History of the Senate from Emmett Macfarlane

On his Substack, political scientist Emmett Macfarlane offers much good sense on the Senate (as he has done before) and confrontation  being set up between a Poilievre government and a Senate full of independent senators -- who owe their seats to Justin Trudeau's new appointment process.  Macfarlane's book Constitutional Pariah is the best book available on the Senate: my notes on it are here.

Andrew Coyne, meanwhile, suggests the Charter of Rights and the notwithstanding clause may be the prime minister's last best shot as an election issue..

Book Notes: Macfarlane on Senate reform

I asked UBC Press for a copy of Emmett Macfarlane's new book Constitutional Pariah: Reference re Senate Reform and the Future of Parliament fearing the worst. Books about the Senate frequently have me rolling my eyes, books by political scientists in particular.

This one's actually pretty good.  

Macfarlane has grasped, as did the Supreme Court in 2014, that an elected Senate, or one appointed by the provinces, is a terrible idea.That's always a good start -- indeed, the essential precondition to saying worthwhile things. Furthermore, his book provides a clear and vigorous account of the last few decades of debates over the Senate, particularly the 2014 reference to the Supreme Court about what changes Parliament can make to the Senate without seeking constitutional amendments.  

It turns out that Macfarlane has inside testimony here. He describes (has this been reported before?) how he was consulted about Senate reforms by then opposition-leader Justin Trudeau. Macfarlane advised Trudeau -- before Harper's reference to the court -- to consider committing to the appointment of non-partisan senators. (He assumes others were consulted, is modest about his own influence, and emphasizes it was a professional consultation, not a partisan contribution.) 

The book repeatedly declares that Trudeau's decision to create a non-partisan Senate produced "the most significant reform of the Senate, perhaps of Parliament itself, in Canadian history." He argues that the new and increasingly non-partisan Senate has been working pretty well, and has a good chance of getting better as times goes on.

The Senate, actually, is only one of two concerns of the book, the other being the Supreme Court's ideas about the constitution. Macfarlane makes a case that the Supreme Court's declaration that parliament cannot make even minor (possibly "housekeeping") changes without constitutional amendment sets too high, indeed too paralyzing, a standard. And he considers that the court's stress on discerning the "architecture" of the Constitution sets a fuzzy principle that gives too much latitude to the judges. I thought that was the best part of the reference decision -- but he's the constitutional scholar, and he may have something here.

Some historical quibbles. He declares a parliament without a upper house was "inconceivable" to the confederation makers, but future prime minister Alexander Mackenzie argued for just that in the confederation debates of 1865. George Brown's reply -- that by making the senate appointive by the federal government he had pretty much secured what Mackenzie wanted -- could give Macfarlane a valuable clue to what the confederation makers were thinking at the time.

For Macfarlane still struggles to determine just what the overarching purpose of the Senate (partisan or non-partisan) really is, and he criticizes the Court for failing to address that conundrum. Is it defending provincial or regional interests? Or holding the Commons to account? Or protecting minorities? Or what? Actually, the judges seemed pretty clear on that question. The only overriding requirement of the Senate for 150 years has been that it be weak. Our punditti still have a blind spot about that, I fear, and the court's message has not yet sunk in. 

Close readers of my own constitutional histories will grasp that I agree with Macfarlane, and with the Supreme Court, when their arguments sustain ideas I had put forward previously, and not when they don't. But since neither cites me, I won't be held responsible. 

    

History of the Senate and Senator Beyak

New Senate (literally: it's the new temporary location in the East Block) 

I'm on the record recently as arguing the new trying-to-be nonpartisan Senate is a good thing and in keeping with its founding principles.  The suspension the other day of Senator Lynn Beyak for her "refusal to remove racist letters about Indigenous people from her website" suggests a new angle to that.

