I Come Not to Praise the Senate But to Bury It

The Canadian Senate is useless. There, I said it. It's a patronage dumping ground that serves no real purpose other than as a retirement home for political cronies. The only way that I see to reform such an institution is to take it out into a quiet spot in the yard and put a bullet between its eyes. (I'm speaking about the institution NOT individual senators, they can take up kite flying or horseshoes for all I care.)

One of Harper's pet projects has been some kind of quasi-reform of the senate that will miraculously not involve a change in the constitution. Aside from electing the senators, it seems that Steve would like to change the proportions of the senate, to skew it westward.

If all that was not enough, today I read in the Star that some guy wants to do representation by territory! Bruce Pardy is some kind of law prof at Queens. Apparently one doesn't need a great deal of math or geography to attain that kind of job. Don't believe me? This is his argument:

"In simple terms, a country consists of its people and its territory. Sovereignty means the exclusive ability to make and enforce laws within a physical area. Since the purpose of the Senate is to counterbalance the distorting effects of representation by population, and since neither regional nor provincial-based schemes accomplish this purpose, some other organizing principle for the upper chamber is necessary."

The distorting effects of rep by pop?! The distorting effects of one person, one vote?! How about the distorting effects of a handful of voters in Ungava having more clout that the millions of people in Southern Ontario? Apparently Mr. Pardy arbitrarily decided that rep by pop wasn't good enough for the senate and so he decided to make up this stupid scheme. The layout of Canada's ridings already skews towards over-representing rural areas and under-representing urban ones. If you think this is Toronto-centrism, take a look at the population of Trinity-Spadina versus that of, say, Cardigan, PEI or Nunavut. Representation by territory exaggerates distortion if anything. To certain extent sparsely populated regions already seem to get something approaching representation by territory. This looks like a splendid way to further silence urban Canada.
Tags: Senate, Toronto, Bruce Pardy.