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The Canadian Senate: Politics and The Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Henry S. Albinski
Henry S. Albinski*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

“… [M]ost Canadians who are aware of the subject,” says the author of a recent essay, “feel that the [Canadian] Senate has outlived its usefulness and has become a superfluous appendix to the political system. Indeed, the prestige and authority of the Senate has probably fallen to its lowest level in Canadian history.” Considering the disparagements which have been tossed at the Senate, the allusions to “… genial old gentlemen who … live on, undisturbed, meeting a few weeks in the year, bumbling and grumbling at the government, making a few good speeches, and drawing an annual indemnity [now $10,000] for less work than any other citizens of Canada,” this was a restrained indictment. Nevertheless, in 1961 and early 1962, the Senate was also being extolled in some quarters as the keeper of Canada's conscience. Yet others saw it as a crafty player of rank politics and as an infringer on constitutional propriety. The Prime Minister threatened Senate reform and the injection of Senate misbehavior as an election issue. The Senate had seemingly come to life, and in so doing thrust itself into the center of Canadian political controversy. The purpose of this article is to examine the problems surrounding the position of the Senate in the Canadian political system, through an analysis of the agitated discussions of 1961-62.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 1963 , pp. 378 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1963

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References

1 Turner, John N., “The Senate of Canada- Political Conundrum,” in Clark, Robert M., ed., Canadian Issues, Essays in Honour of Henry F. Angus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), p. 57Google Scholar.

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3 These and subsequently cited data regarding the composition of the Canadian Parliament have been drawn from Normandin, Pierre G., ed., Canadian Parliamentary Guide 1962 (Ottawa: Published with the patronage of the Parliament of Canada and of the legislatures of the various provinces, 1962)Google Scholar, passim.

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7 Ibid., May 3, 1961, p. 587.

8 Ibid., May 9, 1961, pp., 614 ff.

9 McKay, Robert A., The Unreformed Senate of Canada (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 51Google Scholar. For a full discussion of the original intentions relating to the Senate, see McKay's, chapter “The Intentions of the Fathers,” pp. 32–51Google Scholar.

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11 Normandin, op. cit., passim.

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31 Ibid., July 6, 1961, p. 7626.

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37 W. Ross Macdonald, ibid., July 12, 1961, p. 1126. Also see his remarks of July 11, 1961, pp. 1110-1111.

38 Ibid., July 10, 1961, pp. 1096-1097, 1099.

39 See Canadian Senate Journals. Proceedings of the Standing Committee on Banking and Commerce, no. 1, July 10, 1961; no. 2, July 11, 1961; no. 3, July 12 and 13, 1961. For Coyne's own summation, see no. 3, pp. 203-206.

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41 Ibid., July 13, 1961, p. 1133.

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