In the old days, when the prime minister appointed his or her loyal supporters to the Senate in exchange for their permanent absolute loyalty, there would have been a demand for Senator Beyak's party leader to boot her out.  And of course whenever a party leader is involved, only two issues matter: what might the issue do to the leader's public standing, and is there a challenge to the leader's authority?

Instead, the Senate seems to have take the grown-up position that they don't need to ask the boss to issue a diktat, they can can consider the issue and take appropriate action as a body.  As they have done.  But it is a bit weird too: the Conservative Party and the Conservative party caucus in the Senate are agreed that we should go back to the old way of prime ministers should go back to the old habit of purely partisan appointments, and yet in this case they let the Senate take the lead -- as if they believe it should be an independent self-managing body.  Cannot have it both ways, one might think.

The recent poll a senator took on attitudes to the Senate changes provoked the Conservatives to complain it is a misspending of public money. Accusing the Senate for spending public money -- on anything -- has always been a pretty safe line of attack. But it's hard to resist thinking the Conservative Senators are also peeved by evidence the poll provides of how unpopular is their party's plan to go back to the old party-hack Senate:

The poll found that only 3.4 per cent of the 1,000 people surveyed by Nanos on the phone and online between March 29 and April 1 said future governments should "go back to the previous ways of appointing" senators, while 76.7 per cent said future governments should retain the changes made by the current government.

History at the Literary Review

The March Literary Review of Canada, not yet out in print but up online, is well provided with historical reading. Christopher Waddell reviews a new book by a longtime partisan of the Avro Arrow. John Barber observes the importance of Jane Jacobs's fifty-year old The Economy of Cities, which she and he (and me) consider more important to her legacy than the more famous Life and Death of Great American Cities. George Fetherling looks into Vancouver jazz history. David Mackenzie reviews a cluster of books on trench warfare and soldiers' experience in the world wars. Colleen Simard looks at two new books on Metis and Indigenous struggles in Winnipeg through the twentieth century.

All these items, however, are either paywalled or not made available on the web edition of the magazine, so you need to subscribe, digital or dead-tree, to read 'em. Same applies to my contribution, which argues that the Senate of Canada has always done what the confederation makers wanted (i.e., not too much) and its new non-partisan version is doing the same even better. And the Supreme Court agrees with me.

Jody Wilson Raybould had not launched into controversy when I wrote this paragraph for the essay, but I've thought of it since:

Could a new-look Senate inspire a new-look Commons? If senators begin to distinguish themselves for effective critical contributions to the shaping of legislation, they might provoke jealousy and emulation on the part of MPs, who currently act as if on being elected they must become the only people in the country with no political opinions of their own.

Senates against the people: the Argentine example

The rejection by the Senate of Argentina of an abortion bill commanding much popular support generated news in recent days, and much criticism of the old white male senators and of the Roman Catholic hierarchy who combined to impose their will on the population, and on women, once again.

But it's worth noting the role of upper houses. Argentina, like the United States, has a powerful upper house, the Senate, in which each province has equal representation. It's the American model: Americans tend not to make much of the undemocratic characteristics of an upper house in which a cluster of small states (just 17% of the American population, in the US case, fewer in Argentina) can muster a majority of votes.

Argentina is said to have the most mal-apportioned upper house in the world, though it differs only in degree from the American one. Argentina has 24 provinces and federal territories, each with 3 senators. Buenos Aires City, Buenos Aires Province, and one other, with just 9 senators between them, have fully half the Argentine population. Senators from the small rural provinces provided the margin of victory for the anti-abortion cause. In other words, the clear will of the people and of the representative lower house was rather easily dismissed by an array of senators representing a minority of the national population.

Doug Ford should be so lucky.

This example shows again the wisdom of the Canadian constitution-makers who understood that upper houses are always designed to be an elite bulwark against the representative lower or common house. They ensured that the upper house in Canada would always be weak by making it appointive and not elective. The Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the 2015 Senate reference question showed some understanding of that wisdom. The idea has always eluded most of our political scientists and political commentators, alas

The only other place you are likely to read that argument is my 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal or my Three Weeks in Quebec City: The Meeting that Made Canada. Call me Cassandra.

