On Tuesday evening, Independent Senator Marc Gold gave a speech in the Chamber about the proposal put forward by Government Leader in the Senate err, "government representative" Senator Peter Harder around his proposals for "sober second thinking." Gold saw Harder's contribution to the debate around Senate modernization as "constructive" and he welcomed it and gave a speech which was described as "demolishing myths" around the need for a formalized opposition in the Senate. It may not surprise you that I was not impressed by his speech, not convinced in the slightest.
The first point that should be made is that every time someone digs into the history of the Senate and finds calls for it to be without partisanship, they are usually ignoring some of the context around the time, the composition of the chamber, and what their aims and objectives were. For example, citing one-time Senator Earnest Manning that the Senate should be entirely non-partisan likely stemmed from the fact that he was a former Social Credit premier, and became the first and only Socred senator in Canada's history. That he didn't fit into the Liberal-Conservative dynamic of the chamber likely contributed to his beliefs that said duopoly structure should be eliminated. Not that you'd hear those citing him giving such context.
My second point is that Gold and others make the fundamental error of looking at the Senate in isolation, rather than in full bicameral perspective. There should be an interplay between the members of both chambers, and normally that would happen within the party caucuses. The senate is the corporate memory of parliament, and within the caucus room, it provides a check on party leadership, while at the same time having the institutional independence so as not to be whipped or ordered about by those same party leaders. This, of course, has varied over the past few years, which is a separate problem from the one that Gold is trying to address, but we can't just consider the Senate without considering how it should be interacting with the House of Commons at the same time.
A big part of the arguments that Harder has repeatedly put forward, and which Gold picked up on, was the fact that there is a great deal of variability within Westminster systems, so there is no one model that Canada must follow in order to maintain that character. The problem here is again contextual. While each country may have a Westminster model, their upper chambers (if they have them New Zealand, of course, being an example where they got rid of theirs and it didn't solve the problems that they thought it would) differ because of circumstance. While you can point to Australia having expertise with the Estimates and operating in a way that requires building coalitions with smaller parties due to its elected-by-proportional-representation make-up, or that the House of Lords has specific competencies that it has developed, that too has to do with its own history and dynamics. The Canadian Senate is one built on a foundation of dual federalism both territorial federalism, and linguistic/cultural federalism, which is unique among other Westminster models. It's also large enough that it can't operate in a consensus manner like, for example, the Nunavut legislature, which is another oft-cited example of a Westminster body without partisanship. Not every element is transferrable, no matter how much you may think it is.
And then we get to the heart of the issue. Senators like Hader and Gold confuse formal opposition with partisanship, in part because the Conservatives in the Chamber have been pushing that viewpoint. While the current Conservative viewpoint has tended to ensure a dynamic whereby the Senate acts as either a rubber stamp when they are in power, or a source of needless obstruction when they're not (thanks in large part to the problematic dynamic that the Harper Conservatives infected the chamber with in treating their swath of newly appointed senators like backbenchers to be ordered about), that's not how the chamber should be organized either. But even without partisan labels, there should at the very least be a philosophical underpinning to a structured opposition in order to provide a necessary challenge function to the government.
That challenge function is key to sober second thought, and it's not something I'm seeing in the arguments put forward by Harder and Gold. Sure, they talk about putting forward a diversity of perspectives when examining legislation, which they think can be achieved by means of "a set of standing rules that would provide a structured road map for the passage of a bill through the Senate." The means by which they plan to set that roadmap is a business committee, which I also have very big problems with because it creates a powerful clique that diminishes the power of individual senators. But without any organization or grouping that can provide that challenge function, who can and will call the government out, sober second thought is more difficult because it's diffuse. It's especially more difficult if one expects that only the current crop of independent senators will perform it going forward because there is a not unjustified criticism that they largely share the government's basic philosophical underpinnings.
Doing away with structured opposition creates some 100 loose fish who become vulnerable to being swayed in one way or the other on any given issue, particularly if the Government Leader seeks to co-opt them on an issue-by-issue basis. Not having an organizing principle means that the senate would have to rely on individual incentives to guide debates, whether they're organized by a business committee or not, and that can be a problem. It's especially going to be a problem if you extend this same principle so that only interested parties sit on committees, rather than spreading out the expertise a little, because you also run the risk of groupthink. We've seen that happen, on the fisheries committee, and especially on the national security and defence committee, which became a lobby group for the defence industry. Having some structured opposition can provide a focus for the activities of the chamber as a whole, so that the business of Parliament can be seen for the forest rather than the trees of individual issues.
Just because Gold thinks that the principles of Responsible Government belong only in the House of Commons, which is the confidence chamber, it doesn't diminish the fact that the primary purpose of Parliament is to hold government to account, no matter which chamber does it. The Senate is not supposed to be a debating society or a council of elders. It is not supposed to merely advise on legislation that passes before it. That's a narrow interpretation of the functions that ignores its role in the broader parliamentary ecosystem. And eliminating the role of structured opposition to spite the Conservative partisans will only lead to bigger problems down the road, like every single attempt to "modernize" the rules of Parliament has ever done, time and again. Heed the lessons of history rather than cherry picking them to suit your agenda. Once you break the Senate, it will be difficult to put it back together again.
(Also, a note to the Conservatives in the chamber: Tone down the partisan gamesmanship and apocalyptic rhetoric. You're only giving ammunition to Harder and Gold. Think of the bigger picture).
