Reforming houses of ‘sober, second thought’ a shared problem for Canada and Britain

OTTAWA – The last time Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcomed his British counterpart David Cameron to Ottawa, the European debt crisis was the paramount issue to discuss.

The next time the two meet they might want to put reform of the upper chamber on the agenda.

Canada’s Senate and Britain’s House of Lords are among the only appointed upper chambers in the world, and changing that fact has been on the to-do list of both leaders with varying degrees of failure.

The Canadian Conservatives want to see the Senate’s current term, which extends to the age of 75, limited to nine years. They also want to allow the provinces to hold elections to select senators, instead of just having the prime minister appoint them.

Across the pond, Cameron forwarded a proposal last year that would see its House of Lords, the equivalent to the Canadian Senate, replace appointed “peers” with elected ones who had 15-year limits.

Recent reform efforts

Increasing the democratic legitimacy of Parliament was a driving desire for change in both countries, but the efforts in both countries have been sidelined.

After introducing five different bills to reform the Senate into the House of Commons without success, the Harper government’s plan now lays in the hands of the country’s top court.

Harper has asked the Supreme Court of Canada to clarify what reforms may be possible including fixed terms, retroactive term limits, elections and changes to who qualifies to become a senator.

Cameron was forced to abandon his plans this past summer after 91 of his own Conservative MPs rebelled against him, fearing an elected House of Lords could undermine the supremacy of the House of Commons.

Neither leader is the first in their countries to seek change in the upper chamber. Reform has been on the agenda for more than a century with little effect in Britain and its former colony.

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“For a hundred years or so, ministers and governments have sent ships of state into the waters of House of Lords reform, only to see them, indeed, disappear without trace,” said Baroness Helene Hayman, Lord Speaker, in a speech on the subject last month.

The fact that both institutions are facing reform headaches may not be surprising considering they are direct relatives.

Canada’s founding fathers looked to the British Westminster model to establish governance in the North American colonies. The House of Commons became the institution that wielded the electoral will of citizens through elected representatives and the Senate became the chamber of sober second thought, or the equivalent of the British House of Lords.

But there are some stark differences when it comes to appointments, power and payment.

Appointments and compensation

The British House of Lords has some partisan appointments, but there are also non-partisan peers who are recommended by a non-partisan, independent appointments commission, which also vets partisan nominations made on the recommendation of the prime minister or other party leaders.

“They are appointed as people who they call the great and the good of people of people who achieved a great deal and people the government in power thinks should be in the House of Lords,” said Queen’s University constitutional expert Ned Franks.

Without an established aristocracy, Canada chose to appoint older men, and later women, who represented the federation’s different provinces. Senators have to be 30 years old and have a residency in the province they represent. The selection process in Canada has meant Senate appointments are often hyper-partisan.

“Each prime minister when they go in appoints people who are friends, cronies or supporters of their party,” Franks said. “But not representative of regular Canadians.”

How appointees are compensated also differs in the two countries as Canadian senators receive $132,000 annual salaries, plus allowances for housing and travel. Peers in Britain are unsalaried, but are entitled to a 300 pound allowance, plus travel expenses, each day they work at Westminster.

“There are a huge number of lords there and very few of them perform as lords in the House. In Canada every senator in theory is supposed to be there in the sitting,” Franks said.

Legislative powers

While both can introduce legislation, with the exception of money bills, Canadian senators have more legislative power than their British cousins.

The Senate can introduce bills, amend legislation passed by the House of Commons, defeat legislation or delay bills. But over time, senators have checked their own veto powers, using them only a handful of times to defeat bills, including ones on abortion and crime, in recent history.

The House of Lords can review and amend bills from the Commons, but cannot unilaterally prevent them from passing, except in very limited circumstances. The Lords can delay bills in a bid to force the Commons to reconsider their actions.

Franks said the difference means Britian’s peers can express their views without damaging democracy by overthrowing a law passed by the elected chamber.

“It frees them up because they don’t have the last word,” he said. “One of the problems with the Canadian Senate is they have the last word.”

Baroness Hayman also pointed to the House of Lords’ constrained power as a strength for democracy in her speech.

“At the moment, the House of Lords knows its place – it very, very rarely ends up confronting the House of Commons – and when it does, it loses,” she said.

But most of the strife when it comes to reform is the tension between the powers of the chambers and the way in which people get there.

The rationale for an appointed chamber in both countries was originally to ensure the Upper Chamber wouldn’t have the legitimacy or popular support to be able to block the will of the House of Commons.

“I wouldn’t mind having an elected Senate as long as it isn’t effective,” Franks said. “I don’t mind having an effective Senate as long as it doesn’t have the legitimacy of elections.”

But more than a century later, Cameron and Harper have called that question into logic, arguing that elections would add more legitimacy, and accountability, into the chamber.