New Senate Election Bill — Bottom-Up Approach

Let each province decide if they want to elect their Senators; if they do - their decision should be respected. That's pretty much the idea behind the new Senate bill (S-8) that would make provincial and territorial Senate nominee elections binding.

To make it even simpler, the "schedule", which sets up guidelines for the future Senate elections, just copies the Alberta model: Block voting, (as opposed to earlier bills which proposed STV,) provincial (rather than Federal) political party affiliations, provincially regulated campaign contribution limits and a 6-year "wait" limit for those nominees that for some reason don't get summoned to the Senate. (They are then free to run again in a subsequent election.)

Overall - this is the very minimum that could be done to bring at least some democracy and accountability to the Senate. And, unfortunately, this is as close to the Elected Senate as we can get without a full-scale constitutional amendment. But that too is a great start. At least, no future Prime Minister will be allowed to defy the outcome of a province-wide election and appoint his own proteges instead. (Let Paul Martin be the last PM to do so.) And, once the provincial initiatives to elect their own Senators get legitimized by the Federal Parliament, it will be easier to lobby the remaining 8 provinces to follow suit.