It is very likely that you can name the current prime minister of Canada.
It’s reasonably likely that you can name your own member of parliament.
If you follow politics, even just occasionally, you may also be able to name some other politicians,
including perhaps the mayor of your city, your province's premier,
and some cabinet ministers who may be prominent for one reason or another.
But can you name a single member of Canada Senate?
Probably not.
I've tried this test on a few occasions in first year Canadian politics classes of roughly hundred and fifty students
and found that perhaps one or two students could name a single Senator.
Full and personal disclosure, I teach and write about Canadian politics for living,
and offhand I can name only about a dozen of the one hundred and five members of Canada's upper house.
The fact that an institution of government is largely unknown to citizens does not mean that
its functions are unimportant or that it does not affect the lives of Canadians.
We all know that the Supreme court of Canada is important in our system of government,
but how many Canadians can name a single justice among the nine members of the court?
Probably just a fraction of the population can do this.
So far as I've been able to determine no polling organization has asked Canadians this question in recent years.
But as an Angus Reid survey from 2015 made clear,
even though Canadians don't know who sits on the country's highest court, they overwhelmingly respect and admire it.
Indeed, the percentage of Canadians expressing a favourable view of the Supreme court was twice
that for the house of commons and six times that for the Senate.
So, the Canadian Senate carries out its functions in relative obscurity.
And is not held in particularly high esteem by Canadians.
This certainly would've surprised those who drafted Canada's constitution.
During the Confederation debates that took place in 1865 in the legislatures of the United Canadas in Brunswick,
Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the upper house of the legislature was one of the main subjects of discussion.
Many points of view were expressed about the pros and cons of an elected versus an appointed Senate,
its role as the representative of regional interests, what political interests should be represented in the Senate,
and its relationship to the elected house of commons, among other issues.
If the debate didn't always rise to the level of political philosophy and argumentation found in the American Federalist papers,
the discussion of the Santa came pretty close here and there.
What is one hundred percent certain is that the Senate was expected to be a significant part of Canada's government system.
So, it is perhaps puzzling and certainly ironic that barely a decade after Confederation,
the Senate was widely seen to be an institution of rather minor importance,
and definitely inferior to the house of commons both in terms of its legislative and representational roles.
What makes this even more puzzling is that those appointed to the Senate in its early years were prominent persons.
Most have been members of the legislative councils in the colonies that United to form Canada.
Several of them having held major leadership roles.
Many had served as judges or mayors, or were prominent business persons.
Several were fathers of Confederation, the politicians
who attended at least one of the three meetings that Charlotte town, Quebec city,
and London, England, that proceeded Confederation in 1867.
On top of all this, John A McDonald's first government included a number of senators who served as ministers.
Despite all of this, it did not take long before questions began to be asked
about the Senate's role in Canada's system of government.
Only seven years after Confederation, a proposal that would have permitted the provinces to choose their senators was debated
and ultimately rejected by the house of commons.
This was clearly a response to the senate's inability to act as a recognized and influential representative of the regions.
A role that was quickly assumed by provincial governments and by members of the federal cabinet.
Calls for the Senate's abolition were already heard in the decades immediately following Confederation.
In 1909, the Senate itself took up the issue of reform debating a proposal that Senators served seven year terms,
and the two thirds of them be elected.
Senators rejected the proposal.
Although the Senate had some defenders, often senators themselves, the institution's reputation and relevance
declined throughout the twentieth century.
The unelected nature of the Senate and appointment for life, which was changed to age seventy five in 1965,
did not sit well with many Canadians.
Where was the democratic accountability? Critics asked.
This was not helped by the fact that the Senate came to be seen, and with reason,
as a crown jewel in the system of patronage politics,
a place where those who had served the party in power long and loyally were rewarded for their partisan service.
But as long as the Senate was content to occupy a clearly secondary role in the legislative process to that of the house of commons,
which it was most of the time, the sentence shortcomings in terms of accountability, democratic legitimacy,
and as a voice for the regions were matters that caused a few Canadians any anxious moments.
Nevertheless, there developed a small industry devoted to the issue of Senate reform consisting largely of studies commissioned,
or carried out by governmental bodies.
This industry produced dozens of studies and proposals for change,
and some unsuccessful legislative proposals during the period from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Studies aside, until the Senate reform, or the issue of Senate reform,
I should say, became linked to the rise of Western alienation in the 1980s
and the reform party's proposal for a triple E Senate, the E's being equal provincial representation,
elected members and effective in the performance of the senate’s representative and law-making functions.
This conversation on Senate reform simply was not on the radar screen for most Canadians,
and never emerged as an important, or even minor issue, in any federal election campaign.
The reform party's proposal for the Senate, which was a major part of its platform in the 1993 election campaign,
was based on the party's original slogan, the West wants in.
From a Western Canadian perspective, and at that moment in Canadian history,
it doubtless made sense to emphasize the Senate's failure to perform its role as a voice of the provinces.
