OTTAWA — From TV cameras to making political party affiliation less important, a committee of senators tasked with modernizing Canada’s upper chamber launched recommendations Tuesday that could result in a major change to how we create Canadian laws.
It’s all part of the Senate’s mission to bring itself out of scandal and back to law-making relevance.
Conservative Sen. Thomas McInnis, who chaired the special committee, said on Tuesday morning the House of Commons is no longer a place of “dignity and decorum,” and has to some extent been reduced to “photo-ops.”
It’s up to the Senate, he said, and its new influx of independents — who will become a majority within a year or so — to stand up for regions and minorities, and offer “expert scrutiny to bills so Canadians know what is being done in their name.”
Sen. Elaine McCoy, who’s spearheading a new caucus of independents, said the recommendations correspond to “what Canadians actually want.”
Committee vice-chair Sen. Serge Joyal, who is part of the Senate’s independent Liberal caucus, said “sober second thought” will happen in earnest. “It’s easy to dismiss the Senate — ‘oh, you know, it’s a bunch of bagmen,’” he said. Now, though, “the government doesn’t have a hold on us.”
The 21 recommendations put out Tuesday morning are the first batch in a series of reports on Senate modernization.
Other senators will be able to review and debate them as the committee continues its work.
Here’s a look at some of the senators’ ideas:
Getting rid of omnibus bills
The committee proposes “that the Senate develop a process to determine how omnibus bills ought to be divided into separate bills.”
When elected governments push legislation through to the Senate that’s “jam-packed with disparate clauses,” experienced senators can’t focus on individual aspects, the committee report says.
“Omnibus bills are opaque and undemocratic; they prevent the government from being held to account.”
The committee wants the Senate to be able to “sever” bills and divide them among committees.
Joyal said we’ve seen the practice of packing law into omnibus bills since Jean Chrétien’s 1990s Liberal government, and it reached a peak under Stephen Harper. It was impossible to properly scrutinize bills containing such a wide array of changes, Joyal said — and that needs to change.
Televising debates
The idea of televising Senate proceedings has floated around for years, but the report’s concrete recommendations offer a real shot at finally making it happen.
The House of Commons already broadcasts its meetings. Audio from the Senate is available online, but as Joyal said, it’s important for Canadians to see what’s going on.
Broadcasting could happen when the Senate chamber moves into a new building, the Government Conference Centre, while Centre Block construction gets underway in 2018.
Senators want to see the Senate formalize broadcasting in its rules, and negotiating with the Canadian Public Affairs Channel, or CPAC, for “more broadcast exposure of Senate proceedings.”
Making political parties less influential
The Senate’s definition of what constitutes a “caucus” should be changed to eliminate priority for political parties, according to the committee’s recommendation, and a new step-by-step process should be instituted to decide who sits on committees.
Instead of comprising the traditional government and opposition caucuses, they would be defined as groupings of nine or more senators “formed for parliamentary and/or political purposes.”
Each senator would only be part of one caucus, and “a leader or facilitator” who doesn’t necessarily represent a party would speak for each group.
Senate rules must be updated because they “do not adequately address the needs of independent senators and do not provide for a fair and proportionate distribution of committee assignments,” the report goes on. For the allocation of these assignments, it offers an eight-step process that it hopes will satisfy members of all groups in the chamber.
“I think Canadians have elegantly stepped up to the need to design something that acts as a counter-weight to that fierce political competition in the lower house,” McCoy said, adding she thinks that even people with “exceedingly enthusiastic support of political parties in the past” will come around to the new way of doing things.
To make sure that regions are well-represented, Senate rules should require “regional impacts” to be considered in Senate committee reports and legislation, the report said.
Electing a speaker
If a recommendation on the Senate speaker is adopted, at the beginning of each new parliament, the chamber would elect “up to five” potential appointees.
Of these, the prime minister would recommend one to the governor general for appointment. A compromise where there’s both an election and a prime ministerial appointment would avoid opening up the constitution.
Meanwhile, with a secret ballot, senators would directly elect a deputy speaker from a different caucus.
Updating spending rules
Another proposal seeks to overhaul the Senate’s Administrative Rules, the vagueness of which were at the centre of concerns around inappropriate expenses.
Senators recommend “the totality of its administrative rules,” its procedural rules and its administrative processes be reviewed, and rules revised “such that they incorporate the multiple roles of the modern Senate.”
Guidebooks and manuals should then be produced, the senators recommend, to “reinforce and support senators in discharging their multiple roles.”
Cutting out question periods
The Senate’s daily question period, which many senators see as a waste of time, should be “modernized” along with other practices, the committee concluded.
The new practice of bringing government ministers into the Senate to answer questions should be continued, the senators decided, and formalized within Senate rules.
Officers of Parliament should also be invited, they decided, while question period should only be held twice a week — with one day devoted to questions for a government minister, and one day devoted to questions for either the government’s representative, currently Peter Harder, or to committee chairs.
• Email: mdsmith@postmedia.com | Twitter: mariedanielles
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