The Harper government's determination to fulfill a longstanding Reform Party dream and foist a provincially elected and empowered Senate on Canada without the constitutional changes required to ensure the primacy of the popularly-elected House of Commons would have disastrous consequences for our parliamentary democracy. If an elected Senate is to be the end, the beginning, the very first step, according to Matthew Mendelsohn, former senior Ontario deputy minister and policy advisor to the federal Privy Council, must be a constitutional amendment to curtail the Senate's current almost co-equal powers with the House of Commons.Since Confederation in 1867, the Senate has had the same powers as the Commons except the ability to initiate money bills. The fact it is unelected -- and so restrains itself from flexing its muscle - is all that has saved Canada from the gridlock and paralysis frequently observed in the U.S. between the president and Congress and between the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.In his paper, A Viable Path to Senate Reform, released by the University of Toronto's Mowat Centre earlier this year, Mendelsohn writes that Ottawa has put the cart before the horse."Imposing term limits and electing senators would require provincial consent, which will not materialize," Mendelsohn, the Mowat Centre's director and an associate professor in the University of Toronto's School of Public Policy and Governance warns. "Even if the federal government could secure agreement on these two changes, it would make subsequent reform impossible and render the federal Parliament dysfunctional."Smaller provinces would not consent to giving up seats and there would be no mechanism for breaking deadlocks between the House of Commons and the Senate, rendering the national government, like the American Congress and President, gridlocked much of the time, Mendelsohn warns.However, if, as the first step, Ottawa and the provinces could agree to a constitutional amendment to limit the Senate's almost co-equal powers, "then all other Senate reform issues- elections, term limits and number of seats per province --become far less contentious and it is clear that the pre-eminent house of Parliament is the House of Commons," Mendelsohn writes.Ottawa's current approach - elections - to cutting the Senate Gordian knot would make our democratic institutions worse, not better, Mendelsohn continues. "It would lead to a dysfunctional federal parliament, a skewing of political power away from Ontario and Western Canada, and make real democratic reform to the Senate even more difficult to achieve."Perhaps most ominously, it would alter the fundamental character of Canada's Parliament, endangering the very basis of parliamentary democracy where primacy rests with the chamber directly elected by the people, not the chamber that represents provinces or regions.Ottawa, Mendelsohn continues, has been putting the cart before the horse when it comes to Senate reform. "The federal approach has been backward, beginning with the issues of mode of selection (elections) and length of term in office. Dealing with those issues first makes coherent reform impossible. Instead, those issues should only be addressed following other changes." .Once the Senate's powers have been limited, decisions on all those features suddenly become far less contentious because "it is clear that the House of Commons is the pre-eminent chamber for Parliament."Former B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Gibson is one of Canada's original advocates of Senate reform dating back to the pioneering 1981 Canada West Foundation Task Force on an elected Senate. Now, Gibson is saying that "merely making the Senate elected would be a disaster. Election would confer democratic legitimacy...Plus a 'democratic' Senate would feel empowered to block the House, yielding blackmail and/or deadlock."Mendelsohn himself is sharply critical of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's multiple attempts at Senate reform and is particularly concerned about Ottawa's current reference to the Supreme Court."Looking broadly at the federal government's approach, it is sometimes challenging to present a fully coherent critique because the reforms themselves are not coherent," he writes. "In one way, the legislation changes nothing: it authorizes provinces to do what they are already allowed to do (hold Senate elections) and permits the prime minister to do what he is already permitted to do (appoint, or not appoint, the winner of a provincial senatorial election.)"Even more unsatisfactory is the fact Ottawa's reference never mentions the Senate's other glaring democratic shortcomings that must be fixed before the chamber can be granted electoral legitimacy -- the gross imbalances in senatorial representation among provinces, the lack of mechanisms to break deadlocks between the Commons and the Senate (should there be a 30-day suspensive veto as envisaged in the 1992 Charlottetown Accord, or possible joint sittings of the Commons and the Senate to break deadlocks?) and, most importantly, the final determination of the Senate's powers:Some