The roots of this failure are complex and may be traced back to the practice of partisan appointments
to the Senate that began very soon after Confederation.
Although the first group of seventy two senators, appointed in 1867,
included persons from both the conservative liberal parties,
as well as a handful of liberal conservatives who voted with the conservative party,
the practice of filling vacancies with supporters of the party in power very soon became the norm.
Rather than asking the question, who would the people of Quebec, or Ontario ,or British Columbia,
or any other province like to see represented in the Senate, prime ministers
and their advisors asked themselves what party loyalists from this province wants to set an appointment
and has served the party such that he or she deserves this highly desired bit of patronage.
And so, the Senates role as a representative of the regions,
and therefore part of the machinery of Canadian federalism, went into eclipse.
Indeed, more accurately stated it never really got a chance to take hold.
But there remained its function, as in John A McDonald's often quoted words, a chamber for sober second thought.
Leaving aside the thorny question of whether an unelected legislative body should even perform such a function,
the sensibility to carry out such a role has been undermined by party discipline.
A practice related to the patronage basis of most Senate appointments over the years.
Although some senators and historians have emphasized the comparative independence of those in the upper house,
pointing to cases where its members have not toed the party line,
the truth is that party discipline has been the rule, rather than the exception.
Data on how often, and in what circumstances the Senate has proposed amendments to,
or rejected bills sent to it by the house of commons, range from anecdotal to fragmentary.
Of the thousands of bills sent to the Senate since Confederation only a fraction have been rejected.
Most of these instances occurred during the first several decades after Confederation.
There have, however, been a few more recent instances of such rejections in 1996, 2006, and again, in May of 2018.
But such rejections are rare.
One of the very few systematic examinations of voting and party discipline in the Senate has been carried out
by professor Andrew Heard of Simon Fraser university.
He examined government and private members bills passed by the house
and sent to the Senate for consideration and vote between 2000 and 2015.
Professor heard found that of the four hundred and five bills that had been sponsored by the government,
ninty one percent were passed by the Senate and only about six percent were amended.
Of those bills that failed to be passed, most had been sent to the Senate toward the end of a session of parliament
and simply died on the order paper.
There not being enough time for their consideration.
He also found that about one quarter of government bills during this period were given no detailed examination by a Senate committee,
and that the period of time that government bill spent between introduction
and a vote in the Senate was very short.
Averaging only fourty one days.
Professor Heard concludes that, at least for the period covered by his study,
party discipline has posed a significant obstacle to a more active role by the Senate in reviewing legislation.
And he adds that, overly strict party discipline is to blame for the low rates of amendment of government bills.
While he acknowledges that about six in ten senators had voted against their liberal,
or conservative party colleagues in the Senate on at least one occasion,
and that most votes in the Senate were not on straight party lines,
he notes that quote, “it was also true that most senators voted with their colleagues most of the time.
To all of this we might simply say, well, that was then.
The process of selecting senators was reformed in 2016 in order to get rid of this partisanship
and enable independent senators to perform the two principle functions,
representing regional interests and reviewing legislation in the spirit of sober second thought
that were originally expected of the upper house.
It will take time.
More than just a few years to assess the consequences of this important reform to the process by which senators are chosen.
One thing is certain however,
this change is as much as can be done without amending the constitution provisions concerning the Senate.
The Supreme court's unanimous 2014 ruling in reference on Senate reform stated very clearly
that such reforms as term limits for senators, elections, or other consultative mechanisms
to determine who provincial populations would like to have represent them in the Senate,
or the abolition of the Senate, may not take place without following the amending processes set down in the constitution.
Term limits of any sort, and elections, or some other popular consultations used to select senators could,
the court said, be instituted using the general amendment process of the constitution act 1982.
And this requires an amendment by Ottawa and at least seven of the ten provinces
representing among them over half the national population.
Abolition of the Senate would require the consent of all eleven governments.
In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for any of these changes.
So, will Canadians come to embrace the new look Senate in which independence
already formed a majority of the chambers one hundred and five members,
in which they will comprise an even larger share as new vacancies arise and are filled?
Perhaps.
It seems more likely that the Senate it will continue to work, or carry out its work,
in relative obscurity and that as in the past,
and except on those rare occasions when scandals put the Senate under the spotlight,
most Canadians will be hard pressed to name a single Senator.
Now in itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
An assessment of how well the Senate performs the roles expected of it shouldn't depend on
whether its members have large numbers of Twitter followers, or often appear on the news.
But such an assessment should depend on Canadians believing that
the Senate doesn't assume a role in stature that are inconsistent with this non-elected character.
And so, reviewing legislation sent from the elected house of commons, and even suggesting amendments are fine,
but rejecting, or otherwise blocking the will of the government elected by the people of Canada
is a course of action that is not likely to endear the Senate to the Canadian people.
Nor is it consistent with democratic norms in this country.
Most, if not all senators recognize this.