History of Senate reform

Well, I did not get my seat in the Senate in the recent cycle of appointments. (Not that I had applied, but that probably would not have affected the odds.)  Neither did you. Writers, historians, scholars, artists, and cultural figures generally are pretty thin on the list of new independent senators.

Actually there's an exception, but it kinda proves the rule.  Art historian Pat Bovey of Manitoba was appointed, but like all the other appointees,she has a long resume as an administrator, having been director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery  and sitting on a whole slew of boards and advisory committees. That's the thing all the new appointees seem to have in common; they all seem apolitical and unideological, but pretty familiar with government service, with regulatory service, with boards and commissions.

Hard to complain about administrative experience, but one wonders if it makes for a bland, civil-service mentality Senate, probably largely in tune (despite official independence) with the hip-to-the-trend but centrist view of this government.  Remember those commissions of ordinary citizens that the provinces used to create to study electoral reform.  They always used to vote 97% in favour of whatever their expert advisors told them to do.

Tricky thing, getting a Senate that is independent of government yet weak, respectful of its limited role yet more than a bland rubber-stamp.  These informal changes are proving kinda interesting.

History of the Senate: Kirby and Segal

There is a new and potentially important report by former Senators Michael Kirby and Hugh Segal on how to make the changing Senate work under the conditions of greater senatorial independence that seem to be taking shape. "A House Undivided" can be read in its entirety here, and the authors provide a summary in this Globe & Mail op-ed.

I must first say the report does not reflect at all well on the use by Canadian leaders of political history to advise the political present. The authors starat by telling us that the Quebec Conference (October 1864) preceded the "more famous" Charlottetown conference of September 1864.  (The author of Three Weeks in Quebec City quietly sighs.) Segal and Kirby also sustain the widely held notion that John A. Macdonald created confederation single-handedly, as almost all of their historical quotations on the intentions of the founders are his.

So, history more as support than illumination.  But in fact, Segal and Kirby still manage to display a very clear and sensible understanding of the Senate's purposes, limits, and possibilities as established in 1864-7.

In their report, this prominent Conservative and prominent Liberal wholeheartedly endorse the prospect of a non-partisan Senate. Their project is to begin setting out procedures by which a Senate without formal party structures would operate. No doubt there can be debate about their specific proposals, but these seem very promising. They argue that without constitutional amendment the Senate could organize itself to run its formal procedures by establishing regional (rather than party) caucuses, whose members would choose their own "Convenor" or manager, with Senators remaining free to also caucus in issue-related or even partisan assemblages as well, if they chose.  

That kind of Senate, they argue, could learn how to operate legitimately as a chamber of "sober second thought" (Macdonald) or "court of revision" (Alexander Mackenzie) substantially free of inappropriate influence from the Prime Minister's Office or the political parties.

Kirby and Segal sketch out scenarios by which a formally weak but respected independent Senate could work alongside the House of Commons in pursuit of better legislation and better public policy. They propose that the Senate would actually enhance its utility if it unilaterally abandoned its power of absolute veto in favour of a six-month's veto (as it currently has on constitutional changes).  They also suggest the net-worth and age requirements for Senators should be abolished -- while retaining the regional-based property requirement.

Update, 29 September:  Andrew Coyne likes it, in a grumpy sort of way.  Dale Smith hates it, also grumpily.  Is this what theorizing about parliamentary democracy tends to do: young fogey, middle-aged fogey ....

No Senate reform, no problem

With today's Supreme Court ruling on the constitutional requirements for Senate refrom, Prime Minister Harper has packed it in:  no more reform.

