Sunday special: a provincially elected Senate?

Bill C-7 establishes a framework for an elected Senate, limiting the number of years a senator can serve to nine. But by having senators chosen from a list of nominees elected at the provincial level and representing more than a dozen parties with opposing regional interests, the workings of the Senate could be substantially transformed – and chaotic.

You can read the rest of the article on The Globe and Mail website, part of a series of articles the Globe is doing on the Senate.

I'm not quite sure what is intended by Bill C-7 requiring candidates to be registered by provincial parties. Some provincial parties and elected senators might be very happy to caucus with the government of the day or a federal cousin, but not all of them would be. And their allegiances would be mixed. They would have more of a provincial mindset than the current crop of appointed senators, and would have no particular reason to be loyal to any of the federal party leaders. In fact, they might have very good reason to listen to their provincial party leader instead - if at the end of a nine-year term an elected senator hopes to run provincially (or for the Senate once more, I'm not clear on whether C-7 prohibits consecutive terms), they will need the provincial party leader to sign their nomination papers.

Provincially elected senators will not sit together easily. The government has not had any issue appointing those Alberta Progressive Conservatives to the Senate, since they can caucus with the federal Conservative senators. But what if a Wildrose candidate had won the senatorial election? And, more interestingly, what if both a PC and Wildrose senator were appointed to the Senate? Would they really want to sit together in the same caucus?

If Bill C-7 becomes law and the provinces go along, this probably wouldn't cause too much trouble in the short term with the Senate dominated by appointed senators sitting in federal caucuses. But once the number of appointed senators drops and elected senators with provincial party allegiances become more numerous, the tone of the Red Chamber would change dramatically. Would a B.C. Liberal senator side with the federal Conservatives or the federal Liberals? Where would Wildrose fall? Would Alberta and PEI PC senators see eye-to-eye on everything? What about Tory senators from Newfoundland and Labrador? Quebec Liberals? The CAQ? The PQ?

This sort of Senate sounds absolutely fascinating to watch, but I'm not quite sure how it would work in practice - if at all. It could be a moot point since Bill C-7 might never become law and all of the provinces might never go along. But it is an interesting thing to ponder, as this is what the government is proposing in its bill. Have the long-term implications of this bill been considered?

Three-way race in Ontario

Yesterday, the Toronto Star reported the results of a new Innovative Research poll taken after the OLP convention showing the Liberals narrowly edging out the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats in Ontario. With a small sample, the results of the poll are far from definitive - but it does have a few interesting nuggets.

I wrote about the poll for The Huffington Post Canada and I invite you to read the article, as I will just quickly go over the basic numbers here. I also invite you to take a look at the poll report itself, as it contains a lot of information on other interesting questions.

Before jumping to the conclusion that Kathleen Wynne is boosting Liberal fortunes, it has to be noted that Innovative appears to have been polling regularly (but releasing sparsely, those hoarders) and that the numbers for the Liberals and Tories have actually decreased since December, while the numbers for the NDP have increased. But with a margin of error of almost five points, we really can't see much about what this poll is showing, other than an effective three-way tie (generally what other polls have shown as well).

More interesting are the numbers on who is the best person to be premier: Wynne gets 24% to 18% for Tim Hudak and 13% for Andrea Horwath. That is a big drop since December, when Horwath was leading on this question with 21% to 20% for Hudak and only 19% for Dalton McGuinty. So, by this measure, we can say that Wynne looks to have improved matters for the Liberals to the detriment of the NDP.

With these provincial numbers, the Liberals could eke out another minority government with 45 seats. The Tories would be almost shut out of the Toronto area and win 34, while the New Democrats would take 27 seats. Not shown on the graph is one seat for the Greens. With 9%, or three times their score in 2011, the Greens could potentially win at least one seat, but I suspect that number is inflated (as is often the case with the Greens).

And they're off. If these kinds of numbers are backed up by some other polls, the appetite that the Tories and the NDP might have for an election could drop significantly. It is worth noting that since Wynne's leadership victory, the tone from the press gallery at Queen's Park has been more about an election in the fall or even the spring of 2014, rather than the snap election almost everyone assumed would occur if Sandra Pupatello had taken the leadership. The reaction that Hudak and Horwath will have to Wynne's throne speech will be interesting to see.