts to encourage the provinces to implement a democratic process for this election but also to implement term limits for senators so that there is continued renewal. That continued renewal would be brought about through the nine-year non-renewable terms. In that way new and fresh ideas could be brought into the Senate for debate and sober second thought.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, on this fine morning I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this bill regarding the selection of senators and amendment of the Constitution Act,1867.

For a long time this Parliament has been made up of two chambers, one elected and one unelected. When the provinces were first set up they had the two chamber concept but all of them got rid of the second chamber. History has shown us that the legislatures of Canada can function very well without a second chamber. The legislatures representing the provinces across this country do not have senates now and they are doing a fine job.

What has been my experience with the Senate here in Parliament over the last five years? I have a very difficult time identifying the positive work of the hundred or so members in the other chamber. It is not that they are not good Canadians or that they have poor work habits or that they are not intellectually capable people; it is that they are simply not listened to when they make reports. In the last while, there has been a change in the Senate. It has become much more political. The senators who are there very much play a role in determining government policy. Now that the government has a majority, the Senate acts in accordance with the government's wishes in moving forward government legislation or in blocking legislation that comes forward from other members of this House.

I would say that the climate change bill is at the root of the change that has taken place. That bill was voted on and approved by elected members in the House of Commons but was summarily rejected by the Senate. This represents for me a clear delineation of the problem with the Senate. Ignoring the Senate and allowing it to remain a basket of good intentions where reports are written and nothing is done with them is the old model. The new model is one in which the Senate acts as a policeman over the House of Commons for any of the private members who might not agree with the prevailing view within that Senate, whether there is a Liberal majority or a Conservative majority in the Senate. That is what has been happening.

Of course the New Democrats have supported the abolition of that institution for a long time. We are very concerned that the Senate does not add to the democratic process. In reality, it is taking away from the democratic process. It is taking away from the rights of elected members and from the directions that are given clearly by the majority of the elected members in this House of Commons. The situation is not good and it is getting worse.

I am glad to have the opportunity to debate Senate reform. I want to assist in improving the democratic process that we use to run this country, to provide protection for the rights of Canadians and to give good direction to the future for our country. I am positive we are all here for that. However, what we have here does not strike me as a likely addition to the good work of this body.

I cannot help but continue to support our position to abolish the Senate and look for ways to find approbation among the people of Canada for that position, because that is the democratic process.

A referendum on the future of the Senate and opening the debate to Canadians is a great idea. We support that idea. When this bill fails, as it is likely to do, perhaps the government will consider that to be a better way to go about this exercise. This is a better way to determine which direction we should take. My colleagues can rest assured the people actually can make choices. They have the capacity to look at what is going on and make good choices.

Having spoken to the general direction of the Senate, this bill purports to make changes to the Senate to give us exactly what I am not sure. I am not sure what the government's vision of the Senate would be after the bill passed, which is very unlikely, or what its vision of the Senate should be.

The Prime Minister uses the Senate as an instrument of control over the democratic process in this House. Would the changes made in the bill increase the Prime Minister's use of the Senate? Would it become even more of a tool for parties to use when they are in government? Or when a party is thrown out of government, would that party use the Senate as a tool to subvert the democratic will of the House of Commons?

Four years from now after the next election when the people have turfed out the present government but it has a very large majority in the Senate, I can see a situation where things could be made very difficult for a new direction for Canada. I do not want that.

I am not here to create a situation where those who are not in power have their hands around the throats of those who have been democratically elected to represent the people of Canada. I am not interested in that. I hope the other side is not interested in that either. I appeal to hon. members as Canadians to think about that. When Canadians make a choice, that choice should be represented in the House of Commons and not in the Senate.

What do we see in the proposed changes to the Senate? All senators would be restricted to a single nine-year term. They would need to be registered with a political party in order for people to vote for them in the elections that would be held in the provinces. People would have to register, for example, as a Conservative, a Liberal, a New Democrat or a Green Party. However, once they were elected, it would be for one electoral term and that is it.

Where is the recourse of the voter to senators? They would be in there for nine years. They would be under the direction of the government or the opposition, whichever party they were registered with. How would that work for sober second thought, for careful delineation of what is going on in the House, for advice given to the House, for supporting the democratic process in the House? How would that actually help? Where is the vision?

The Prime Minister would not be required to appoint any of the people elected by the provinces through registered parties. The Prime Minister could make his choice.