This is the best of all possible outcomes, very nearly.  Any reform to the Senate would inevitably give the Senate more power, and giving the Senate more power is a bad thing whatever its form.  If the Senate were representative of the country, it would be the House of Commons.  And we have one of those -- it has its problems, for sure, but they need solving in the Commons, not by tinkering with the Senate.

Make the upper house elective, and it becomes more powerful, though still unrepresentative.  Make it appointed by the provinces, and it becomes more powerful though still unrepresentative.  All the changes proposed for the Senate are in the direction of making it seem more legitimate -- and a legitimate-seeming Senate is going to want to throw its weight around. The confederation makers of the 1860s, who drew their power from elective constituencies, did not want a powerful, legitimate-seeming upper house countermanding their will, and they carefully designed a Senate that never would. Ensuring the weakness of the upper house (by making it appointive) created a bulwark for elective representative democracy, not a betrayal of it.

Sure, the Senate is often annoying -- but at least it does not do much. The more it does, the less we have a democratic and representative legislature. The present senate does little good and little harm.  An abolished senate would do no good and no harm. Those are the only palatable alternatives. So the wreckage of Mr. Harper's reform plans is a good thing.

Wasn't expecting that: Belgium adopts a Canadian-style Senate

Belgium, having moved from a unitary state to a federation in recent decades, has now reformed its upper house. Who says no one loves the Canadian Senate? Belgium has moved from a directly-elected to a mostly appointed upper house and transformed its role from actually powerful to mostly symbolic, all the while claiming that the new powerless version will be a forum for the regions.

The newest reform will change the composition of the Senate to 50 elected indirectly by the Community/Regional parliaments and 10 co-opted, removing all directly-elected members. Its powers and functions will also be hugely curtailed: it will no longer take part in regular legislation, will no longer have the power of inquiry or to ask ministers questions. The only legislative power it retains regards to the constitution and the monarchy. Instead of being a true legislative chamber, the Senate is supposed to become a forum for the Regions and Communities. The reform was a compromise between those wishing to abolish and those wanting to retain the chamber (the latter being mainly French-speaking parties, if I’m not mistaken).

Fruits and Votes has more.

History at the SCC, continued

The SCC Institute for Historical Study

For maybe the first time in my life, I was thinking the last few days that had I been in Ottawa I might have gone down to the Supreme Court of Canada to listen to the arguments about how the Senate might be legally reformed or abolished. From what news coverage squeezed through the Mayor Ford blitz, it sounded like the liveliest Canadian political history seminar around. Lots of bad history, sure, but that happens at lots of historical conferences, too, no? 'Course historians don't get to make their versions into law.

On abolition, it was useful to see the roadblocks being described.  PEI premier Robert Ghiz, on the television news the other night, insisted PEI would not support abolition because the province has only 4 MPs and so its four senators provide valuable additional representation.

"Mike Duffy has given PEI valuable representation?" the interviewer asked, and Ghiz, a Liberal not eager to praise Duffy or the PM, was reduced to saying "We-ll, in theory, ye-es." There's the rub: as long as Canadians continue to tell ourselves that the Senate somehow actually represents or could represent regions in Ottawa, premiers, particularly in smaller provinces, will presumably continue to be reluctant to abolish.  (On abolition, I tend to lean to the unanimity formula, but that's one of the subjects the SCC is addressing.)  
Ghiz's point sets out the (deluded, I think, but still influential) federalist defense of the senate.  For the bicameralist defense of the senate (equally deluded, I would say), here is the political scientist Jennifer Smith's argument for sober second thought -- or maybe it's just an attack on the NDP.

On "At Issue" last night, I was impressed to hear Chantal Hebert argue uncontradicted that if a federal party leader were to act like Rob Ford, at least his caucus would remove him.  I wonder. Surely party leader Rob Ford would be refusing to resign and insisting that since his caucus had not made him leader, it could not remove him.  It is an argument that has worked for lots of other embattled leaders back to John Diefenbaker.

