Most Canadians in favour of seeing the Senate abolished or reformed: poll

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – With the Mike Duffy Senate expense trial expected to last weeks, lots of questions have been raised about the future of the Senate itself.

A new Angus Reid poll finds 41 per cent of Canadians would favour abolishing the Upper Chamber, while 45 per cent say it needs to be reformed.

The rest believe it works fine as is.

The prime minister recently floated the idea of a full salary for life in exchange for Senators giving up their post and voting to dissolve the Red Chamber. Something similar worked with Quebec’s provincial equivalent of the Senate in the late 1960s.

But Simon Fraser University political scientist Patrick Smith says it likely wouldn’t work at the federal level.

“It could be a piece of the puzzle but it’s never going to be the full puzzle. The problem is that we’re talking about constitutional matters here. It could be Saskatchewan, it could be BC. Some provinces may like the idea, other provinces won’t. We’re never going to get there with regard to the constitution because any province that wants something else might say ‘Well, we might go along with this, but only if we get that’.”

He says that would seem unlikely.

Smith adds many PMs have battled to try and abolish the senate.

“It’s a long issue. You can go back to Mackenzie King when he was early prime minister. Apparently, he had people who he was appointing to the Senate who basically signed letters of resignation, saying they would vote to abolish it. We never got around to that.”

He tells us most senators themselves would fight any such move, even if it meant getting paid for life.

“I think that there are a good number of senators that honestly feel they do important public work and they’re part of a constitutional process, passing legislation, and they give good value for money. I think they would certainly be resistant.”

Harper has also put forth the idea of not appointing any new senators, and letting the chamber slowly die of attrition.

Smith says the idea might gain more traction in some parts of the country than others. “There might be more stomach for wanting to do this in Western Canada and historically, that has been the case.”

But such a move would again come with a constitutional challenge.

“People would want other things if they were going to go there and some of them wouldn’t even want to go there because they think that the senate does provide a voice for various regions around the country. If you’re British Columbia, of course, it’s only six senators versus Nova Scotia, which has 10. [That is] is one of our historical accidents,” says Smith.

He says Duffy’s home province of PEI is already making noise about being under-represented right now with only two sitting Senators.