We really have changed nothing. If the Prime Minister did not like a particular candidate, he could ignore the person throughout his time in office. If it does not extend to six years and the Prime Minister is thrown out after the next election, perhaps that person who was elected by the people in the region would have a chance to be appointed by the new prime minister. As long as that happened within the next few years, they would have that opportunity. If not, good-bye to the voters' intent to put somebody in to represent them.

If the Senate is to represent the regions and the only way people can get elected to the Senate is to be part of a registered political party, and once they are in there, they still must be appointed by a prime minister, I just do not see how that would push forward the regional issues that someone who is actually elected by the region to represent the region would be in a position to do so. I think it would leave that senator much indebted to the political party and very little indebted to the region that will never get vote for him or her again anyhow.

Those are some of the provisions that the Conservatives have put forward to change the Senate.

What do we see? Not much of this will make a difference to what is happening now. It will not make a difference to the fact that the Senate is now being used to subvert the will of the majority in this House of Commons, which happened in the last two years. Nothing will stop that. If the government does not succeed in being re-elected four years from now, it will have a stranglehold over in the Senate. We will fight our way through that, as a new government, with extreme difficulty. That will become a vehicle for non-change and a vehicle for continuing the will of a government past its time, which is unfortunate to a Canadian democracy. That will not work.

The Conservatives railed at the Liberal senators for three years, until they got a majority. They hated them. They said that they were always standing in their way and always making it more difficult for them. What were they going to do? They were going to perpetuate, through this legislation, the continuation of that problem that the Conservatives saw very clearly when they started their time as government.

Where is their vision? What is their vision for the Senate of Canada? They should tell us.

However, like most legislation that the Conservatives put forward, they do not put a vision forward with it. They are scared to do that. They are scared to tell us what they are really thinking and what they really want for this country, which is unfortunate because this country needs leadership and direction right now. They need to work to make things better.

However, the only way we will do that is with disclosure, with understanding. When we do not have it, this will not work.

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.

We know that, fundamentally, the Senate should be there to ensure a separation of powers. How does my colleague think that a senator elected under the banner of a party will allow us to have a true separation of powers?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I actually do not see that as the trend that has developed in the Senate. I see the trend developing in the Senate much more in a direction of political parties being the primary driver of the Senate, which is unfortunate because, quite clearly, the good work that Senators have done in the past, and there has been good work, has been when they have spoken impartially on legislation, when they have made their way forward with reports that do not speak to any particular political direction but speak to the realities of Canadian life and the way legislation could be written that would better suit Canadians. Those are things that are useful. I do not say that they are useful to $100 million a year. I have trouble with that because there is simply not enough work being done there to make that $100 million viable.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my friend and I found a fair number of contradictions in what he was saying to the House. One is either for democracy or not but the member is both for and against democracy. I found that very contradicting.

Our goal here is to make the Senate more transparent and ensure that it plays an effective role in Parliament. I do not think I heard the member talking about a constitutional war with the provinces to kill the Senate. , I think our role as parliamentarians is to make the Senate as democratic and transparent as possible and to ensure that the senators over there are doing good work for Canadians.

Perhaps the member could take a moment to better explain whether he believes senators should be elected or whether senators should continue to be appointed in the way they have been for 143 years.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I do not see any contradiction in what I said. If the prime minister would have the right to overrule any election, how could that possibly be part of a democratic process? That would be like asking a U.S. senator running for the Republicans to get permission from President Obama before he is elected. If we are going to have an elected Senate, then let it be elected. People make the choice and that is the choice they are stuck with.

Another point in the bill is that senators would need to be members of registered political parties. How is that democratic? How is it democratic for somebody who wants to represent his region to have to indicate his support for a particular party when he would be going into a body that is supposed to represent the region and speak for the region?

When those elements are put into the bill, the democratic process is taken away.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague, whose speech I very much enjoyed.

I would like to know what he thinks about more substantive and fundamental reform of our parliamentary institutions. The former Bill C-20 on Senate reform very clearly set out a transition towards a means of direct election for the Senate, which would completely change the system. This bill was simply a transition. That was completely cut out of the bill before us today. There is no more talk of a transition or of more substantive changes. This seems to be all that the Conservatives have to offer us by way of reform. I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about that.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I will speak to why I favour the abolition of the Senate.