History in the Supreme Court of Canada

Today one of the (federal) Crown's legal counsel, Robert Frater, took up the government's case in the reference question put to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Frater began his arguments by reminding the Court the Senate has been changed unilaterally in the past, in 1965, when the retirement age for senators was set at 75 years. Before then, senators were appointed for life, and Frater pointed out at least 20 judges served into their 90s and two reached 100.

But under the terms of the BNA Act prevailing in 1965, the federal government alone was entirely within its powers in amending the term of appointment of senators from life to 75 years.   You could read about it in the Commons Debates for that year.

An entirely different clause of the BNA Act covered the lifetime tenures of superior court judges. When the Diefenbaker government decided in 1961 to proceed by constitutional amendment to oblige the judges to retire at 75, it secured the consent of every single province in Canada before formally requesting the British parliament to make the amendment. Frater's bit about the judges would seem to go against his argument here.

Dief's amendment terminated all the over-75 judges at once.  Pearson's Senate retirement bill left unchanged the life appointment of sitting Senators; it was purely for future appointees.  But fearing the Senate might actually defeat the bill, they did offer generous pension terms to any senator willing to retire voluntarily.

Never heard that any Supreme Court of Canada judges read this blog. No doubt they will do fine without it.

Andrew Smith on the Senate

Andrew Smith's blog The Past Speaks, has a long, thoughtful, and historically-informed piece on the Canadian Senate up. It draws less on the current scandals than on the Quebec Court of Appeal's analysis of Senate history in its recent decision finding the Harper government's Senate reform plans unconstitutional.

I'm generally sceptical of arguments that the Senate plan of 1867 was to create a powerful anti-democratic institution at the heart of Canadian governance. It seems clear that the confederation-makers' spectacular success was to endow the Senate from the start with the illegitimacy that appointment was certain to confer, thereby ensuring that the Senate would never effectively challenge the more representative lower house.

But Andrew's evidence and argument are interesting -- particularly when, in acknowledging there was never going to be a Canadian class equivalent to the British aristocracy of the mid-19th century, he considers how the senate may have come to represent the Canadian business class.

I suspect the way to pursue this question might be to investigate the careers of men like Salter Hayden, a Toronto lawyer appointed by Mackenzie King in 1940 who as chair of the Senate Banking Committee functioned as the Senator from Bay Street until his retirement in 1983. Careers like his suggest how the Senate still lacked power but had influence, as a kind of lobbyists' chamber. But with the imposition of party discipline on the Senate and the appointment of party functionaries like Keith Davey and publicists like Duffy and Wallin, even that role seems to have shrunk in recent decades.

Shutdowns and Senate reform

It was actually kinda surprising, last night, to see that given a choice between saving the full faith and credit of the United States, returning the government to work, and preventing economic disaster, on the one hand, and pursuing their crazy ideological obsessions, on the other, a sufficient number of American Republicans actually chose the option that was, you know, not completely insane. These days, whodathunkit?

Best analysis I saw of the American crisis came from Spanish political scientist Juan Linz, who actually died during the shutdown but who had foreseen it all years ago. In 1990, Linz observed that in systems with separation of powers between president legislature and executive, “No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of the people.” The Republicans may have been crazy, that is, but in bringing their own country to the brink of disaster, they were only using the powers the constitution provides to them. (h/t: an American journalist called Jonathan Chait.) Linz wondered why the crisis of 2013 had not happened already, and constantly.

There has been a certain amount of smugness expressed from parliamentary countries, based on the observation that in such systems separation of powers exists but is not complete. Confrontation between executive and legislature is possible, but in the end the legislature yields, or the government is replaced, or an election produces a new legislature and government.

Strikes me that the only way Canada could enable the kind of impasse the United States has recently seen would be to establish a truly Triple-E Senate. If “equal” and “effective” mean what they promise, a Triple E Senate would presumably be able to hold hostage, say, a government budget supported by the Commons, thereby rendering government unworkable by fully constitutional means. (I'd be glad to be corrected on this -- did triple-E theory allow for some resolution of such a confrontation?)

