On the Stupidity of Senate Reform
The Conservatives have been trumpeting Senate reform as one of their platform points for as long as I can remember. Letting alone the fact that they (fortunately) have never followed through on this, it’s a stupid idea. Believe it or not, having an appointed Senate can be a good thing. Why?
Certainly it seems logical that in a democracy, the upper house of the democratic body ought to be democratically elected, but elections open up the senate to all manner of tinkering, by lobbyists, government and police interests, the far right and so forth. Some of you are probably pointing out that appointments give an unfair ideological advantage to whoever is doing the appointing, as in the US with judicial appointments or even Canada today when that bugger Harper appointed 18 senators, all of them conservative (so much for an open, free and non-partisan senate), and you’re right. Sort of.
What we forget though, is that with an election one must keep on the side of those with the money (people are stupid enough to be told what to believe nine times out of ten, so it is the lobbies that matter and not individuals doing the voting), whereas in the case of the Senate, while one probably did “good work” for whoever appointed oneself, afterwards one has no further obligations. Indeed, traditionally the Senate has been very good to Canadians — it is the lower house and the cabinet, the psuedodemocratic bodies, which tend to fail us. Examples, you scream? Alright. Two spring to mind, interestingly — Mulroney’s GST and marijuana legislation.
The Senate refused to permit Mulroney’s GST to go through originally, and it is only through an obscure act of law that Mulroney was able to skew the appointments to allow that piece of legislation to go through. As to marijuana, most people do not know that the Senate was asked to form a committee to review drug laws, prohibition and policy in Canada and abroad, and issue an opinion piece for the use of the government — this is alot of what the Senate does, and it is infact alot of work despite the lies of the conservatives.
As a sidebar, this is another problem: while technically a senator only needs to attend 40-70 days a year and is well paid for it — and some senators do infact do this — many senators do absurd amounts of work by working in committees, which are frequently formed by the government and by the Senate itself. This is a good thing — if the government refuses to address a “hot button” issue that the people want addressed (as it often does), the Senate can form a committee to look into it and the government has no means of bringing pressure upon the body. This is a good thing!
Back to the marijuana example: most people do not know that the Senate was asked to form a committee to review drug laws, prohibition and policy in Canada and abroad, and issue an opinion piece for the use of the government. And work they did. The Senate summoned people from all over Canada, spoke to DEA representatives (they have offices here, alas), and talked to people in countries that actually have successful anti-drug programmes, such as Switz (successfully got rid of cocaine abuse for the most part) and Holland (massively reduced all forms of drug addiction and disproved gateway theory), read huge bodies of scholarly research and spoke to professionals, from police to government to activists, the world over. Their “findings” were published in a 500+ page, 2-volume set, and you know what they reccommended? Legalize marijuana, initiate massive harm reduction, increase penalties for more severe drugs, follow European models for substance abuse, and rewrite existing legislation to be able to deal with drug problems. In other words, exactly what should be done, and exactly what people (and police unions/lobbies, and pharmaceutical unions/lobbies, and the US government) didn’t want to hear. So the rest of the government — the democratic government — ignored the report. It’s available online if you want to look for it.
Some food for thought before you clamber for a democratic Senate. As people’s opinions change, when they owe no one further patronage, when democratic boots need not be licked, unpopular and righteous opinions can be voiced. And in a democracy, is having an opposing voice which has the ability to, betimes, float above the corruption of the indirect democratic process not a good thing?