We do not have a 200-year history like the United States. However, there are many other countries that have two elected Houses where they have an arrangement between the two elected bodies to work together to create legislation and make government work.

A directly elected body of senators could be a terrible imposition on the smooth running of the Government of Canada. There could be very different points of view about how the government should be run, what direction it should take, and that would be coming from two groups of elected members. The senators, who are not now elected, do not have much jam when it comes to speaking for the people. If they were elected, I agree that they would have a lot more influence and confidence in their ability to stand up to the government.

I would say that it would be an extreme problem for our democracy right now. We do not have the underlying principles or the direction for two elected bodies in this House.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I want to correct the record. The member opposite commented on having to be a member of a registered party in order to have one's name brought forward. I would like him to look at section 19.2(b) in Bill C-7 where it states that the name of each candidate must be printed on a ballot together with:

the word “independent”, if the candidate is not a candidate for a registered provincial or territorial political party.

Just to be clear, one would not need to be a member of a political party in order have one's name brought forward.

The member and his party talked about the abolishment of the Senate altogether. This would require significant constitutional change but really end up at the status quo. Would this help modernize Canadian society by just maintaining the status quo as opposed to moving forward with incremental democratic reform, as the Canadian public wishes?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, having a debate about the Senate is a great idea. I happen to favour the approach of abolition, much as the provinces have with their senates because that is likely to be the most democratic thing to do. I do not see that creating an elected Senate in the end will be a good thing for our democracy.

Without attention to a whole number of issues that come out of our developed political system, imposing an elected Senate on it will cause more grief than productive results for Canadians.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for pointing out the folly of this bill.

For me, this bill seems weak, ill-conceived and flimsy. I wonder if my colleague would agree that the Conservatives have proposed this weak legislation because they have put themselves in a trap. They have over-promised to their base and now must come up with legislation that they know will not really work. They have done this to themselves and now we are stuck with legislation that will not do anything.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have found the Senate to be useful to them in the last while in stopping legislation in a minority situation that they could not stop in the House. I think that has been of some interest to them.

In the long term, over the next dozen years if they are thrown out as government, if they legitimize the power of the Senate they will have a powerful instrument to thwart the will of any other party that takes control of the government. It is not simply to massage their base. I look at it in a different fashion because that has been my experience in the last five years in the House.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to enter into the debate on Bill C-7, Senate Reform Act.

First, I tend to share some of the feelings that members opposite may have about the Senate because I was there at one time. Before I was first elected to this place in 2004, I had many misgivings about the Senate in its current form. I did not know, frankly, whether the Senate actually served any useful purpose. I was not sure whether the Senate should still remain as an institution in our democratic system or whether it should be abolished. However, it was not really until I came to this place that I started to more fully understand what the Senate was, what it did and the benefits it could provide to Canadians and to our democratic institution.

I am now firmly of the belief that the Senate plays a very important role in Parliament and should not be abolished, but it needs to be reformed. That is what Bill C-7 intends to do, to make some incremental preliminary steps to reform this institution, to make it a more democratic, more accountable system in today's society.

This debate will also serve the purpose of perhaps, and hopefully, pointing out to Canadians what the Senate actually does and how it works on their behalf.

We have seen in news stories emanating out of New Brunswick today that New Brunswick Premier Alward has stated that he wants to see democratic consultations on Senate appointments made in New Brunswick. He believes New Brunswick will need a strong, regional representative voice in the Senate should our Parliament go forward with expanding the number of seats in the House of Commons.

I think most members of this place know that one of the primary functions of Senate is to provide that regional representation in the House and in Parliament.

I can point to a very quick example in my own province of Saskatchewan many years ago of where this regional representation really came into play. Back 40 or 50 years, there was a Liberal government of the day. Unfortunately for the government it had no elected Liberal members of Parliament from the province of Saskatchewan. Therefore, Saskatchewan had no effective representation in Parliament, at least in the House of Commons.

The prime minister of the day appointed a Saskatchewan Liberal senator by the name of Hazen Argue to cabinet and made him the minister of agriculture. in that fashion, Saskatchewan had representation. That is probably the most glaring and best example of how the Senate and senators can represent their region in Parliament.

Beyond the regional representation, on many occasions I have seen senators provide very useful services and provide a very important function to Parliament. We have seen, time and time again, where senators start to examine bills that have been passed by our Parliament, by the House of Commons. After due diligence and post-examination of some of those bills, Senate reports have come back recommending amendments or changes or improvements to legislation, which in fact have strengthened the bill.

