Hands Off the Senate, Layton

The NDP leader's proposal to hold a referendum on scrapping the Senate is not only wrongheaded, but would have no effect whatsoever on Senate reform.

The National Post editorial board does not approve of Jack Layton’s proposal to hold a referendum on eliminating the Senate. Because scrapping the Upper Chamber would require a constitutional amendment, a referendum “would have no more force of law than a poll conducted by a media organization,” says the Post, and besides that the Senate provides our democracy with vital checks and balances. Instead of wasting time on Layton’s referendum proposal, the Post recommends speedy passage of the Conservatives’ Bill S-8, which would effectively allow provinces to elect senators. At best however the Post’s suggestion is an imperfect solution because it would address only one characteristics of a “three-E” (equal in regional representation, elected, and effective) Senate, widely considered the ideal.

The Post’s Lorne Gunter is also no fan of the referendum proposal, because he believes the Senate is one of the best ways to protect Western Canada from the “official contempt heaped on” the region by Ontario and Quebec, particularly on the issue of regulating the oil sands. Layton’s proposal “is a sign of how much the New Democrats under Mr. Layton have become the party of downtown Toronto and Vancouver,” he writes, which is a fairly odd accusation for Gunter to make. Is standing up for the interests of those two urban centres inherently worse than standing up for the interests of the West, which Gunter himself does so proudly?

“The fact that a regionally distorted body made up of patronage appointees holds the power to thwart the legislative will of the elected House of Commons has long contributed to Canada’s democratic deficit,” writes the Toronto Star's Chantal Hébert, but she still doesn’t believe Layton is serious about reforming the Senate. If he were, he would not have suggested a non-binding referendum to tackle the issue, and would have gone the more serious route of recommending studying the issue in committee. That’s exactly what he’s done with the proportional representation issue, which would drastically improve his party’s fortunes if it were ever implemented. His referendum proposal is equivalent to “prescribing a breath mint in lieu of a visit to the dentist.”