Once upon a time Alberta MLAs had meaningful ideas about Senate Reform

Until last weekend, 2 of Alberta’s 6 seats in the Canadian Senate sat empty for years

Did you know that until recently, two of Alberta’s six seats in the Canadian Senate had been vacant for years? 

You’re not alone if you didn’t know before last weekend. Most Albertans probably didn’t know.

You’re also not alone if you didn’t even hear about the appointments, because it was out of the news-cycle in about 24 hours.

Despite playing a big role in how federal laws are shaped in our country, the profile of Canada’s Senate, a place of sober second thought, usually flies far under the radar of most Canadians.

Who are the new Senators?

The Alberta seats left empty by Elaine McCoy, who died on December 29, 2020, and Doug Black, who retired on October 31, 2021, were filled last weekend with the appointment of two new Senators - MacEwan University’s Dr. Kristopher Wells and Calgary lawyer Daryl Fridhandler.

Dr. Wells’, the Canada Research Chair for the Public Understanding of Sexual and Gender Minority Youth and an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights, fits nicely the spirit of the “independent” Senators that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has appointed since coming to office in 2015.

Fridhandler, a longtime Liberal Party fundraiser and organizer, fits much closely in the traditional mould of the kind of partisan appointments Canadians are used to seeing appointed to the Senate.

The Calgary lawyer was David Bronconnier’s campaign chair during his run as a federal Liberal candidate in Calgary-West in 1997 and his subsequent successful campaigns for Mayor of Calgary. Fridhandler was also a big player in Paul Martin’s campaign for the Liberal Party leadership in the early 2000s, and co-chaired the Liberal Party’s campaigns in Alberta in 2004 and 2006.

While media reports cast Fridhandler as a major donors to the federal Liberal Party, he is also listed on the Elections Alberta database as having made donations to the Alberta Liberal Party, the Progressive Conservatives, and, more recently, the Alberta NDP.

Didn’t I vote for a Senator?

If you have a vague memory of being handed a ballot to vote in some sort of Senate election a while back, you are remembering correctly. The Alberta government held a non-binding Senate nominee election during the dog’s breakfast that were the municipal elections in October 2021.

The Senate nominee election in 2021 was the fifth time since 1989 that Alberta has held one of these elections. Alberta is the only province to have held this kind of election.

According to Elections Alberta, the estimated turnout for the 2021 senate election, using the provincial List of Electors, was 39.6%. Elections Alberta also reported that 213,783 ballots were declined or rejected (137,316 in Calgary and Edmonton).

Why didn’t the winners of the Senate election get appointed?

Alberta’s Senate nominee elections are considered “consultative” as the Senate is not an elected body and the Prime Minister has no obligation to appoint the Senate nominees.

The federal Liberal government doesn’t recognize Alberta’s Senate elections, and instead relies on recommendations from the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments to make Senate appointments (though the ultimate decision for appointments lies with the Prime Minister).

It’s widely suspected that the advisory board model will be scrapped if (or, more likely, when) Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre becomes Prime Minister. Poilievre is expected to return to the practice of appointing partisan Conservatives to the Senate, though he would likely appoint Alberta’s elected nominees to fill a future vacancy in the province’s delegation.

Elected Senate nominees have been appointed by Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, including current Senator Scott Tannas, who was elected in 2012 and appointed in 2013.

The winners of the 2021 Senate election were Conservative Party-endorsed candidates Pam Davidson (the UCP constituency president in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake and Press Secretary to Minster of Forestry and Parks Todd Loewen), Erika Barootes (a former United Conservative Party President and lobbyist who now works for the private-for-profit MaKami College), and Mykhailo Martyniouk.

Making Senate nominee elections meaningful

I recognize there are some eminently qualified Canadians serving as appointed Senators today, including Alberta’s own Paula Simons and Karen Sorensen, but I strongly believe there isn’t a place for a non-elected House of Parliament in 2024. But I also believe Alberta’s Senate elections aren’t very meaningful.

Senate nominee elections in Alberta tend to be an afterthought that are usually tagged on ad hoc to municipal or provincial elections because as standalone elections they would be unlikely to attract many voters to the polls.

The Senate elections are also designed in a way that makes it difficult for voters to meaningfully engage with the candidates. As a province-wide vote, it is impossible for Senate candidates to meaningfully engage with the 4.2 million people in a 28 day election period.

It would make more sense for the provincial government to divide the election of nominees for Alberta’s six Senate seats into six regions so that local candidates might have a better chance actually engaging with voters (even though that would mean each region would have around 775,610 people living in them).

I would level another criticism at the parties that refuse to participate. The NDP have sat out all of the province’s Senate elections and the Liberals have sat out four of five, allowing Conservative parties to dominate the discussion. Only in 1989, when Liberal Bill Code placed second in Alberta’s first Senate election did that party participate.

