Oooh! Ooh! Senate Reform! Nothin' more excitin' than dat!
Andre wrote here a number of good reasons to avoid Senate reform like the plague. I'm mostly in agreement with him, with some caveats (and he taught me the word caveat during a Phsyics assignment, too!)
Firstly, while Canadian experiences in changing the constitution (Meech Lake and Charlottetown) have largely been disastrous, there's no Iron Law saying that they by definition are going to be disasters. Who knows - if Jean Chretien had been in office instead of Mulroney, we might all be reading today about the genius of Charlottetown. (I know, we don't like counterfactuals...) But it's worth noting that Trudeau was able to repatriate the constitution, and bringing in the Charter of Rights wasn't an easy task.
Secondly, the statement "Senate reform would probably be a really bad idea in a Westminster Parliament. How can Cabinet be responsible to two different houses?" seems kind of odd to me. The Australians have managed two elected houses in a Westminster system for quite some time. The Westminster system is bicameral to begin with, after all. The House of Lords (which our Senate is modelled after) isn't much today, but through most of the past three centuries you had a combination of a strong Commons and a strong Lords, neither of which hampered the running of the British Empire.
In practice, a party which dominated the Commons would be likely to also have the plurality in an elected Senate. So I don't think that is necessarily the contradiction Andre thinks it is. But please, Andre, if I've misinterpreted or misconstrued anything, let the flamewarz commence!
Senate Re4m rox0rs!!!
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