Red Chamber Renaissance (Page 3)

Senate sits three days a week when Parliament is in session, usually about 30 weeks a year. Days can be long, with special caucus meetings starting at 8:00 am and Senate or committee hearings sometimes lasting well into the evening. By law, senators must live in the districts or province they represent, so many travel home on weekends. Fraser says, "We all have umbilical cords -- faxes and the like -- between our home and office. You can't believe how busy that machine is." Senators from the northern territories or from smaller towns on the east and west coasts might get home only once a month.

As for rubber stamping the legislation passed from the House of Commons, Finestone says Sir John A.'s description of Senate is a fitting one. "We don't have the same time constraints as the House. We can read the background studies, interview more witnesses. Senators bring a wider range of experience and expertise to bear, and debate is much less partisan."

"What we tend to do is refine the bills passed to us," says Fraser. "We make them do a better job of what the authors of the legislation say they were intended to do. We very rarely get locked into a complete donnybrook with the Commons, although I think that would happen if you had an elected Senate."

That's one change Senate critics would like to see. In fact, Western Canadians are calling for a "Triple E" Senate -- elected, equal and effective. They especially object to the current representation, with Quebec and Ontario each entitled to 24 senators, while only six may be appointed from each of the four Western provinces. New Brunswick, with a relatively small population, is represented by ten senators. Alberta has even gone so far as to propose holding a provincial election to choose a slate of Senate candidates, paying them to be "senators in waiting" and then insisting that the Prime Minister appoint one of them when a vacancy arises.

Conceding that changes to the makeup of Senate, the appointment process, or the term of office (senators sit from the time they are named until they reach 75) may be necessary, Fraser sees no merit in an elected body, an opinion she held long before her own appointment. "For 20 years I have steadfastly resisted calls for an elected Senate because I think it would diminish the authority of the House of Commons.

"The Commons is the chamber that decides who shall form the government and who shall remain at the head of government. Members of the House of Commons can bring down a government. They also have the power of the purse; it's the only chamber that can initiate tax bills. These are two fundamentally important powers -- revolutions have been fought over them. If you have two elected chambers, the members of the second one will say to the other, 'My mandate from the people is just as good as your mandate from the people.' Not only are they going to start challenging on the core issues of defeating a government and the power of the purse, they're also going to be more obstreperous about ordinary legislation."

Ironically, Canada's first upper chamber was an elected body, at least from 1856 until the deal for Canadian confederation was finally hammered out in 1867. At that time, both an appointed Senate and "sectional" versus provincial representation were agreed upon by the negotiating parties. The last major changes to the structure of Senate occurred in 1915, well before the growth and development of British Columbia and Alberta.

Whatever its shortcomings, Poy, Fraser and Finestone talk with enthusiasm about their work in the Senate and take great pride in contributing to debate on issues that affect all Canadians. These are women who have been extremely successful in their respective realms of business, journalism and politics; each has a fistful of major awards for their professional and volunteer activities, yet they emphasize how honoured they were by their appointments.

Perhaps Fraser sums it up for all of them when she describes sitting in her office across the street from the Parliament buildings. "I look up at the Hill, and every single time I do, I think to myself what an extraordinary privilege it is to be there."