Thursday, June 20, 2013

Building a Better Senate redux

I previously blogged some ideas for improving the Senate, building on the advantages of the existing model by making it less partisan.

While reading this article (although not directly related to its content), I came up with a simpler way to do the same thing.

First, we make senators non-partisan.  They can't be members of a party, they don't identify themselves as "Conservative senators" or "Liberal senators", there are no Senate party caucuses.  They're just senators.

Then comes the important part: government of the day cannot appoint any senators who are or have ever been members of its political party (or any of that party's predecessors).  It can appoint people who are or have been members of other political parties, it can appoint people who have never been a member of any political party, but it can't appoint from its own party.

Possible corollary, depending on what percentage of the people who are good senate candidates have ever been members of political parties: each government must appoint a minimum number of senators who are or have been been a member of another political party.  I can see pros and cons of this.

But, either way, it would be the political equivalent of having one sibling cut the cake and another choose the slice.

4 comments:

laura k said...

There would be definite advantages in a non-partisan Senate. It should be non-partisan. But how would you rate this vs abolishing the Senate altogether?

impudent strumpet said...

I would very much prefer to perfect the Senate's sober second thought role rather than abolishing it altogether. I think it's better to have two houses that sort of counterbalance the flaws of each other's systems. (I blogged more about this here.)

However, I would rather abolish it than make it elected, unless they made it elected under a vastly different model than the House of Commons. Just making it into another House of Commons would be a waste of resources.

impudent strumpet said...

In general, I agree with the position of the Globe and Mail article I linked to. I'm just thinking of ways to do the same thing but better.

laura k said...

Thanks. I agree it should not be elected. That would be nuts, IMO. But I wonder if it could ever really be de-politicized - in practice as opposed to in theory.

I'll read the piece you linked to. I'll also go back and read your older post (which I must have read at the time). The Senate has been a big learning curve for me!