Senators’ inevitable slide into irrelevance

Canadian senators put on suits and show up to work. They hold question periods. They vote, give speeches, argue and deliver lengthy commemorations to dead colleagues.

But while they certainly look busy for their $132,300 annual salary, it’s safe to say that lately, the Upper Chamber hasn’t really been doing anything of consequence.

“The Senate hasn’t really been playing much of a role as a watchdog,” said David Mitchell, president of the Ottawa-based Public Policy Forum.

Shrouded by scandal and reviled by virtually the entire House of Commons, the Conservative-dominated Senate has lately had almost no effect on new legislation — aside from delays.

It’s not clear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s informal siege against the Upper Chamber will have any immediate deleterious effects.

There are few aspects of modern Canadian law that bear the fingerprint of the Red Chamber (even though Canadian legislation can theoretically be introduced in either chamber of Parliament).

An exception, however, would be the lack of any Criminal Code legislation related to abortion, which the Senate blocked in 1989.

According to Mitchell, however, there was a time when the Canadian Senate could be said to have been a body shaping the “direction of public policy and public opinion.”

Senators — free from the ungentlemanly partisanship of the House of Commons — dutifully checked legislation for errors and oversights. Senate committees released thoughtful reports that were received with the same gravity that modern Ottawa now gives to an Auditor Generals’ report. “The Senate banking committee did some great work that had an extraordinary impact on Bay Street and public policy in Canada; we haven’t seen too much like that lately,” said Mitchell.

Gordon Barnhart, a former Saskatchewan lieutenant-governor, served as Senate clerk from 1989 to 1994.

According to Barnhart, Canada’s estrangement from its Senate started during the GST debate.

In 1990, a Liberal majority in the Senate threatened to block Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s attempt to pass GST legislation.

In response, Mulroney invoked a rare clause to stack the chamber with eight extra senators — and gain an instant Progressive Conservative majority.

“I think it changed the Senate for the worse, and I think it changed the relationship between the Senate and the House of Commons,” he said.

Now, virtually every party has begun to see the Senate as an annoying speed bump to royal assent. Although individual MPs occasionally canvass the Red Chamber to block a piece of unpopular legislation, such actions are usually decried as undemocratic.