Module 6: The Legislative Branch

As we saw in the previous module, much of the legislation that is passed in Canada is deliberated upon and drafted into bills by the political executive. If the government holds a majority, it is very likely that the bill as it is drafted will become law. But this is not always the case. Take for example the Liberal Government’s attempted tax reform legislation in the Fall of 2017. The government had announced that they were closing loopholes in the tax code which they claim allowed the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Specifically, Finance Minister Bill Morneau had announced plans to stop income sprinkling and the use of incorporation for passive investment income. The government claimed this was fulfilling its electoral promise to help the middle class. These reforms would impact business owners, doctors, and farmers, albeit those on the upper end of the income scale. The loyal opposition, the media, and interest groups took Prime Minister Trudeau and Finance Minister Morneau to task on these proposals. Some of the fiercest critiques, and subsequent media sound bites, came from question period in the House of Commons. In the end, despite having a solid majority, the government has backed down to a significant extent, demonstrating the legislative importance of what happens in the House of Commons.

While the other house in Parliament, the Senate, has had less impact on the legislative process, it has generated its own controversies. Between 1984-1988, the Senate had more Liberal senators, leading to conflict with the Progressive Conservative Government of Brian Mulroney.

Figure 6-1: “Prime Minister Brian Mulroney” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMulroney.jpg Permission: Public Domain. Courtesy of A1C LYNCH.

For example, to pass the legislation on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 1990, Mulroney became the first prime minister to use Sec. 26 of the Constitution Act 1867. This allows the sovereign to approve the appointment of four or eight extra senators, equally divided among the regions. This gave the Progressive Conservatives a slight majority in the Senate and therefore allowed the GST legislation to pass. You can read more about this story here. Thus, while the political executive is the locus of decision-making in Canadian democracy, the Parliament plays an important role in its functioning. In order to explore the legislative branch, this module will look at the formation of Parliament, the House of Commons, the legislative process, and finally the Senate.

As previously discussed, the Parliament of Canada was established by the Constitution Act of 1867. It is based on the Westminster model that originated in the UK, the roots of which trace back to William the Conqueror in 1066. The first advisory body, the Magnum Concilium, would evolve into the British House of Lords which originally represented the interests of the nobility and clergy. In contrast, local moots or assemblies would eventually evolve into the House of Commons which would represent the interests of first subjects and later citizens. The explicit division between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, occurred in 1341 when the Commons began to meet separately from the nobility and clergy. While this bicameral division of the legislature has been replicated in Canada, it has taken a distinctive form.

The Canadian Parliament has three legal bodies, the House of Commons, and Senate, and the Crown. As discussed in earlier modules, Canada is a constitutional monarchy, with the Crown playing a largely ceremonial role in the Canadian Parliament through the Governor General. Before any legislation can become law, the Governor General acting under the authority of the Crown must approve it, or grant ‘Royal Assent’.

Figure 6-2: ” Former Canadian Secretary to the Queen, Kevin MacLeod” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKevin_MacLeod_in_Canadian_Senate_Chamber_2009.jpg Permission: Public Domain. Courtesy of Mr. Badlands.

Figure 6-3: “Bob Rae” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABob_Rae.jpg Permission: CC BY 2.0 Courtesy of Will Pate from Rotman School of Management, Toronto.

Royal Assent has never been withheld in Canada and has not been withheld in Great Britain since 1708 when Queen Anne withheld the Scottish Militia Bill. However, Bob Rae as Leader of the Liberals did request that the Governor General first delay and later withhold Royal Assent to the Wheat Board Law in 2011. This was highly controversial since only the prime minister is to offer binding constitutional advice to the Governor General.

In practice, the process of creating laws happens in the other two bodies which constitute the Canadian legislature. This is a bicameral institution with an elected lower house of representatives, called the House of Commons, and an appointed upper house called the Senate. Of the two, the House of Commons is the more significant body based on the principle of responsible government: that the government is accountable to parliament. At a routine level, the government is held accountable to parliament through things like Oral Question Period, where the opposition can ask the prime minister and the cabinet questions or make statements on policy more generally. However, at a deeper level, the government is held accountable to the House of Commons by the need to retain the confidence of the House. This means the government requires the support of the majority of the elected Members of Parliament. If the government no longer has the confidence of the House, the Governor General will either ask another party to form government or dissolve parliament for an election.

Figure 6-4:  Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AParliament2.jpg Permission: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Courtesy of Montrealais.

The other half of the bicameral Parliament is the Senate, an appointed body that was established to fulfill two primary functions. First, the senate was intended to protect provincial rights. Arguably, Confederation wouldn’t have happened at all without the Senate being included in the deal to balance provincial interests. This would be facilitated by assigning a designated number of senate seats to each province and by the senators being appointed for life. In principle, being appointed for life would allow the senators to represent their respective regions without having to worry about being re-elected and without being coerced by the party that forms government.

Figure 6-5: “Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Macdonald1872.jpg Permission: Public Domain. Courtesy of Notman Studio/Library and Archives Canada/C-010144.

Second, the Senate would, in the words of John A. Macdonald act as a body of ‘sober second thought’. As such the Senate was intended to be a revising body. It would be a body of ‘men of wisdom and good stock’ appointed to watch out for the public interest.

As an interesting note, the government took ‘men of wisdom’ seriously, with no women being appointed until 1930. The Government of Mackenzie King had argued that women were not ‘persons’ for the purpose of Sec. 24 of the British North America Act. Building off the momentum of the women’s suffrage movement, five women from Alberta mounted a legal challenge to the Government position. The Canadian court summarized its unanimous position that “Women are not ‘qualified persons’ within the meaning of section 24 of the B.N.A. Act, 1867, and therefore are not eligible for appointment by the Governor General to the Senate of Canada.” This was overturned by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1929.

Figure 6-6: “Senator Wilson” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACairine_Reay_Wilson.jpg Permission: Public Domain. Courtesy of Shelburne Studies.

Four months later, in 1930, Cairine Reay Wilson was the first woman appointed to the Senate. She would be a champion of women, children, and refugees. She would be the first woman to chair a Senate Standing Committee and be Canada’s first female delegate to the UN General Assembly. She was also given the Knight of the Legion of Honour. If you would like to learn more about Senator Wilson go here. 

As a concept, Parliament refers to each elected government. For example, the 2015 election of Trudeau’s Liberal government inaugurated the forty-second Parliament. Each parliament is divided into several sessions, or working periods, which vary between respective parliaments but there is a constitutional requirement to meet at least once per year. Each session of parliament generally has three events. Sessions begin with a Speech from the Throne, written by the prime minister but read by the Governor General. It outlines the government’s legislative agenda for the session. The Speech from the Throne for the first session of a new parliament tends to be a restatement of the winning party’s campaign promises.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s first Speech from the Throne focused on ‘growth for the middle class’, ‘open and transparent government’, ‘a clean environment and a strong economy’, ‘diversity is Canada’s strength’, and ‘security and opportunity’.

Up to six days can be taken to debate the Speech from the Throne and this is a major opportunity for the loyal opposition to question the government’s agenda. The second important feature of every session is the delivery of the Budget. There are four days set aside for the Budget Debate. Again, this is a major opportunity for the loyal opposition to question the government and this can be quite intense given the fact that money is involved. The final element of each session is the tabling of the estimates: the government’s spending proposal for the coming fiscal year. Each session sets aside 20 Opposition Days or Supply Days, to allow the opposition parties to critique government policy, propose alternative policy, and introduce motions of non-confidence.   Individual sessions of Parliament are closed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister via prorogation and are usually followed by the opening of the next session. Parliament itself is closed via dissolution. Since Bill C-16 was passed in 2006 by the Harper Government, elections are held on the third Monday in October in the fourth calendar year after the previous election unless dissolved earlier.

The contemporary House of Commons has 338 Members of Parliament, each representing one single-member riding. These ridings are distributed across the country in proportion to population. MPs are meant to be the primary linkage between constituents and the government. They act as a via medium, taking their constituents’ concerns to Ottawa and conveying government policy to their constituents. The most senior MPs in government are given a role in the ministry as cabinet ministers or parliamentary secretaries. The most senior MPs representing the loyal opposition act as party critics. Further, all parties sitting in the House appoint several positions. The first is the House Leader: an MP designated by the leader of each party to manage party conduct in the House. The second is a whip: an MP designated to keep party members in line and therefore maintain party cohesion. The remaining MPs are backbenchers, whose main duties include supporting their respective party, attending plenary sessions, serving in parliamentary committees, and participating in the party caucus sessions which occur every Wednesday morning when parliament is in session. For all parties except the Liberals, the caucus is constituted by both MPs and Senators. In 2014, Justin Trudeau expelled Senators from the Liberal caucus, meaning they would not join the Wednesday morning meetings.

Figure 6-7: “Geoff Regan” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASpeaker_Geoff_Regan_2016.jpg Permission: CC BY 2.0 Courtesy of Presidencia de la República Mexicana.

The third is the speaker of the House of Commons. The speaker of the House of Commons is an elected Member of Parliament who acts as an impartial arbiter of the whole house. As we will see below, the speaker of the House is tasked with keeping debate in the house civil as well as having the government answer questions during question period. The speaker is not allowed to vote unless there is a tie, in which case they must support the government of the day. The current speaker is Geoff Regan.

In theory, MPs should represent a cross-section of the Canadian public, but this falls quite short in practice. Running for office takes significant financial resources and time. Moreover, people who may have an interest in becoming an MP need to win the candidacy of a political party that may have its own preferred candidate or bias. This has resulted in MPs being predominantly middle-aged men of British or French background. This forty-second Parliament is the most diverse to date with 47 visible minorities, 10 Indigenous MPs, and 26% of MPs being women. And while being the most diverse parliament to date is good, it is far from representative of the Canadian citizenry. Women, in particular, are under-represented as are visible minorities outside of those of South Asian and Chinese ethnicity. As discussed in Module 5, the biggest gains in representativeness were made in Trudeau’s cabinet, which among other things had gender parity.

The balance of power between parties in the House of Commons has a great bearing on the functioning of debate. If there is a majority government, the party in power can use closure, formally known as Standing Order 75, when facing a hostile House. This requires that all outstanding discussions and divisions on a particular stage of a bill must be completed within the next sitting day. This practice is informally called the guillotine since it cuts off debate and provokes quite a bit of consternation in the opposition, who label such action as undemocratic and non-transparent.

Figure 6-8: “Stephen Harper” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AStephen_Harper_by_Remy_Steinegger.jpg Permission: CC BY-SA 2.0 Courtesy of World Economic Forum – Remy Steinegger.

The use of closure increased under the governments of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien but became routine under Stephen Harper, who in the forty-first Parliament used closure over 100 times.

Less drastic than closure is time allocation, formally known as Standing Order 78 (1,2,3), which limits debate on a particular bill, or a particular stage of a bill, to a pre-arranged allocation of time. In a minority government, the party in power does not necessarily have the votes to force through closure or even time allocation. Nor can they depend on the confidence of the House since the opposition, if they believe they can win an election, may be able to force the dissolution of Parliament. That is unless the Prime Minister is able to convince the Governor General to prorogue Parliament as Prime Minister Harper was able to do in 2008. In practice, a minority government must be flexible and build a majority for every vote. This gives smaller parties greater influence in achieving their legislative goals.

MPs work under the operating rules of the House of Commons, called the Standing Orders. These privilege the government’s right to monopolize the House’s time and to set Parliament’s agenda. Procedural rules seek, though often fail, to achieve decorum in the House. One means to achieve this is the rule that MPs can only speak if recognized by the Speaker of the House. Another rule stipulates how MPs address each other. For example, if you have ever listened to a debate in the House of Commons, you may have noticed questions and comments are directed by using titles, not names. For example, on October 17^th, 2017, the leader of the opposition, Andrew Scheer asked Bill Morneau about his financial stake in his family’s business like this: “The question is simple. When did the finance minister sell his shares in Morneau Shepell?”.

Or they may open a question to ‘the Prime Minister’ or to ‘the leader of the Opposition’. Other measures to facilitate decorum include the barring of ‘unparliamentary language’. For example, this exchange which took place on June 19^th of 2012:

Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North): Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Premier from Alberta is coming to Ottawa and he wants to meet with the Minister of Immigration and other Alberta members of Parliament. The minister’s response to the suggestion is, and I quote, “He is a complete and utter asshole”.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Hon. Andrew Scheer Speaker of the House (Regina—Qu’Appelle): Order, please. The member knows that he is not supposed to do indirectly what he is not allowed to do directly.

Other procedural rules include the right of MPs to speak their designated time uninterrupted as long as their speech remains relevant to the motion being debated. Besides censure from the Speaker of the House, MPs do enjoy parliamentary privilege: the right to speak freely in parliament without fear of prosecution. In contrast to Standing Orders, the Orders of the Day set out the procedures under which the House of Commons deals with the public business before it. These orders guide the speaker and direct the officers of the House as to what actions to pursue.

Finally, it is important to look at the Committee structure which supports the legislative process in the House of Commons. Committees allow smaller bodies to look in greater depth at government legislation and policies. They then provide advice on how to improve said legislation and policies. There are four basic types of committees: committee of the whole, standing committees, joint standing committees, and legislative committees. The committee of the whole is constituted by all duly elected MPs and is chaired by the deputy speaker or the deputy chair of committees. It is primarily reserved for money bills or to expedite legislation. An important committee of the whole is the ways and means committee, which looks at the resolutions and the proposals of the minister of finance. A standing committee is relatively permanent, established by the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. There are currently 24 standing committees. They deal with issues from Veterans Affairs and National Defence to Indigenous and Northern Affairs and Justice and Human Rights. Each committee is composed of 10 to 12 members who study the mandate, management, and operation of their designated department(s). Standing committees may also create sub-committees to help with the workload. There are currently three joint standing committees that bring together MPs and Senators. The first is the joint standing committee on scrutiny of regulations, which reviews and scrutinizes government regulations and other statutory instruments. The second is the joint standing committee on the Library of Parliament which assists the Speakers of both the Senate and the House of Commons in reviewing the effectiveness, management and operation of the Library. The third is the special joint committee on physician-assisted dying, appointed to review the report of the External Panel on Options for a Legislative Response to Carter v. Canada and, following consultations, make recommendations on the framework of a federal response on physician-assisted dying. Finally, legislative committees are temporary, established to review proposed legislation and they cease to exist once their report is submitted.

The primary purpose of Parliament is to debate, reform, and ultimately defeat/pass laws. This process begins with bills: legislation presented to the House of Commons for consideration. Bills come in two forms, private bills and public bills. Private bills have become increasingly rare as they confer special powers or rights on specific individuals, groups, or corporations. Historical examples of private bills include the Dissolution and Annulment of Marriages Act in 1963 and the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees) Act in 1990. Most contemporary examples deal with the incorporation or amendment of religious, charitable and other organizations as well as insurance, trust and loan companies. Public bills make up the bulk of the legislation and come in two forms, private members’ bills and government bills. Private members’ bills are sponsored by individual MPs and can only be considered during one of the daily Private Members’ Hours. Given the limited time available, only a few such bills are considered. MPs’ names are drawn by the Speaker to establish a List for the Consideration of Private Members’ Business. However, very few Private Members’ Bills become law and they cannot include spending without government agreement at some point in the legislative cycle. Most of the legislative agenda is constituted by government bills, those that are introduced by cabinet as government policy. Government bills come in two forms, financial bills and non-financial bills. Financial bills are known as money bills, and seek to raise or spend money. Supply or appropriation bills authorize the spending of money. Ways and means motions authorize taxes to raise revenue.

Let’s look at government bills since they are both the bulk of the legislation dealt with by the House and are often most significant. As we saw in module five, the formal legislative cycle of government bills begins with deliberation by the political executive who drafts a bill. Once drafted, forty-eight hours notice is given before the minister responsible introduces the Bill into Parliament. Bills can begin in either the House or the Senate but most often begin in the House of Commons. Whether the House or the Senate, the bill undergoes three readings. The first reading is the introduction of the bill to the House by the responsible minister. The bill is then printed and numbered with a C prefix if it originates in the House and an ‘S’ prefix if it originates in the Senate. The bill is then placed on the Order Paper: the schedule of pending parliamentary business. The second reading is where the principles and purpose of the bill is debated. If passed, the bill is then referred to a committee where the bill is examined in greater depth and proposed amendments are made. The bill then reaches the report stage where the committee may recommend that the bill be accepted as introduced in the first reading, be accepted with amendments, or that it not proceed any further. During the report stage, bills are debated and MPs can propose further amendments. If passed, the bill is printed and distributed for the third reading which includes any amendments made so far. If passed, the bill moves to the second house, most often the Senate, where it goes through the same process. As we have seen earlier, the Senate may seek to amend, delay, or refuse a bill but this is rarely the case for reasons we will discuss in the last section of this module. However, if a bill is amended in the second house, those amendments must be approved by the first house before moving on. If the bill is rejected in the second house, the government must begin again if it wants to achieve its legislative objective. However, the Senate cannot make amendments that increase taxation or spending. If the bill passes through both houses, it is ready for Royal Assent, and subsequently becomes an act of the Parliament of Canada and given a chapter number for the Statues of Canada.

There are some exceptions to the above process, specifically regarding money bills. First, they must originate in the House. Second, ways and means bills are considered by the committee of the whole as a motion in order to preclude amendments that would infringe on the financial initiative of the Crown. Third, supply, or appropriation bills to cover government expenditures, are introduced via estimates for parliamentary approval. Fourth, the Senate is limited in its ability to amend money bills. Finally, since money bills are particularly partisan and contentious, they take longer to pass.

The Senate is the Upper House of Parliament. As we discussed at the beginning of this module, it was a necessary component to achieve an agreement on Confederation. Especially for Quebec and the Maritime provinces, the Senate was meant to be a protector of regional and provincial rights. It was also meant to be a check on electoral impulsiveness, tempering democratic demands by being a ‘chamber of sober second thought’. Essentially, it was to be both a check on legislation after leaving the House and again before becoming law. In the 1860s, democracy was still viewed with a bit of caution. The worry was that MPs, who represented the average Canadian, may not be able or willing to put the national interest above that of constituent demands. Therefore, the Senate was meant to be constituted by men of wisdom, appointed for life, without the threat of electoral retribution. That being said, the fear of democracy has abated and the function of the Senate has changed since Confederation. And the idea of Senate reform has been a recurring narrative since 1874 when the idea of allowing the provinces to appoint senators was debated in the House of Commons.

The number of Senate seats is fixed at 105 Senators but there are currently 12 vacancies. It is possible to appoint an additional 4 or 8 senators under Sec. 26 of the Constitution, as Brian Mulroney did in 1990. As of 2021, there are 20 Conservative Senators, 44 in the Independent Senators Group, 12 Canadian Senators Group, 11 Progressive Senate Group, and 6 non-affiliated Senators. The Independent Senators Group, now the largest in the Senate, was created to deal with the funding and committee appointment issues generated by Prime Minister Trudeau’s decision to appoint non-partisan members. The Canadian Senators Group was formed from several members of the Independent Senators Group as well as Conservative Senators in response to the Liberal government’s legislation on tanker traffic off the coast of British Columbia. The Progressive Senate Group is a rebranded Liberal Party Group, formed when that older caucus disbanded. In the past few years, there has been a significant change in the Senate, especially regarding how senators caucus with one another. This has been in response to how the Liberal party engages with the Senate, something we will explore in the next learning activity.

Constitutionally, to become a senator, you must be at least 30 years old, a resident of the province or territory they are being appointed from with at least 4,000$ worth of property in that province or territory, and be a natural-born or naturalized citizen. In 1965, lifetime appointments were changed to mandatory retirement at 75. Senate seats are divided regionally, with 24 seats in Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and Western Provinces. Newfoundland and Labrador have 6 seats while the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut have one seat each. Senate seats have traditionally been awarded as political patronage, supporting friends and allies of the Prime Minister and the governing party. This had led to the Senate often being criticized as overly partisan, far from being the chamber of “sober second thought”, and more akin to a retirement home for political party insiders.

Figure 6-9: “Canadian Senate Divisions” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACanadian_Senate_Divisions.png Permission: Public Domain.

In theory, the Senate is theoretically equal to the House of Commons in terms of legislative powers. As we saw, bills have to go through the same process in the Senate as it does in the House, with the exception of money bills. As well, since the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the Senate cannot delay constitutional amendments passed by the House for more than 180 days. However, in practice, a constitutional convention has evolved that the Senate should in very rare circumstances reject or delay legislation. The onus is on the Senate to prove the necessity of doing so. This is based on the issue of legitimacy; the House is elected and the Senate is appointed, therefore for the Senate to block bills that have originated in the House would be obstructing responsible government. As this convention has evolved, it has raised the question: what does the Senate do? And this has driven demands for abolishing or reforming the Senate.

In 1965, the first reform to the Senate occurred when the maximum age of newly appointed Senators would be limited to 75 years of age. Since then, much has been discussed but little has been accomplished. Substantive Senate reform was almost accomplished by the inclusion of the ‘Triple E’ Senate model in the Charlottetown Accord. The ‘Triple E’ stands for equal, elected, and effective. Senators would be directly elected, would be equally distributed among the provinces, and would have an increased role in legislation.