Maybe this is why Triple E works well as a banner for Western grievance when the Reformers are out of power, but does not get implemented when they are in power. Yesterday’s speech by the governor general promised either Senate reform or Senate abolition. As understanding grows that any senate reform can only make governance worse,I'm thinking, the drift toward a consensus on abolition seems likely to continue.

The arrival of the admen, continued

By email (and with visual evidence as above), Charles Hoffman of McGill and Indiana Law School makes the case that Canadian political advertising goes back longer than 1952:

Reading through the Susan Delacourt piece you linked to reminded me of the ads run by the Conservatives during the 1925 Nova Scotia provincial election, which I came across while doing research into the debates leading to the 1928 abolition of the Legislative Council of Nova Scotia.  In brief, the opposition Conservatives ran a series of ads against the 43 year old Liberal government under the theme "Vote Him Back Home".  The ads were largely devoid of specific proposals, instead focusing on the general economic malaise that had caused so many Nova Scotians to emigrate to the United States and blaming the Liberals for failing to stem the tide.  There were at least five versions—a mother asking "Where's my boy?", an infant asking "When is Daddy coming home?", one focused on the exiles themselves ("But we are exiles from our Native Land" - attached), another telling the story of a Halifax doctor hearing a traditional Nova Scotia melody in a small American town, and the last showing a farmhouse abandoned by yet another emigre.  All ended with the refrain:
 Vote Him Back Home
Vote Against The Government That Drove Him Into Exile
Vote For a change that will give A Good Living For All Nova Scotians
 While there are some similarities to the 1957 federal campaign (including the interesting parallel of the long-out-of-power Conservatives taking up newer advertising techniques to combat the establishment Liberals), there are at least two significant differences.  First, unlike 1957, the 1925 Nova Scotia ads did not play up Conservative leader Edgar Nelson Rhodes at the expense of other candidates—indeed, Rhodes is entirely absent from the election ads (though the Conservative-leaning Halifax Herald did put quite a bit of emphasis on him).  Second, I have not found any references to Rhodes or the Conservatives making much use of that era's new media, radio.  As best as I can tell, this was a very "old media" sort of campaign, even if the Conservatives were making much better use of the newspapers than did the Liberals.  So, I wouldn't say the 1925 NS election disproves Delacourt's thesis, but it does offer some interesting context of how advertising was slowly making its way into Canadian elections in the period preceding 1957.
 Oh, and to end the suspension, the Conservatives won the election in a landslide, taking 40 of the province's 43 Assembly seats.  Of course, the Liberals still held an overwhelming majority on the Legislative Council, leading to Premier Rhodes' ultimately successful push to abolish the Council.

Nova Scotia 1925: a successful Conservative-led movement to abolish an unelected upper house.  Some note on Hoffman's work here.

Irish Seanad survives: more evidence referenda and representative government don't play well together

Who could say No to that?

Ireland voted the other day on a referendum about Senate abolition. After leading the polls throughout the race, the Yes side narrowly lost. The Seanad, an unelected and largely powerless upper house roughly similar to Canada's goes on.

The referendum question was a simple Yes/No -- attractive compared to the Canadian style of "Do you want to consider potentially giving a possible mandate to tentatively negotiate...."  But it prevented debate on avenues for change and reform as part of the process. As usual, those who set the question shape the terms of debate and the outcome.  

As usual with referenda, the Irish debate encouraged maximalist demagogery, with the No side conjuring up an executive power grab if the Seanad were gone, and the Yes side just as extreme about elitist, unelected, autocratic blah-blah-blah.

Whatever Canada does about our Senate, I hope we have as little as possible to do with referenda. If  enough provincial legislaturs will line up, pass a simple statute, override or pack the senate, and just do it. 

