Pierre Trudeau’s essay “Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec” was first published in the old Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science in August 1958 — when Premier Maurice Duplessis was still shouting “orders to the Speaker” of the Quebec legislative assembly. “French Canadians,” Trudeau wrote at the time, “must begin to learn democracy from scratch. For such is the legacy of a history during which [among other things] ... as Catholics ... they believed that authority might well be left to descend from God.” There is no one quite like Maurice Duplessis in Canadian federal politics today, just over a half-century later. (Those not currently in jail who share the opinions of Conrad Black might even want to add “unfortunately.”) But there is concern in the Ottawa air that in 2009 we are “Witnessing a democracy's decline.” A learned book has just been published on Canadian federal politics with the somewhat ominous title Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis. And a meeting at Metro Hall in Toronto this past still-so-called Victoria Day holiday could make you wonder whether all this is, in some important enough degree, the legacy of a history in which especially English-speaking Canadians, as constitutional monarchists, have believed that authority actually does descend from the Divine Right of Kings (and nowadays Queens too, of course).

It is more than a little foolish to say — as the federal Conservative website does — that "Stéphane Dion ... lets the unelected, unaccountable Liberal insiders in the Senate boss him around on issues ranging from crime bills to Senate reform." And Hugh Segal, a Conservative appointed by former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, is walking evidence that the unreformed Senate of Canada still has some high-minded virtue in 2008. Yet even Senator Segal’s actions sometimes demonstrate why Prime Minister Harper can so aptly call the present upper house of the Canadian Parliament "a relic of the 19th century." The Bill S-231 that Mr. Segal tabled just before the chamber’s Easter recess is a case in point. It proposes to use the "notwithstanding clause" in the Constitution Act 1982 to override any imminent judicial decision that the present Canadian citizenship oath of allegiance to the old colonial British monarchy violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Even some among the monarchist minority in Canada today are worried that this will do their cause more harm than good. And they are probably right.

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The current quixotic and apparently only half-serious quest for Senate reform in Canada shows both the best and worst sides of the Stephen Harper Conservative minority government in Ottawa. There is a high-minded sense in which this relic of the 19th century desperately ought to be brought up to date, in the interests of a stronger Canadian future. But Mr. Harper is trying to use his clever plans in a much more opportunistically low-minded way, recently prompting the Kitchener-Waterloo Record in Ontario, e.g., to urge that "Senate reform isn't for threats." Last Saturday’s Australian election triumph of Labor leader Kevin Rudd, with his commitment to some eventual further motion towards an Australian republic, also raises a few companion rumblings up here in the true north. The British monarchy is another 19th century relic in both countries. And the latest poll numbers suggest that a majority even in Canada would like to see the end of it soon. Yet here Mr. Harper seems more definitively on the side of the darkness. And this can make you wonder what is really going on with Senate reform (and/or abolition) too.

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