Has Trudeau freed the beast?

AThe Canadian Senate chamber in Ottawa. new age has dawned in the Canadian Senate. Or at least, that’s what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would have you believe. With his recent recommendations of 21 new independent senators, unaffiliated senators hold a plurality in the Red Chamber for the first time in Canadian history. If you listen to the Liberals, these ostensibly non-partisan appointments are the antidote to all the ills that have plagued our upper house over the past several decades. With pesky political allegiances out of the way, the Senate will somehow transform from an elitist, corruption-plagued relic of Canada’s less democratic past into a legitimate and effective chamber of sober second thought. Scandals will evaporate and sunny ways will reign.

However, despite the government’s optimistic rhetoric, the new and supposedly improved Senate isn’t all that different from the one in which party hacks have traditionally lived out the twilight of their political lives.

Instead of hand-picking senators, the prime minister now hand-picks names from a list recommended by a committee, whose members are mostly handpicked by the prime minister. Of course, he doesn’t have to choose from the names the committee gives him. He still has carte blanche to appoint anyone he wants, just in case he can’t find someone he likes on the list. The committee’s suggestions conveniently remain a secret, so we won’t necessarily know if his selections are from the bank of approved candidates or his own back-of-anapkin tally.

The not-so-groundbreaking result of this process is that Canada now has a Senate filled with liberal senators rather than Liberal senators.

While the government has overstated the innovations of Trudeau’s Senate plan, they have understated — or perhaps overlooked — the threat a non-partisan, appointed Senate poses to the upper chamber’s accountability.

For most of its history, the Senate has been restrained from exercising its constitutional powers by its obvious illegitimacy. Keenly aware that they risked provoking a public backlash if they clashed with the democratically elected House of Commons, partisan senators have generally rubberstamped the legislation of the government influenced by partisan pressures: “As an independent, I will vote my values, I will vote my conscience, I will vote my voice ... In the end, I will vote as I think is right.”

On its surface, such conviction may seem admirable. But the Senate is a legislature, not a court. When senators’ personal values are not held in check by regular elections or party discipline, they can become dangerous. What happens if Omidvar’s values are opposed by a clear majority of Canadians? When her conscience forces her to vote down legislation passed by the duly elected House of Commons? When her voice drowns out the voices of millions of people across the country who disagree with her?

You can’t vote her out of office. With a guaranteed seat in the Senate until she’s 75, she’s as secure in her office as a Saudi prince. You can’t even punish her party by voting it out, since she isn’t a member of a party.

But worry not. Trudeau assures us that removing partisanship from the Senate will allow it to perform its job more effectively by “ensuring that the interests of Canadians are placed before political allegiances.”

Thank God there are independent senators looking out for our interests so we don’t have to go through the irksome trouble of actually voting.

The Senate has never been the chamber of sober second thought it was supposed to be. But if Trudeau’s new non-partisan senators are as independent as they claim to be, the upper chamber will go from being a benign — albeit expensive — backwater to an out-of-control experiment that threatens to spark a constitutional crisis. Then again, maybe a constitutional crisis is exactly what is required to inspire the real reforms the Senate badly needs.