Whats your personal opinions?

I like the Senate - I just think it needs to be reformed. It serves a useful purpose

I for one would like to see the appointed senate done away with, and a small group of elected officials do the job instead. They can still be called the senate, but the current senate is a bunch of useless former politicians who sit on their asses all day, order a pizza, and then decide something that could have taken 5 minutes for the average joe. On top of that, half the senate doesn't even do anything. Like, at all. Don't even show up! And they just sit there. Its like the Governor General. The position is obsolete and should be disbanded.

I for one think the use of senate is more beaurocratic rather than functional. More hands to stamp the bill, and with the right money I'm sure they can be bought.

Do away with the current senate. Get rid of them all. And pull in a small cotingency of elected reps to do the job. Or do away with it completely. Making sure shitty laws arent passed is the job of parliament anyways. Let them sort it out.

The "until you feel like leaving" tenures that senators get make it difficult for me to take them seriously. I think ideally proportional representation could be used to choose the senate after every federal election. This would give more power to the parties that are usually too small to take individual ridings yet still allow people to keep the individual MLA voted for in their riding.

The three A's--abolish, abolish, abolish.

The Senate is a truly underrated Canadian institution. I believe in reforming it, not abolishing it. It is a chamber of sober second thought, and many important amendments gets made to legislation there. Further, senators do a lot of the unglamourous grunt work, such as sit on standing committees, etc, which serve a purpose.

If you abolish the senate, you lose their useful yet underrated function.

I'd rather turn it into a PR elected house, where parties have more of a shot of contributing to the governing process. Under a PR elected senate, the Greens would get a greater voice and be rewarded for their 4% showing.

No. I'd abolish the Senate and make the House PR.

And what about the functions that the Senate currently provides? Who would take on the role of "sober second thought" and staffing of standing committees and other less glamourous "grunt" work that MP's don't always have the time to do?

Why do we not have a second house in the Saskatchewan legislature? And in many, if not all, of the other provinces? We don't need it, it simply serves as a cemetery for old party loyalists.

Quebec and Manitoba had senates - they were abolished early on as the volume of legislation at the provincial level was too small to justify it. This is not the case fedeally.

You are committing falacious reasoning. There is no need for the Senate to be place for party loyalists - it could be a vibrant, relevant institution if the poltiical will was there. (Conversely, it would also take an equal amount of political will to abolish the senate).

It does serve a purpose - it should be reformed, not abolished. (My god, I'm sounding like Preston Manning).

Here is a website outlining the Senate, its functions, and current problems.
http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/parliament/senate/

The role of "sober second thought" could also be accomplished by requiring all passed legislation to go through a second passage 3 months after the first passing before it could take effect. Less government fat, same effect.

With all due respect, I think that's naive. It is highly unlikely that the same group of people would have a change of heart three months later. A reformed senate would fulfill that objective, and many more, far more effectively.

Whether it is the regional balance that the senate provides, its tireless yet low profile work on standing committees, or its poorly publicized role in fixing up legislation before it becomes law, the Senate does in fact do great work. The only problem with it is the manner in which Senators are appointed.

If they won't have a change of heart, then why does legislation go through the House a second time after its gone through the Senate?

Legislation has three readings in each house. The purpose of the three readings is to open legislation to scrutiny and amend it so it becomes stronger. Often, legislation is amended after the first or second reading based on criticisms raised.

Since the Senate and House serve different interests (regional vs. partisan), they (in theory) each provide different levels of scrutiny and different emphasis in theri scrutiny of bills.

bweezy's largely right - the Senate does need to be reformed, but it can be pretty useful if used right. This whole idea of Senators serving until they are 75 is completely insane; if Senators had to stand for election every now and then, they might be a little more up to speed. The Senate's purpose should be as much a revision body as a legislative body, the idea that they can refuse to pass legislation based on the fact that it's problematic in one form or another and needs to be revised. If the Senate refuses legislation, the theory is that they should send it back to the House with agreed-upon revisions and reasoning behind those revisions. I suppose they could also say "no way in hell will we pass this no matter how you edit it" but if they fail it 53-47 in the Senate then clearly they can do something to make it pass.

The last thing we need is more politicians pandering for our vote. The original reason the Senate was non-elected was so that they could act according to their concience. Well, now it's become an exercise in partisanship.

In theory, it was a nice idea, but in practice, it leaves a bunch of outdated politicians in office. Somehow there needs to be some fresh blood in the Senate. A mandatory retirement age of 75 doesn't cut it.

For one our senate shouldn't be over the age of 65. Theres something wrong when a jackass Mr. Rich politician is sitting in a room doing largely NOTHING all day while collecting a paycheque, at the same time recieving a CPP cheque in the mail every month, or if they chose to withhold, recieving a percentage increase for each year of cpp they dont collect. So they are getting tax payers money on top of tax payers money.

Yeah, the senate needs some serious reform. But like I said, abolish the senate completely. It's a beaurocratic dinosaur and the job can easily be done by MP's on a provincial level. Little brother can watch big brother for a change.

Although the idea of an elected senate is tempting, do we really need another house of commons? What could an elected senate accomplish that the commons would not. At best, if elected by different methods, it would make likely the situation where the majority in one house favours a piece of legislation and the majority in the other despises it; the elected nature of the senate would make it more legitimate for them to block legislation from the commons; as it is now this happens only in extreme cases. They have this in the States: gridlock.

At one time, there was no retirement age - you were appointed for life. They amended the constitution to cap the age limit to 75 more recently.

Still, Pillory makes a good point. We'd either have gridlock or redundancy.

If you look at Europe, they have a recipe for gridlock all the time. PR elected houses with a dozen parties sharing power. Gridlock rarely ensues - why? Because parties work together to put forth moderate, manageable change. Even the Americans do that - Republicans and Democrats do it all the time.

Its called "checks and balances" and ensures that better quality legislation is enacted.

True, it is more time consuming.

Its all a matter of what you want - good legislation that takes longer to pass, or lower quality legislation that is passed at the whim of the sitting government.

There are pluses and minuses to each system.

Well, I don't care if it takes longer to sort out because people actually bother to read the damn legislation before they vote on it. If it takes an extra week to pass, but people actually go through it and make an informed decision, that's all for the better. And of course there's going to be amendments made to bills and stuff; it's just how politics work in a democracy where compromise is necessary. Because, let's be honest, compromise beats the hell out of the alternative most of the time.

I still like MrPopo's idea of sending it through the MLA's.

You mean MP's. MLA's are a different level of government :)

Yeah. :wall: