Talk:Triple-E Senate

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The Conservatives support an elected Senate with equal representation of the provinces, but say nothing about effectiveness. The Triple-E moniker was explicitly rejected in the 2005 Policy Declaration.

More like Australian or US Senate

I've removed "However, the Triple-E Senate would more accurately describe the US Senate", in reference to the similarity of the Triple-E Senate to the Australian Senate). Since the Australian Senate is based on the US Senate and exists in the Westminster System (which the US Senate does not of course) and that the number of provinces in Canada more closely resembles the number of States in Australia than it does the US I fail to see how the Triple-E Senate could be more like the US Senate than the Australian Senate. Eg, each US state sends only 2 senators whereas each Australian state sends 12 and each territory 2. Given the number of Senators in the current Canadian Senate (105) we can expect the number of Senators sent by each province to be around 10. Robertbrockway 23:14, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand you point that each Australian state sends more senator than a US state. However, I took a different approach. While the US Senate is a first-past-the-post system (with each state staggering the election of their 2 seats), the Australian Senate has a proportional representation system. I'm not sure whether the Canadian Senate would use proportional representation should it become a "Triple-E Senate."

Also, the idea of a Triple-E Senate began when "Western populists, outraged by their exclusion from the decision on the National Energy Program looked south towards the United States and began to believe that perhaps if Canada's Senate had been more like its American counterpart..." (from the article). It's not unreasonable to say that a Triple-E Senate would look more like the US Senate. It's not to my knowledge that Western Canada looked at the Australian Senate as a model for a new Senate. Bourquie 3:26, 8 Feb 2006

Hi Bourquie. You've made some good points - perhaps we need to spell this out a bit more in the article.

IIRC some Canadians interested in Senate reform have looked at the Australian Senate as a model, basically because of the similar national backgrounds, etc. I can't recall where I read this. Both the US and Australian senates perform the same function really - to give numerically smaller states a house in which they can match the numerically larger states. Interestingly in Australia senate voting has been criticised as being party based rather than state based, somewhat undermining this idea. I suppose the same is true in the US.

Re the use of the "first past the post" I think I read recently of Canadian reform in this are also. Robertbrockway 08:13, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In response to Roberbrockway, one of the criticism of the US Senate is that it's too regional based and it weakens the federal government even further. It's not unusual for endless sidedeals to compromise individual senators. One of the articles in the Globe and Mail this week, which argues against having an elected senate like the American one, is that elected senators will block legislations that don't benefit the individual provinces, while the House of Commons, as a whole, works for the betterment of the entire country rather than on a regional basis.

Another criticism of an elected senate came from Vivienne Poy in an interview with a Chinese-language channel, who states that the Senate will become too partisan should it becomes elected. Moreover, an elected Senate won't function well since it'll be too sensitive to public opinion. Bourquie 8:03 utc, 16 Feb 2006

Name Change

Should this page be renamed "Senate Reform in Canada", or something in that nature?Habsfan|t 02:12, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One "E" already acheived in Alberta

I can't believe that an article on the Triple-E Senate can exist without named Stan Waters, Ted Morton, or Bert Brown. Is it really that well known outside of Alberta that its completely escaped notice that several shots across the bow have been fired by a provincial government interested in forcing the issue? Somebody who can write NPV needs to get on this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 28 September 2006 (talk • contribs).

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