Every now and again, boneheaded ideas about what to do with Senate pop up, and then as now, I feel the need to take it myself to smack them down. Because I care about Westminster democracy. This time it’s political scientist Arash Abizadeh writing in the Montreal Gazette that we should replace the Senate with a randomly selected Citizens’ Assembly.

Nope.

For starters, Abizadeh gets his civics wrong in which he tries to get at the tension between democratic legitimacy and the role of the Senate in being sober second thought on the House of Commons. The problem is that he doesn’t actually get to where the Senate derives its legitimacy which is from the constitution, and by that, we include the unwritten conventions of Responsible Government. The Senate is legitimate because the people appointed to it were chosen by the prime minister who held the confidence of the Chamber. It’s how all judges or tribunal chairs or any other decision-making body is appointed, and the Senate is no different. This is a glaring omission when it comes to trying to “solve” a problem that doesn’t actually exist. Just because the general public (and certain political scientists, it would seem) are ignorant as to how the system works, it does not mean that said system is illegitimate.

Abizadeh also fails to make a convincing case as to how some of the more specialised work of the Senate is to be done by 105 randoms selected by a national lottery. Currently there is an impetus to fill the body with people who have a lifetime of knowledge and experience (and up until recently, having done work for the party didn’t hurt either). It’s made the Senate the country’s pre-eminent think tank, which is part of the “value-added” of the institution on top of its job of scrutiny of legislation and holding the executive to account. This cannot be replicated by randoms, particularly if we keep the current appointment terms of continuous until age 75 (which is both for security of tenure and to dissuade them from seeking government favour for post-appointment work).

Abizadeh remains convinced that the citizens’ assemblies in Ontario and BC when it comes to electoral reform were such great experiences that obviously would be applicable to the Senate, and this is where his thinking is the fuzziest. While some people saw value in those assemblies, there was also a great deal of criticism that the political scientists who ran them exerted a great deal of influence in terms of getting their preferred electoral systems to be the one chosen in the end. Why this is particularly concerning with a senate of randoms is that they become especially vulnerable to, say, a Government Leader (or “government representative” as we are styling them these days) who has enough charisma and who can get them enough meetings with ministers to talk about causes near and dear to them that the Senate’s role in accountability and opposition to the government will evaporate. This should be concerning to everyone. And seriously – stop coming at the Senate with solutions to problems that don’t exist. You’re only confusing the issues and looking to unnecessarily damage our institutions.

Good reads:

• The premiers are going to outline their climate plan on Friday, which is supposed to get us to our 2030 targets.
• At the AFN summit, pro-pipeline chiefs say that environmentalists are impoverishing their communities.
• The former ambassador of religious freedoms says that the fight against religious persecution has “diminished” under the Liberals (but he would say that).
• The RCMP are holding off on issuing body-mounted cameras to officers citing that the current technology is not up to their needs.
• The bill to create the national security committee of parliamentarians has passed committee in an amended form.
• It is believed that the government has chosen the Airbus C295 as new search-and-rescue planes.
• Economists meeting with the Alberta government say that the consensus is that the worst is now over.
• Andrew Coyne evaluates the Conservative leadership race post-“bilingual” debate.
• Scott Gilmore worries about the observer effect in the Conservative leadership race.
• Colby Cosh fears that there are no grown-ups left in politics after the “lock her up” chants in Edmonton.

Odds and ends:

For iPolitics, I covered the launch of Peter O’Neil’s biography of former Senator Gerry St. Germain.