Here goes…

Current Situation

Current Senate, courtesy of Wikipedia

The Senate – currently an unelected body of representatives that are appointed by the current governor general (under advice of the current Prime Minster) whom hold their positions until they turn 75 – is the part of our government that has to approve bills after they pass the House of Commons (where our elected MPs sit and discuss bills and other issues). Since new Senators are chosen by the sitting PM, all of them are either Liberal or Conservative, and the Senate rarely rejects bills passed by the House.

It’s bad enough the House of Commons doesn’t reflect the true will of the people thanks to the existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. Why does the Senate purely reflect the will of past PMs?

I propose that we impose a proportional representation system on the Senate, so that the number of seats assigned in the Senate are directly proportional to the percentage of votes each party has received, with a minimum of 1 seat being assigned to any party that receives a significant number of votes, or maybe even to any party that has received any votes.

The Solution

Going back to the 2008 Federal Election, here are the results for percentage of nationwide votes by party:

• Conservatives – 32.67%
• Liberals – 30.23%
• NDP – 17.48%
• Bloq – 10.48%
• Green – 4.48%
• Other – 4.66%

Note that only the top 4 parties won seats in the House, and the Bloq wins a disproportionate amount because all 10.48% of  votes come in Quebec. But what do those numbers mean for the Senate? Well, currently the Conservatives hold 52 out of 105 seats, the Liberals hold 46, Progress Conservatives hold 2, Independents hold 2, and 3 are vacant. Instead of this current oligopoly, the makeup of the Senate using proportional representation would be quite different:

• Conservatives – 34 seats
• Liberals – 32 seats
• NDP – 18 seats
• Bloq – 11 seats
• Green – 5 seats
• Other – 5 seats

Looking that over, I suppose it would be best to split those other 5 seats amongst the next top 5 polling parties (I think we have to draw the line somewhere, but that’s up for debate). Whether they be fringe parties like the Communist Party of Canada, the Rhinoceros Party, or the Christian Heritage Party – as much as you may disagree with their politics and policies – the people who voted for them deserve to be heard.

So what now?

At this point it’s important to note that each province has a set number of seats in the Senate. I’m not sure whether this should be continued or not. In the USA, each state has a junior and a senior Senator. I think, for the sake of provinces currently feeling under represented in Parliament, this should be done away with. Instead of each province having a set number of seats, instead each party should be able to choose their best and brightest to sit in the Senate.

One other thing that I’m open to suggestions on is term limits. I think a limit of, perhaps, 8 years or two elections should be in place. While the Senate should theoretically provide a steady, guiding hand for the country, fresh ideas are still needed. I suppose we could let previous Senators back in after being out for one or two elections, but I think most of us are a bit tired of “career politicians,” especially those Senators that were appointed for life prior to recent changes, and even those that are appointed until 75 yet don’t sit in the Senate nearly as often as our MPs do in the House.

What I like about this is that it’s easy to implement. Citizens are already voting for their favourite party/candidate at the local level, and this practically guarantees them representation in Parliament regardless of the results in their riding. It doesn’t require extra effort, math, deciding which parties they prefer in what order, etc. Same tick in the same box as before, with Elections Canada applying the numbers to the Senate, and then calling upon each party to send their best and brightest to the Senate for whatever term we decide appropriate.

Is it perfect? No, of course not. The existing FPTP system stays in place, but I think this is a quick and easy way to bring about electoral reform without confusing the populace (including me).

So let’s open this up for discussion. Love it? Hate it? Suggestions for improvement? What say you?

After being exposed to nothing but European news for almost 2 weeks, I began thinking about ways that Canada could improve it’s government in (probably) 12 months or less. Some of these require lengthy explanations, others don’t because others have done the explaining family. So let’s get right into it!

1) Proportional Representation
Though I hate to see the type of power fringe groups on both the left and right-wing of the political spectrum might obtain, the fact is people vote for them and therefore they deserve a seat at the table (as long as enough people vote for them to warrant handing them 1 out of 308 seats). For more information on proportional representation, click here.

2) Senate Reform
I’m not referring to the full-of-fluff Senate reform that Prime Minister Harper has been asking for. No, I’m referring to the Senate reform that I wrote about back in October 2008. Lower pay ($122,700 is far too much), fewer senators (105 unelected Senators is far too many for a country of 32 million people), they shouldn’t be able to hold other jobs and they should be elected. Much of the reasoning for these proposals are on that older post.

3) Actively Solicit Feedback on New Bills
The Canadian government, and Members of Parliament, should be actively pursuing public comment on new bills far more often and in a far more engaging way than they do now. While I don’t appreciate the waste of paper (and campaign-style leaflets), the Conservative MP in my riding actively sends out messages to his constituents. And why not? If he communicates more actively, the chances of him being re-elected are much higher and you also have a more highly educated constituency. That’s good for politics, despite the fact that it may not be good for most politicians.

The Canadian government needs to get involved in social media sites, and so do more MPs. The Canadian government needs a newsletter system that people can sign up to in order to receive alerts on new bills; it should setup accounts on sites like Identi.ca, Twitter and Facebook so that people can receive alerts outside e-mail; more MPs should be holding townhall meetings using their own websites along with social media sites to organize them; and the Canadian government should allow online voting of new bills on a secure site, ideally using a unique identifier (like your SIN) in order to prevent fraud, as a way to gauge popular sentiment for new bills.

4) MP Websites
Some published standards for MP websites, ideally giving them some standard templates to follow and a choice of 2 or 3 different content management systems for them to use. The website for Ed Holder, my MP, is horrendous. Irene Mathyssen’s website, on the other hand, follows the standard NDP template and is much, much easier to use. This way, if your riding elects a new MP, you can expect the new MP’s website to look at least somewhat similar to the old MP’s website, albeit the backend may be entirely different.

5) Fixed Election Dates
This is a no-brainer. October, April or May every 4 years. Why those months? Well October would avoid overlap with the American elections in November (if they fell in the same year), and April or May would place the elections out of winter for most of us (very northern areas possibly excluded). No one wants to trek to the polls when there’s over a metre of snow on the ground, and summer elections will negate the possibility of many people even being near home to participate in debates leading up to the election or being at home when the actual election happens. Those months just make sense to me.

6) Webcast CPAC
Actually, this one’s already happening. I had no idea until I checked, but CPAC is available in both official languages live online. Kudos to CPAC for getting that going! What disappoints me is that it’s encoded in Windows Media format, so it’s not available on every type of computer. If CPAC were to offer the stream in an open format, like Ogg Theora, that would be much better for the public at large (and their, and in the end everyone’s, wallets).

What do you think? What other quick-win ways could we improve government?