But my biggest criticism of Alberta’s Senate elections is that there is no way for voters to hold the elected Senate nominees accountable. Once, or if, they are appointed to the Senate they can serve until they turn 75 years old without ever having to face re-election.

That’s not very democratic.

(Another big issue that I will leave for a future column is the unfair regional composition of the Senate, in which provinces like Alberta and British Columbia have 6 Senators each and small provinces like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia each have 10 Senators)

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Once upon a time Alberta MLAs had meaningful ideas about Senate Reform

Senate reform probably wouldn’t place in the top 100 issues on the minds of Albertans today, but it’s hard to overstate how big a role the debate over Senate reform played in Alberta politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a big issue.

When Senate elections briefly became a topic of discussion in the Alberta Legislature in 2019, I was inspired to pull out an old copy of the Special Select Committee on Senate Reform report, Strengthening Canada, from March 1985.

In the heat of the debate over the Triple-E Senate, a committee of Alberta MLAs, chaired by Calgary-Currie MLA Dennis Anderson, published a report that led to the creation of the original Senatorial Selection Act in 1989 and subsequent Senate nominee elections in 1989, 1998, 2004, 2012, and 2021.

The 1980s were heady times for constitutional debaters and Senate reform advocates in Canada. Dozens of reports from various governments, organizations, and think-tanks studied the idea of reforming Canada’s appointed Upper Chamber.

An advertisement asking for feedback for the committee.

Unlike today, when the majority of Senators sit as Independents in various caucuses not aligned with the parties in the House of Commons, decades of federal Liberal Party governments had led to the 1980s Senate being overflowing with Liberal partisan appointees.

A motion from Minister of Federal and Intergovernmental Affairs Jim Horsman on November 23, 1983 led to the creation of the committee, which included 7 MLAs from the Progressive Conservative caucus, including Anderson, Calgary-North West MLA Sheila Embury, Highwood MLA Harry Alger, Calgary-Egmont MLA David Carter, Lacombe MLA Ron Moore, Edmonton-Kingsway MLA Carl Paproski, and Innisfail MLA Nigel Pengelly, and Independent former Social Credit MLA Raymond Speaker. The group spent more than a year consulting and studying the issue in Alberta, Canada and abroad.

The motion in the Alberta Legislature to create the committee and the 1985 and 1987 motions to hold Senate elections had cross-partisan support – including from the PC, NDP, and Liberals. This is a big difference from today, when the NDP are advocates of Senate abolition, the Liberals have their banished Senators from their federal caucus, and Conservatives (when they are in government) have largely fallen back into supporting the current appointed Senate model.

The committee report tabled in the Legislative Assembly in 1985 included a number of recommendations for reforming the Senate that are much more ambitious than anything being promoted by Senate election advocates today.

Unlike the unimaginative Senate Election Act, which is a largely farcical exercise, the Special Select Committee on Senate Reform called for wide-ranging constitutional reforms that would reorganize and increase the democratic accountability of the Upper Chamber.

The 1985 report recommended Senators should be elected using a first-past-the-post system and that they should represent constituencies identical to provincial boundaries. Senators would be elected for the life of two provincial legislatures with staggered elections allowing for three to be elected during each provincial election, with each voter being able to vote for three candidates.

The number of Senators would have been dropped to 64 had the committee had its way, with six representing each province and two representing each territory. This would presumably fulfill the “equal” part of the call for a Triple-E Senate (the other Es being effective and elected).

The report also recommended that “the Senate should be organized on a different basis than any other Upper House in the Commonwealth,” including being organized without the recognition of political parties.

The report argued that “if the role of the Senate is to represent the regions (provinces) of the country, it must be structured to represent those regions’ interests rather than the interest of national political parties.” This is somewhat reflective of the current Senate, where the majority of members sit as Independents rather than members of political parties.

The report recommended that traditional opposition and government roles in the Senate be abolished, including the positions of Government Leader and Opposition Leader, and that Senators should physically be seated in provincial delegations regardless of any party allegiances.

Each provincial delegation would select a chairman who would should sit at the pleasure of the provincial delegation and participate in a Senate Executive Council, which would, along with the Speaker, determine the order of business of the Senate.

The report also called for the qualifications for candidates to the Senate to be made the same as those for Members of Parliament, removing minimum 30 years old age requirement of and $4,000 property ownership requirement.

It also noted that “the Senate should not be a forum for inter-governmental negotiations.”

(This is an updated version of a piece I wrote at daveberta.ca back in 2019)

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Lethbridge-West by-election

The Alberta NDP will announce on Saturday, September 7 whether party members in the riding have voted to choose former city councillor Bridget Mearns or Rob Miyashiro as their candidate in the yet-to-be-called Lethbridge-West by-election.