Harper's Senate Moratorium

Harper has not appointed anyone to the Senate in the last two years, and his recently announced moratorium compares with his prorogations of the House of Commons in years past. They are examples of the Executive (the Prime Minister) interfering with the Legislative, and for those not in the know: the Senate continues to be part of the Canadian Legislature. Harper’s constitutional pyrotechnics (borrowed in this case from the NDP, where one polarizing party mimics another) flies in the face of the Supreme Court which states that Senate constitutional reform can only happen by agreement of the ten provinces – not by attrition and by starving provinces of historic representation.

Harper’s Senate spectacle amounts to a farce.  It is he who appointed inferior candidates to the chamber of “sober second thought” (including the illiterate Jacques Demers).  It is he who dismisses their residency requirements, as in the case of former media assets Pamela Wallen and Mike Duffy.  It is he who fears the upcoming testimony of his own, once loyal Nigel Wright – on whom Harper turned in the fallout following his Chief of Staff’s ‘misguided’ $90,000 cheque to Duffy.  It is Harper who apparently confers with just one other - Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, known for his opposition to the Senate. It is Harper who needs to shore up his sagging polling numbers, hence cheap populism trumps the Canadian Constitution which has ‘evolved’ more in the past 10 years than it has in its entire 148 year history. (And note just how many levers Harper is willing to exercise in the face of his government’s poor economic showing).

Here is an excerpt from John Locke’s “Second Treatise of Government” (circa. 1681) articulating how Harper is ‘altering’ government (and has on more than one occasion):

When the Prince hinders the Legislative from assembling in its due time, or from acting freely, pursuant to those ends, for which it was Constituted, the Legislative is altered.  For ‘tis not a certain number of Men, no, nor their meeting, unless they also have freedom of debating, and Leisure of perfecting, what is for the good of the Society wherein the Legislative consists: when these are taken away or altered, so as to deprive the Society of the due exercise of their Power, the Legislative is truly altered.  For it is not Names, that Constitute Governments, but the use and exercise of those Powers that were intended to accompany them; so that he who takes away the Freedom, or hinders the acting of the Legislative in its due seasons, in effect takes away the Legislative, and puts an end to the Government.[1]

As Locke puts it: “it is not Names that Constitute Governments” but in Canada’s case it is Harper’s name that is everywhere, tending to disguise “the rule of law” of which the Prime Minister speaks with so much fondness.  (But note how little attention he has paid – in true Hobbesian form - to the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta). The Senate is part of the Canadian Constitution, like it or not, but the latter is being meddled with, singlehandedly, along with many other aspects of government, all in Harper’s name.  Perhaps the only good thing about the Senate moratorium is that it will allow Harper (or another party) more opportunity to appoint candidates who actually merit the position.

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[1][1] John Locke, Two Treatises of Government.  Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 409 (para. 215). See also my earlier blog entry “Canada and John Locke’s ‘Two Treatises’”.