A new game is afoot in Ottawa these days—a not very stealthy campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the reformed independent Senate. For months now we’ve seen a wave of columns, think pieces, tweets and blog posts trying to whip up fury against a Senate that has never been more effective—or more non-partisan. It’s not just designed to confuse Canadians with misinformation about how the Senate works. It is designed to intimidate senators themselves from doing their jobs.
With the Conservatives leading in the polls, and the Liberals on the back foot, there’s lots of speculation about what the reformed Senate might do if and when there’s a change in government. Historically, any government, Conservative or Liberal, that’s been in power for a decade or so fills the Senate with its own patronage appointees. When the House flips, there’s always a lag time until the new government can appoint its own Senate picks. And the incoming prime minister frets about whether the Senate—filled with people chosen by the previous prime minister—will block or impede their legislative agenda.
But this time there’s a twist. Canada has a new, non-aligned Senate, where only 12 members—Conservatives—officially belong to a political party, and where all the rest of us sit as independents. A 21st century Senate, where any Canadian citizen over 30 can apply for the job and have their application screened by an independent arms-length committee—an open process that has led to the appointment of a wide array of accomplished, non-partisan senators who come from an eclectic range of professional and personal backgrounds.
Independent senators aren’t “whipped”—no one tells us how to vote. Since we are unaffiliated with any party, no leader has leverage to make us toe the line. As a consequence, no Senate has ever held bills to smarter, more unbiased scrutiny. This independent Senate has proposed and adopted 352 amendments to government bills since 2015—of which 175 have been accepted in full or in part by the government. By contrast, during the last Harper parliament, from 2013 to 2015, no Senate amendments were accepted.
Our largely non-partisan committees have authored thoughtful, hard-hitting investigative reports pointing out weaknesses in a wide range of policies and calling on ministers to do better. And while we haven’t killed any bills—that hasn’t happened since the Senate defeated Mulroney’s abortion bill in 1991—we have certainly forced the government to rethink and redraft key pieces of legislation.
To be frank, this situation doesn’t thrill either of the two big parties. Plenty of Liberals wonder if this radical Senate reform was actually such a good idea, or if they wouldn’t have been better off packing the Senate with reliably loyal partisans. Meanwhile, the Conservatives, always opposed to Trudeau’s reforms, fear an independent Senate might prove even more trouble than a predictably partisan one.
The dozen remaining Conservative senators serve as the Senate opposition. If and when the Conservatives take power, will some kind of new opposition caucus coalesce to play that role? Or will most independent senators remain staunchly independent, and judge each piece of legislation on its own merits? Without party discipline to keep independent senators in line, will they respect parliamentary convention and allow Conservative legislation to pass? Or will they delay, to block or even defeat it? There’s no precedent for what comes next. Independent senators will have to figure out whether and how a truly non-partisan Senate might function in relation to any future Pierre Poilievre government.
In truth, the Senate reform process has largely worked. The reformed Senate has taken bold steps to improve audit and oversight to ensure Canadians get value for their money. It’s taken long-overdue steps to stamp out sexual abuse and harassment of staff. The Senate has never been more diverse. More than half of all senators are women. More than 10 per cent are Indigenous. We’ve never had more queer or racialized senators. And while we have seen a few people with clear Liberal links appointed, especially recently with an election in sight, the reformed nomination system has also named senators with historic ties to the New Democrats and the Conservatives, as well as many lifelong non-partisans, from bankers to police commissioners, social workers to CEOs, a retired rear admiral and a handful of ornery journalists.
We have different backgrounds and perspectives. But we’re united in a deep commitment to reform a Victorian relic for the pluralistic Canada of the 21st century. It’s the very success of these reforms that makes conventional partisans so angry—and why we see op-ed pages filled with pieces predicting some kind of constitutional cataclysm.
Nonsense. Carved above the office of the Speaker of the Senate in the old Centre Block are a half-dozen Latin quotations, including this one from the poet Horace: “Sapere aude”—Dare to be prudent. When governments change, senators will value, more than anything else, the courage to be prudent, to think things through and not be swept up in the political tides of the moment. May that courageous prudence guide us through the uncharted political waters ahead.
Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.
____________________________________________