There is a reason why the Senate is called the chamber of sober second thought. It allows that second set of eyes to examine legislation that is brought forth from this place.

I could go on with many more examples of why the Senate is a useful institution, but I want to concentrate on two elements of the Senate that I think need reform. Those two areas are what Bill C-7 purports to do.

As we all know, currently senators are appointed. They are appointed by the Governor General. Many people think it is the Prime Minister who appoints senators to the Senate. That is not correct. The Prime Minister provides advice to the Governor General who then makes the appointments. However, one of the reasons I think Canadians have been so upset over the years with Senate appointments is that on many occasions senators have been appointed for purely partisan reasons.

If people have been good soldiers for a political party that happens to be in power at the time, whether they have been local campaign workers and good volunteers or have been fundraisers over time, it seems, on many occasions, that their reward for all of this partisan work on behalf of the political party they represented was an appointment to the Senate. Too many times we have seen blatant partisan appointments where the competency, the integrity and the independence of that senator comes into question, and rightfully so.

With Bill C-7, what we purport to do is allow Canadians to have a direct input into the Senate appointments coming out of their region. Let me be clear. We are not talking about direct Senate elections. That would require constitutional change. We are not talking about a system in which Canadians would elect a senator, where on the results of that election, they would automatically go to the Senate. The legislation does not intend to do that. We do not want to reopen the Constitution. We do not want to try to engage provinces and others in constitutional discussions about revamping the Constitution to allow for direct Senate elections. What we are however talking about is allowing Canadians in various regions the ability and opportunity to voice their opinion on who they would like to see as their senator or senators.

How would we do this? It is quite simple. Each province has the ability and flexibility to set up a process for consultation. They could have an election, if they want to call it an election, in which the voters of particular region or province would cast a ballot, usually in conjunction with a provincial election or a federal election, and then the people who would come out of that consultation process or election would have their names given to the Prime Minister with a recommendation that the next appointments to the Senate should be that person or persons. However, it would still be up to the Prime Minister and the Governor General to make the official appointments.

In other words, provinces would be able to hold a consultation process to seek the input from their citizens on who they would like to see as their senator. That name would then be passed along to the Prime Minister, who would then have the ability to either suggest that name to the Governor General for appointment, or reject that name.

Let us be quite clear that any prime minister would be walking a very thin political line if he or she did not take the advice of the provinces on the choice they wanted or had made in terms of Senate appointments. A prime minister could ignore the advice of the province and appoint someone else. That would be within his or her purview, but the prime minister of the day would be doing that at his or her political peril if he or she did not follow the consultation process that the provinces had set out.

The beauty of this is that it would not require a constitutional amendment because the Prime Minister and the Governor General, as they have always done, would be the ones who would make the final appointment. It is just that in this fashion they would be able to take advice from provinces on who the appointment should be.

This is a very important first step in democratic reform of the Senate. Why? Should this legislation pass, for the first time Canadians will have the ability to directly consult with their citizens and will have a direct opportunity and have a hand in the appointment process.

We have seen and heard time and time again from Canadians that they do not believe the Senate serves any useful purpose because there is no accountability and because appointments are made for partisan purposes and for no other reason. The consultation process that we are bringing forward in the legislation would provide accountability because the citizens of each province would have direct input into the senators who would represent their interests. Accountability is paramount is a democratic institution. It is certainly paramount in determining which senators represent which regions.

I do not think there can be any hesitation on behalf of Canadians. In fact, most of the polling data that I have seen seems to indicate that Canadians from coast to coast to coast are very much in favour of having some form of direct input on senatorial appointments. I believe this would be a process that would find Canadians approving of the attempts by the Prime Minister and the government to reform the Senate and allow accountability to finally come into the Senate.

I could talk about a few other matters that are important with the consultation process, but I should also point out that most of the provinces are onside with this. Most of them have either changed or introduced legislation to allow for some form of consultation process or have at least indicated that they would be willing to entertain such a system. Saskatchewan has already brought forward legislation that would allow for the consultation process to take place, Alberta has had this consultation process established for a number of years. Several other provinces have indicated their willingness to enter into such a process so they would be able to engage their citizens in a discussion and ultimately an election or referendum of sorts to give to the Prime Minister a name or names of possible Senate appointments.

