On meaningful options

Thanks to the better part of a month dominated by talk of Harper's trip to the Senate trough, public cynicism about the upper chamber figures to be as high as ever - with Cons riled up over the possibility of coalition appointments, and everybody else rightly pointing out the hypocrisy of Deceivin' Stephen making a record number of patronage appointments after promising to make none at all.

Which means that now may be just the time to decide whether voters would prefer to see the Senate abolished rather than preserved or turned into a source of additional gridlock. And without much fanfare so far, Lorne Calvert is offering up a means of doing just that (warning: PDF):

NDP Leader Lorne Calvert has announced he will be bringing forth an amendment to the Sask Party government's legislation regarding Senate elections.

Calvert believes an additional option should be provided to Saskatchewan voters on the issue: the abolition of the Senate altogether.

"The intention of the legislation seems to be to let Saskatchewan people have their say in the makeup of the Senate in the most democratic fashion possible", Calvert said. "The NDP believes that many people in Saskatchewan would rather see the Senate done away with altogether. Providing this option on a ballot is simply the most democratic thing to do."

Of course, the Sask Party will be able to shoot down the suggestion if it wants to limit the options available to voters in an effort to legitimize the Senate. But when even Wall's federal cousins/bosses are once again musing about abolition as one of their options in dealing with the Senate, it would take an awfully tone-deaf government to deny that possibility to Saskatchewan's voters.

So what effect would an abolition option have if included on the ballot? From my perspective, it would dovetail nicely with the current state of discussion about the Senate. There's been at least some talk to the effect that non-appointment might be the best way to get from the status quo to meaningful Senate reform of any kind. And one could hardly ask for stronger evidence that the public favours that path than an election result where "don't bother" wins out over the list of candidates.

All of which suggests that the amendment may set out an important first step toward the type of change long favoured by New Democrats. And if even the worst-case scenario is to force the Sask Party to publicly and deliberately limit the choices of the province's voters, then there's every reason to look forward to the results of Calvert's proposal.