provinces have already jumped the gun on the Senate issue. Alberta has elected four senators and B.C. and New Brunswick are planning senatorial elections.Mendelsohn is not alone in his concerns and criticisms of the Harper government's Senate proposals.In 2012, former Liberal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion published a paper in the academic journal Inroads titled - The Senate Reform Bill: A Constitutional Danger for Canada, warning an elected, unreformed Senate would paralyze the national government and literally " overturn our federation... We face the possibility of major constitutional disputes."The former constitutional law professor argues an elected Senate will import all the paralysis and dysfunction currently being experienced between the two houses of the U.S. Congress and the White House but lacking any mechanism for resolution."Canada is a decentralized federation whose 14 member governments have huge powers and responsibilities," he writes. "In such a decentralized federation, it is important that federal institutions, common to all citizens, be able to work well and quickly when drafting legislation or making decisions. Federal institutions should not be constantly hampered by opposition between two elected chambers."But that is only the first of the snares set by empowering provinces to elect federal senators in a constitutional, institutional and procedural vacuum. Because of their non-elected status, Canadian senators traditionally defer to the elected House of Commons. But, Dion warns, if senators are elected "they will be entitled -- and it may be argued, will have the duty -- to exercise their constitutional powers to their full extent."Elected senators will be stronger and more powerful than MPs, he continues. Senators would represent larger constituencies than MPs, they would be elected for longer terms, and they would be fewer in number -- 105 senators compared with 338 MPs -- giving them more prestige and clout, the kind of clout enjoyed by the 102 U.S. Senators.Nor is that the only way an elected Canadian Senate would eclipse the House of Commons, the house to which the government of the day is accountable and the only house able to defeat it."An elected Senate will not limit itself to complementing the House of Commons, but rather duplicate it and likely oppose it," Dion says. "How many bills passed by the House would an elected Senate reject?" he asks.David E. Smith, senior policy fellow at the University of Regina's Johnson Shoyama graduate school of public policy, currently Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University, adds a further objection to the Harper government's Senate reforms. He finds it "puzzling and disturbing" that Canada, alone among the parliamentary democracies, is apparently prepared to have Parliament's second chamber elected not by federal law, but by the laws of 13 provinces and territories."I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how the provinces can establish the laws by which individuals are elected to the upper chamber of Parliament," he said in a 2012 interview. "I don't quite understand that. You would have 13 different sets of laws, 13 different sets of rules... I just don't get it. How does this reflect selection of members of the upper chamber of the federal House?"It's a provincial Trojan Horse," he continues. "I think this could be challenged on constitutional grounds. There needs to be more public debate."Mendelsohn believes that the prime minister "likely understands that a half-reformed Senate is much worse than the status quo -- both for the coherence of a functioning Parliament but also for democracy, given the under-representation of many provinces, particularly Ontario, Alberta and B.C."But Harper hasn't even attempted to address those two thorny issues, saying only that it is "my frank hope" other Senate reform issues will be addressed "at some point in the future."States Mendelsohn: "This magic won't come about and the Prime Minister's 'frank hope' is an insufficient foundation on which to roll the dice on an incoherent Senate reform strategy."Instead, he suggests Ottawa test whether there really is provincial consensus for reform by first exploring whether "a relatively simple and uncontroversial amendment to limit the Senate's powers can be secured, following which more contentious issues could be more easily tackled."Frances Russell was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. A journalist since 1962, she has covered and commented on politics in Manitoba, Ontario, B.C. and Ottawa, working for The Winnipeg Tribune, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun and The Winnipeg Free Press as well as freelanced for The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, CBC Radio and TV and Time Magazine.She is the author of two award-winning books on Manitoba history: Mistehay Sakahegan - The Great Lake: The Beauty and the Treachery of Lake Winnipeg and The Canadian Crucible - Manitoba's Role in Canada's Great Divide. Both won the Manitoba Historical Society Award for popular history.She is married with one son and two grandsons and lives in Winnipeg.