Expect noisy debate on bid to abolish senate

Oh, sorry.  That's "...to abolish Seanad."  It's the abolition of the Irish Senate that is being debated.

History of obscure Senate rules

Apart from the money and the general ick factor, Senator Mike Duffy has the big problem that if he doesn't live in Prince Edward Island, he is not eligible to be one of its senators. And the audit has established he doesn't live in Prince Edward Island.

But what's with that odd rule? It's right in the constitution (the 1867 one and all its updates): a senator must be “resident in the province for which he is appointed.” 

There's nothing like that for members of the House of Commons. William Lyon Mackenzie King was actually the MP for the Prince constituency in Prince Edward Island at one time, and no one claimed he lived there.  Mr. Harper doesn't spend many days in Calgary Southwest, and he's breaking no rules by that. The constituents doubtless want him to be in Ottawa, you know, doing stuff for them.

So why make senators sit at home?

Worse than the Canadian Senate?

Historian David Silbey defends the US Senate against the charge that it is “the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation.” 

He provides comparisons to upper houses in several countries, but seems unaware (perhaps fortunately for Canadian sensibilities) of the Canadian Senate.  Still he fudges a bit, I think, on the question of whether the upper houses he compares, like the British House of Lords, wield actual power, as the American Senate certainly does.  The saving grace of our Canadian upper house is that it has no power -- which is as the confederation makers intended and carefully provided for.

History of Triple-E: one for the archives now?

It is great to see a dumb idea whose time has come -- and gone. On Senate reform, Chantal Hébert writes:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper may be about to bury his party’s grand plan until at least the next federal election and, possibly, for all time.

The constitution makers of the 1860s had it about right: Democratic legitimacy rests in the representative lower house and the executive accountable to it. An upper house is only acceptable to the extent it does nothing serious to challenge the representative house.

The Triple-E movement was always a powerful expression of a certain strain of western anger and alienation. Trouble is, Triple-E has always been bad for the west, has always promised an upper house in which those westerners' interests would be even more certainly marginalized.  (Do the math: BC already has more than 10% of Canada's population and Alberta soon will.  By definition, Triple-E underrepresents them both, even if the territories were unrepresented. That's not a problem Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, or New Brunswick are likely to have.)

So Triple-E always sounded good as a complaint and a demand.  But when the westerners get into power, slowly reason began to prevail. "We've demanded this thing for thirty years. But geez, do we really have to go through with it?"

Hébert again:

The ranks of those who would simply do away with the Senate have grown steadily since Harper first came to power.

Actually, I'm okay with the Senate surviving so long as it actually doesn't do anything. Abolition would not be easy. But if there are to be changes, abolition is the only one worth pursuing.

Dubious History: Ed Morgan on the Senate

Professor Ed Morgan, constitutional law scholar at the University of Toronto law school, believes new Senator Betty Ungar of Alberta has more than Stephen Harper on her side. She has History.

Ungar once won one of those non-binding election-thingees in Alberta to determine who Albertans might prefer as a senator. Recently she was appointed to the Senate by the governor-in-council (ie, the prime minister). Morgan, who likes the idea of making the Senate elective without constitutional amendment, legislation, or popular consultation, comments in the Law Times here:

If a “person” can go from meaning a man in 1867 to signifying a man or woman in 1929, it can likewise go from meaning an appointed person at Confederation to an elected individual in 2012. Unger, then, is on the side of history

Funny how easily people can identify their own preferences with "history."  Morgan apparently believes "history" wants an elected (and hence powerful) Senate in which, among other things, New Brunswick and PEI together will have more senators than BC and Alberta combined.

But then Morgan's sense of history is pretty fuzzy:

The Confederation debates of the mid-19th century had taken place not long after English legal scholar William Blackstone notoriously proclaimed that the husband and wife are one person in law: the husband.

Blackstone's Commentaries? Published 1765-69.  Confederation debates? 1865.