{"id":43080,"date":"2018-04-14T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T09:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43080"},"modified":"2018-04-13T22:06:04","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T02:06:04","slug":"andrew-coyne-asks-why-do-we-need-a-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/04\/14\/andrew-coyne-asks-why-do-we-need-a-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Coyne asks “Why do we need a Senate?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

And the answer for anyone who’s lived through previous constitutional mud-wrestling is almost certainly going to be a variant of “We don’t, but to change it in any way means re-opening the entire constitution for revision and re-negotiation … thanks, but no thanks<\/a> … we’ll put up with the Red Chamber of Irrelevance”:<\/p>\n

More than two years after the Trudeau government introduced its system of \u201cindependent, merit-based\u201d appointments to the Senate, transforming \u2014 so it was said \u2014 the Other Place from a house of patronage and partisanship to a house of virtue, the government\u2019s \u201crepresentative\u201d in the Senate has given some thought to how it will all work.<\/p>\n

In a 51-page discussion paper, Peter Harder offers his views on what role the Senate should play, as one of the last remaining appointed legislatures among the world\u2019s democracies \u2014 and the most powerful, on paper \u2014 particularly in light of its changed circumstances. It makes for a fascinating, not to say hallucinatory read.<\/p>\n

In Harder\u2019s estimation, the past two-and-a-bit years have been something of a golden age of Senate legitimacy, a period in which it has rebuilt its credibility after what he plainly views as the dark age of partisanship that preceded it: a dark age that precisely coincides with the period of Conservative government.<\/p>\n

The expense scandals, the epic confusion that followed the government\u2019s half-considered reforms, the repeated episodes of brinksmanship as the newly envirtued Senate threatened to defeat this or that bill, these rate barely a mention, in Harder\u2019s account, beside the Senate\u2019s \u201crobust bicameralism,\u201d its \u201cpositive track record\u201d and contributions that have been \u201ceffective, policy-oriented and always respectful of the role of the representative House of Commons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah yes. About that: if the Senate were so \u201calways respectful\u201d of their respective roles, it\u2019s curious Harder should feel the need to spend 51 pages explaining what those roles are. But then, that is because it is so exquisitely complicated, so delicately subtle, requiring such a delicate balance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And the answer for anyone who’s lived through previous constitutional mud-wrestling is almost certainly going to be a variant of “We don’t, but to change it in any way means re-opening the entire constitution for revision and re-negotiation … thanks, but no thanks … we’ll put up with the Red Chamber of Irrelevance”: More than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,53],"tags":[715,553],"class_list":["post-43080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-politics","tag-constitution","tag-senate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bcQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43081,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080\/revisions\/43081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}