Two major things in Canadian politics are clearly broken. One is the voting system, which allows the majority of Canadians to go without representation in parliament. The other is our senate, which has been abused beyond all recognition. Some political parties call for abolition of the Senate. Personally, I think it does serve a valuable purpose to our country when it works correctly.
I had a shower-idea today for merging electoral and senate reform. I may be totally wrong on this, so if I am, just call me on it and we can get to the real fun.
As I see it, the senate is the perfect place to be a proving-grounds for party-free politics. This is already the idea, but senate appointments have been misused. Picture a democratically elected senate with a ban on formal parties. Obviously every senator would have his or her own partisanship, that’s to be expected, and obviously alliances would form, but that’s just politics. I propose two rules, although I am not certain they’re necessary. One, that senators be disallowed from having held seats in the House of Commons at any point (ie. once you’ve been an MP you cannot be a senator) and two, that senators cannot discuss senate business with other senators outside the senate. The latter would be an essentially unenforceable rule, and doubtless disregarded often, but I think it would still have an effect on the landscape.
Where this ties into electoral reform is with the problem a lot of people see regarding proportional representation and single transferable vote. These systems leave some voters feeling unrepresented on a personal level, although they improve the popular representation, as voters generally vote more for parties than for individuals. However, in party politics, that’s pretty much the way it is anyway. I think it’s the minority of voters that vote based on their local candidate rather than the party leader, and in a sense that’s reasonable as local candidates have only moderate say in what goes on in the House.
What if we were to address this issue by maintaining a fully localised senate electoral system? I propose that we use PR or STV or some other party system for the House, but alternative voting (a system which, generally, keeps all votes inside a single riding) for the Senate. Further, a senator should be required to be a member of the riding she/he is running for – which oughtn’t be an issue without parties to ‘plant’ senators anyway. Let the house be an abstraction with perfect representation of the popular vote, and let the senate represent our local interests, as free from party politics as can be managed.
As I see it, this would allow constituents to deal closely with their senators in order to manage local interest via the senate. The House can represent fields of general interest; the Senate can represent local concerns.
What do you think?