Figure 6-10: Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Canada_map.png Permission: Public Domain.

It was driven by Western alienation and in particular in response to the National Energy Plan of Pierre Trudeau. It was tapping into that regional/provincial defender role that has existed since Confederation. When Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, Senate reform was a priority and this was reaffirmed in the 2011 speech from the Throne. The Conservative Government under Stephen Harper, tabled several bills including provisions to limit terms to 8 years and introducing non-binding elections for new Senators with the Prime Minister using discretionary powers to appoint the winners. The government argued such changes would not require constitutional reform nor provincial consent. However, the governments of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador disagreed. The government then asked for the Supreme Court’s opinion on the constitutionality concerning Parliament’s legislative authority to:

• Set term limits on Senate appointments
• Allow citizen consultation on Senator appointments
• Allow provinces the means to consult citizens on Senator appointments
• Repeal the property qualification for Senators

The government also asked the SCC’s opinion on whether the Senate could be abolished with the general amending formula. The unanimous ruling was that none of the Government’s proposals passed the constitutional test. With little appetite to reopen the constitution, this had left piecemeal reform as the only option realistically available for reforming the Senate. Unfortunately, the need for reform did not abate despite this ruling. The Senate expense scandal of 2013, along with some examples of the questionable political maneuvering utilized by the Conservative government under Steven Harper would only prompt further calls for Senate reform, if not abolition. In November of that year, a national opinion poll found that half of the respondents favoured abolishing the Senate entirely.

In an attempt to create some traction on electoral reform without requiring constitutional reform, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau removed Liberal Senators from the Liberal caucus in 2014 and since taking office has sought to appoint non-partisan Senators using a new appointment process. This change was significant for two reasons: the first being that traditionally all senators appointed by a government would then be part of the partisan Senate caucus from that government’s party (Liberal government appointing Liberal senators, Conservative government appointing Conservative senators, etc). By removing senators from the Liberal caucus, the direct link between the Liberal party and the senators was severed, giving the government less control over these newly non-partisan senators. The second important change has been the method of appointing the senators. Previously appointments were a form of political patronage for party loyalists.  The new selection process has a non partisan advisory board comprised of a panel of distinguished Canadians, called “the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments”, that proposes candidates from pools of interested Canadians who have applied. Although initially thought to be a rather minor reform, there has been evidence that this different approach has yielded some results. The Senate has proposed far more amendments to government legislation than before but is still deferring to the House of Commons and not outright blocking any legislation. The more independent Senate has also made passing legislation more organizationally complex for the government. Since the majority of senators are no longer in the Liberal party caucus, they can no longer be relied upon for partisan support for all legislation passed by the government. Government ministers now need to respond to senators’ concerns in order gain their support, adding an additional complication for passing legislation that did not exist previously. These changes appear to have the potential to act as a curb on prime ministerial power and the use of majority power in the House of Commons.

It is important to note that none of these changes have resulted from any constitutional change, they are only the result of the decision of the Liberal government to take a different approach in utilizing its existing power. The Conservative Party has not expressed any support for this approach, and during the 2019 federal election, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer was quoted saying that if his party formed government, they would return to the former approach of strictly partisan appointments. Without any constitutional change, piecemeal changes to the Senate that might be undone by the next government will be the norm until a window again opens for deeper constitutional reform.

While we noted in module 5 that the political executive wields considerable power in drafting and introducing legislation, the Parliament is where legitimacy is founded through responsible government and transparency. It is, for better or worse, where the spectacle of politics happens. It is where elected MPs, the media, and the average citizen can see the government’s legislative agenda and try to influence it. It is where the government is held to account by these same parties. Understanding parliament is a crucial step in democratic citizenship in Canada. In order to better understand Parliament, this module examined the history and structure of Parliament. Specifically, the ceremonial role of the Crown and the distinctive roles of both the House of Commons and the Senate were introduced. We then looked at the membership of each body as well as their respective roles in the legislative process. Finally, we concluded with the issues surrounding the Senate and Senate reform. From this discussion, it should be clear that the Parliament plays an important role in shaping the narrative of Canada, even its more flawed components such as the Senate. It should also be clear that improvements can be made and that we as citizens should not be complacent.