Ignorance Undone and the Senate Debate

In an earlier post today I admitted to being "fundamentally ignorant" about the British Parliamentary system. I said something stupid about its make-up. I decided, primarily with the help of my favourite resource (Wikipedia) that I would fix that. I believe I can now talk somewhat intelligently about it.

The British Parliament, much like the Canadian Parliament (and unlike what I wrote earlier), has two Houses: the House of Lords is the upper house (we call it the Senate) and the House of Commons is the lower house (we call it the same). What was confusing me is that the House of Lords has two types of members: Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. Right now, neither faction is democratically elected (as with our Senate). The vote in the British parliament I referenced is going to change that. The House of Commons, like ours, is democratically elected. The Queen chooses the person most likely to be able to gain support of the majority of the House (usually the leader of the Party with the most seats, but not necessarily) to be Prime Minister. Again, this is exactly like our system (except instead of the Queen doing the selecting, it is our Governor General).

So the British parliament has voted in favour of a fully elected House of Lords. The Western Standard* thinks this is a boost to the Conservative plan of having our Senate become a democratically elected body. I'm not sure an unelected House of Lords an ocean away is what was holding us back, but perhaps. Is there really that much deference still paid to the British system? I think it had more to do with Liberal control of the Senate (i.e. since the Liberals usually form the government, why would they change the system and risk losing their guaranteed Senate support?).

But do we really want an elected Senate? Right now, the Senate acts as a sort of Socratic philosopher king in that it protects against the tyrany of the majority. The Senate doesn't need to worry about whether or not their decision will cost them the next election, thereby allowing Senators to make the right decision, even if that decision is not popular (i.e. a law taxing red heads more than any other hair-colour cleavage would benefit the vast majority of the population, and it wouldn't really violate the Charter [where does it say we are free from discrimination based on hair colour?], but it would, I think we can agree, be unfair/wrong/an example of tyrany of the majority and could conceivable have popular support).** I'm not saying this is a common thing, nor am I saying the Canadian Senate actual does this, but it can, and that is the benefit of having an appointed-for-life Senate.

Besides that, what's wrong with the current system? In comparison to the American system (their upper house, the Senate, is elected) I don't think we come up short. I mean, if the theory of voter fatigue is correct, Canadians don't want any more elections - far too many of us don't turn up on election day as it is.

I don't think this change in the British Parliament has much significance in Canada. I think Harper has the same long road ahead of him if he wants to make our Senate an elected body. I give credit to the Western Standard for jumping on anything that could possibly further their cause (remember that their cause and the Conservative cause are one and the same), but this train isn't going anywhere.

*****

* Is it possible the Western Standard could be any more partisan? Wholly rightist, entirely Conservative. I know it is "Canada's only conservative national newspaper" but it could at least pretend to be unbiased like the rest of our national newspapers do.
** Give me a break, this is the best idea I could come up with. If you've got a better one, leave it in the comments.