I want to also point out that the legislation would allow individual provinces the flexibility to establish this consultation process however they wish. In other words, a province may want to have a consultation process wherein a first-past-the-post system would be established and the name of person who received the greatest number of votes would be suggested to the Prime Minister for appointment purposes. However, another province may want to have a preferential balloting system, if there were multiple openings for the Senate.

The flexibility remains with the provinces to determine how they wish to consult with their citizens. It would not force the provinces to follow a set-in-stone path for the consultation process. I believe this is one of the reasons why most of the provinces have tended to agree with our attempts to reform the Senate because they would have a direct say in these democratic reforms.

The appointment process is one of the elements of Bill C-7, which is the ability for provinces to have a direct say in the appointment process for senators. However, I believe the second part is also extremely important, and that is setting term limits for senators.

I mentioned at the outset that I had some concerns before I came to this place about the Senate itself. One of my concerns was that beyond being appointed for purely partisan reasons, senators could be appointed for an extended period of time and there was no recourse. Outside of perhaps being charged and convicted criminally, once an individual was appointed to the Senate, that person was there for up to 45 years potentially. One could be appointed at 30 years old, with 75 years of age being the mandatory retirement age for senators. For that period of time, unless someone appointed to the Senate did something against the law or contravened the Constitution, a person could remain there and the government or citizenship would have absolutely no ability to remove the individual.

I think we all recall a story from a number of years ago that got great play in Canadian newspapers and media. There was a senator who had been in the Senate for several decades, and his attendance record was absolutely abysmal. This senator actually spent more time in Mexico than he did in the Senate. If memory serves me well, in the last year of that senator's duration, he had spent fewer than five days actually in the Senate. In other words, he showed up for work on fewer than five days out of a year. Eventually, once the story became public, the Senate took steps, and that senator eventually was forced to resign.

However, the fact of the matter is that constitutionally, once people are appointed to the Senate, there is no way to either reprimand them or force them to resign should they not be doing their job, and that is something I do not think most Canadians can abide by. I certainly cannot see the rationale behind allowing someone to be appointed at age 30 and then serve until age 75 with absolutely no accountability or recourse.

In this legislation, we are suggesting that senators would be appointed for a nine-year term, and for only nine years. They could not be reappointed. In other words, if a senator were to run in a provincial consultation process and ultimately be appointed to the Senate, if that senator wanted to run again after nine years, he or she could not do so. The only flexibility built into that system would be that if the senators, once appointed, had to resign because of, for example, medical issues, they could run again in their province and perhaps be reappointed, but only to serve out the remainder of their nine years. In other words, whether it was an interrupted term or a consecutive term, nine years would be the absolute limit.

Why is that important? It's very important because it would allow those senators to be beholden to the people of the region rather than to the people who appointed them.

As an explanation, right now we have people who have been appointed for partisan reasons. Who are they responsible and loyal to? Human nature being what it is, they are probably going to be more loyal to the person who appointed them than to the people they are supposed to be representing.

If senators were appointed for a nine-year term and appointed based on some consultations with the people of their region, in my view they would be more loyal to the people who appointed them. If they were only there for nine years with no chance of being reappointed, those senators would not have to curry favour with the Prime Minister or anyone else, because they would know that at the end of nine years, their terms would be done. Those senators would be there for a finite period of time and to represent the wishes of their region. That is what the Senate is supposed to be all about.

In conclusion, let me just say that while I believe there are more reforms needed in today's Senate, these two steps, as small and incremental as they may be, would be the first steps toward a total and needed reform of the Senate. I would ask all members to please get behind these reforms, get behind Bill C-7 and show Canadians that while we understand the role the Senate can play, we understand the need for reform.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the speech given by the hon. member on the other side was extremely interesting. He spoke about a senator who made the front page around the country. I remember it; we actually talked about it on the call-in radio show I was hosting at the time.

When I look at Bill C-7, introduced by the Conservatives, I do not understand how limiting terms to nine years would prevent that type of behaviour. On the contrary, the person who is elected—no matter how it is done, which the bill is not clear on—will be accountable to absolutely no one. A senator can finish his nine-year term and do pretty much anything he wants. All this bill does is limit a senator's term to nine years, instead of allowing it to span a longer period. I do not understand the Conservatives' logic on this one.