In 1984, Alberta farmer Bert Brown plowed four famous words (and a letter) into his field: “Triple-E Senate or Else”. “Elected, equal, and effective”, was the rallying cry for many in the West who believed that a radically reformed Senate would be the key to protecting provinces against an often-hostile federal government. Brown would eventually run for the Reform Party and be elected as a Senator-in-Waiting, but would not enter the red chamber until his appointment by Stephen Harper in 2007..The fight for Senate reform has continued, and has renewed importance today. Many Western-based groups and political parties in the last three decades pushed for it. The need for fair representation in the upper house is obvious to most Albertans, and Project Confederation includes Senate reform in its “New Alberta Agenda.”.While many groups demand senate reform, most are vague on the details. As the resident electoral reform wonk at the Western Standard, I’d like to propose a specific plan inspired by the proportional representation system Albertans used to elect urban MLAs between 1926 and 1955: The single transferable vote (STV)..Before diving into how to vote for the Senate, it’s important to understand the makeup and ideology behind the Senate. The current framework is based on the idea of dividing the nation into four regions, each with equal representation provided by 24 senators. The regions are Ontario (24), Quebec (24), Western Canada (6 each for British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba), and the Maritimes (10 each for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, 4 for Prince Edward Island). When Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949, the new province was granted 6 senators. The territories gained a single senator each in 1975 – and another for Nunavut in 1999 – bringing the total to 105 today.. Senate seats by provinceSenate seats by province (source: WikiCommons) .A reformed Senate should move from one of arbitrary “equal” regions, to one of equal provinces. In this, each province has 12 senators. With an equal senate, there is no longer a need for small provinces to be overrepresented in the House of Commons, and the rule of having no fewer members of parliament than a province has senators could be repealed. .Prince Edward Island would be reduced from four MPs down to two, while Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador would each lose a single MP. Alberta would gain three MPs, Ontario would gain two, and B.C. would gain one. .To make senators responsible to someone besides themselves and the prime minister, senators should be elected during provincial elections, and mandate that senators run as members of provincial political parties. This is partly inspired by how German Länder (state) governments appoint representatives to their upper house after each state election, under their Länder party banners. .It has been 65 years since the last Alberta STV ballot was cast – although Calgary City Council used a form of STV between 1917 and 1971 – so I doubt there are many readers with firsthand experience marking an STV ballot, save for recent immigrants from Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. .Using STV to elect senators would involve creating three large electoral districts per province where voters use a ranked ballot to elect four senators under the Droop quota. As there will be multiple winners in each district, the major political parties will run multiple candidates. This empowers voters and eliminates the need to vote strategically – no more “vote splitting” boogieman or “throwing your vote away” – as voters can choose the ranking of individual candidates. To save you some math, to win a seat, a candidate needs 20 per cent of the vote plus 1. .Thanks to computers and scannable ballots, counting the ranked votes is simple and painless. The first step is to redistribute extra votes from any candidate who received more votes than required to win – 20 per cent plus 1 – to the second-place candidates. Next, we start from the bottom and eliminate the most unpopular candidates – one at a time – while redistributing their votes based on the voters’ ranked preferences until we have four winners. Still confused? A seven minute video on STV can be found here and – for the math keeners – a three minute video on Droop can be found here. .It’s more straightforward than defenders of the status quo claim, but it does require voters to pay attention..The three remaining senators from the territories would be elected using a simple ranked ballot as there would still only be one senator per territory. With 12 senators per province and one per territory, the new Canadian Senate would have 123 equal and elected senators. Knowing they’ll face a hotly contested re-election battle under STV, there’s plenty of motivation to be effective..In our early history, Albertans were electoral reform innovators. Let’s recapture that boldness in building a fair deal for all Canadians with a Triple-E Senate..Alex McColl is the National Defence Columnist with the Western Standard and a Canadian military analyst
