Appointment to the Senate is a prime ministerial prerogative. To be eligible
for appointment to the Senate it is necessary to be 30 years of age; own
property in the relevant province worth $C4,000 and live in the province;
and have a net worth of $C4,000; these requirements have remained
unchanged since 1867. An interesting aspect of the Senate’s history is that,
in 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not eligible
for appointment to the Senate, not being‘persons’within the meaning
of the British North America Act; the case went to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council where the Supreme Court decision was reversed. Appoint-
ment was initially for life but, since 1965, senators retire at age 75.
There has been a great deal of debate about the Canadian Senate. One of the
major themes around which debate has centred is creation of a Triple-E
Senate—elected, equal, and effective. Most conspicuous advocates of change
appear to come from Western Canada, notably Alberta. Various schemes for
electing senators and involving the provinces in selection have been pro-
moted but none has come to fruition. Alberta has even had a provincially
run election of senators, but Ottawa declined to appoint those elected when
vacancies arose.
An instructive comment on the membership of the Canadian Senate is
provided by the Senate itself:
The Senate was created to counterbalance representation by population in the
House of Commons. In recent years, the Senate has come to bolster representation
of groups often underrepresented in Parliament, such as Aboriginal peoples, vis-
ible minorities and women. (<http://sen.parl.gc.ca/portal/about-senate-e.htm>)The method of electing senators in Australia has had something of the same
effect. For several decades women found it easier to win a seat in the Senate
than the House of Representatives (Harris 2005, p. 206); or, more precisely, to
win major party preselection for the Senate than for a winnable seat in the
House. Likewise, there have been several Aboriginals in the Senate but only
one so far in the House. In 2013–15, both the leaders of the Government and
the Opposition in the Senate migrated to Australia as children.
The Australian Senate is a fullyfledged House of Parliament, exemplified by
election of its own presiding officer, the president. The president, in order to
preserve the equality of state representation, has a deliberative, not a casting
vote; if voting is equally divided, the Roman principle applies:‘when the votes
are equal the question shall pass in the negative’(Constitution of Australia,
section 23).
By contrast, in the House of Lords until 2006, the Lord Chancellor (a Cabinet
minister and judge) was the Speaker; the House of Lords now elects its own
Speaker, limited by convention to two terms. The Speaker of the Canadian Senate
is appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the prime minister.
J. R. Nethercote