Implications of an Elected Senate

Since his election in 2005 Harper has been pushing to reform the Senate. As witnessed in his 2006 and 2010 senate reform bills he wants senators to be elected and have a term limit of about 8 years. By doing this Harper says he hopes to bring accountability and legitimacy to the Senate.

There are a number of problems with his plan.

1. He can't change these things without a constitutional amendment

The Constitution Act 1982 §42 (1)(b) states:

(1) An amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to the following matters may be made only in accordance with subsection 38(1):

(b) the powers of the Senate and the method of selecting Senators;

This means that if Harper wants Senators to be elected or to have an 8 year term limit, he needs to get the approval of Parliament, the Senate, and at least 7 provincial legislatures who have a total of at least 50% of the population. The CPC has argued that the election part of this can be circumvented since, the PM will simply appoint whoever wins the elections. But lets not fool ourselves, even if I accept this method it's facially still a change to method of selecting Senators.