Ethics: United States and Senate Refrom Essay

Submitted By bobbyobrien
Words: 306
Pages: 2

1) A reformed Senate could be used to overcome the chronic inability of the House of Commons to reflect the diversity of the Canadian people. Women, visible minorities, aboriginals, small political parties and other minority groups are poorly represented in the current House of Commons. This doesn’t mean that MPs don’t care about these groups, but it is a problem when the country’s main legislative body does not include the same diversity as the population it represents.
Fixing this shortfall can’t be done via appointments to the Senate because this is a form of tokenism. The shortfall must be fixed by way of an electoral process.
Senate refrom is an opportunity to introduce proportional representation to the federal system. It is not a cure for every representational weakness of our governments, but it would go a long way toward making a reformed Senate a more diverse and representative body. This can be done while retaining our traditional first-past-the-post system in the Commons.
2) A reformed Senate could help ensure federal policy is based on a wider variety of input with a premium placed on compromise and consensus among diverse perspectives. Admittedly, this makes for a slower, more complex and generally messier legislative process, but that’s how a healthy democracy works.
3) A reformed Senate could serve as a check on what virtually everyone agrees is the alarming concentration of power in the hands of the prime minister and the central agencies that report to