Prime Minister Stephen Harper may only have a minority in the House of Commons but he'll soon have a majority in the Senate, a change that could hasten Conservative plans for Senate reform.
Harper is expected to appoint five new Senators next month, said Senator Marjory LeBreton, the Conservative leader of the government in the Senate and one of Harper's close advisers.
"We're committed to Senate reform and so is the prime minister," Lebreton said during an interview in her Parliament Hill office Friday. "But (Harper) has also made the point that we couldn't continue on as a government having our whole agenda and all of our policies driven by a group of unelected people from two governments ago!"
It will be the first time since Brian Mulroney was prime minister that the Liberals will not be the leading party in the Senate.
"We're clearly in a transition phase and that will change the dynamics in the chamber," said Senator James Cowan, who leads the Liberals in the upper house. "In a way, it will take some of the uncertainty out of the situation because they will clearly have the majority in the chamber and they will be expected to win all the votes, just as we were expected to win all the votes."
The Conservatives -- and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson in particular -- are fond of blaming the so-called unelected, unaccountable Liberal-dominated Senate for "gutting" bills that have made it out of the House of Commons. But come next month, they won't have that bogeyman to kick around any more.
"It will be the unelected, unaccountable Conservative-dominated Senate and the expectations, particularly beyond Mr. Harper's office, will be that all he has to do is snap his fingers and the unelected, unaccountable majority in the Senate will do what he says when he wants it done," Cowan said with a wry smile. "Well, that isn't going to happen."
Cowan said he believes most senators, be they Liberal or Conservative, subscribe to the idea that their role is to provide advice back to the House of Commons on any piece of legislation. And he expects that, despite the soon-to-be new numbers in the Senate which favour the government, the Senate will continue to provide its own input on government legislation.
"That's the history of this place and I think it will continue," said Cowan.
There are three Senate vacancies now and there will be two more by the first week of January.
Liberal Senator Lorna Milne is set to retire Sunday upon reaching her 75th birthday and Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein will do the same when he turns 75 on Jan. 2.
When those two senators retire, the Liberals will be down to 49 senators, compared to 46 Conservatives. Harper, though, would almost certainly fill the five vacancies that will exist after Grafstein's retirement with Conservatives, giving the Tories a 51-49 edge over the Liberals.
(One Liberal senator, Raymond Lavigne, is currently suspended from the Liberal caucus while he faces a fraud trial so, technically, the Liberals would have just 48 votes to count on.)
Harper has already appointed 29 senators and the next batch will boost his total to 34, still a long way from the 75 senators Jean Chretien appointed or the 103 senators William Lyon Mackenzie King appointed. That said, Harper once swore he would appoint no senators until a system was in place to elect them.
"So we have to fill the Senate vacancies in order to implement the agenda that we were elected to implement," LeBreton said.
