Senatus populusque Canadensis

Canadian political life is now completely paralyzed, thanks to the scandal surrounding the upper house of Parliament, the Senate.  The government is trying to turf out a number of senators who are accused of padding their expense accounts, but the senators in question -- Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau -- are refusing to go quietly.

The story is evolving all the time, but the one thing that can safely be asserted is that everyone involved is lying.  All three senators were untruthful about their place of primary residence, in order to be able to claim tens of thousands of dollars in travel and housing allowances.  And Prime Minister Stephen Harper, under ferocious attack from Duffy in particular, is changing his side of the story by the day, as he tries desperately to maintain control and avoid irreparable damage to his ability to govern.

It's all good dirty fun, but it's leading more and more people to question whether we really need a Senate as a chamber of "sober second thought".  The Senate was established in 1867 as part of the constitutional deal that set up the Canadian confederation, but it was a bit of a Frankenstein creation from the outset.

The UK, as the colonial power driving the constitutional process at the time,  had a second chamber, in the shape of the House of Lords, so it was only natural that it would want to set up something similar for Canada.  However, the House of Lords was an entirely hereditary assembly back then, and there was no basis for replicating that in Canada.

Looking south of the border, the "fathers of confederation" could see that the US had established a Senate with the explicit aim of providing equal representation for each state (by giving them two seats each, regardless of population).  However, back in 1867 only four territories joined the new Canadian confederation (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia), so that model was not really applicable.  There was also little appetite for having a second elected chamber.

The result was that the Senate was set up with the intention of providing a balancing function akin to that of the US, but on an unelected basis, like the House of Lords.  Except, of course, that in the absence of an aristocracy to fill the benches, it was left to the governments of the day to select the members.  This process that has been shamelessly abused ever since, as successive governments have packed the second chamber with their placemen and toadies.

Which is exactly how Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau landed there, back in 2010, when Stephen Harper decided to pad the place out a little with some high-profile Tory loyalists. Duffy and Wallin, who were both prominent TV journalists back in the day, mutated into highly partisan attack dogs for the government, racking up massive expenses as they gallivanted around doing Harper's dirty work.  However, contrary to the rules of the Senate, neither of them was truly resident in the Province they purported to represent (PEI in the case of Duffy; Saskatchewan in the case of Wallin), and it was this that proved their undoing when questions began to be asked.

This being Canada, reforming the Senate would in all likelihood be an impossible task:  either Quebec or the Western provinces would undoubtedly feel they were getting short-changed.  But it's hard to see how it can ever regain what little credibility it may have had at one time, so getting rid of it altogether is very possibly the best option.  As Oliver Cromwell famously said to the "rump Parliament" more than three and a half centuries ago, “You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”