Talk:Senate of Canada

Fuller treatment of term

The Senate is modelled after the British House of Lords and consists of 105 members appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister.

Seats are assigned on a regional basis: four regions—defined as Ontario, Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and the Western provinces—each receive 24 seats, with the remaining portions of the country—Newfoundland and Labrador and the three northern territories—assigned the remaining 9 seats apart from these regional divisions.

Senators may serve until they reach the age of 75.

The term of appointment properly belongs immediately after the sentence discussing appointment, otherwise the political magnitude of the appointment is left hanging, especially for non-Canadians, who might have no prior opinion, and completely different political models.

The third sentence quoted here isn't even a full statement of term, as it essentially states the converse, that "no Senator may serve after the age of 75", while specifying nothing about conditions arising before then, though it does seem to imply that a Senator can voluntarily choose to step down at any time (through another piggyback shade of "may" smuggled in through this ambiguous door).

Is there a dis-appointment process of any kind, or is the position effectively a life sinecure? Not stated.

Note also that the entrancing second sentence is where attention sneaks off to smoke a joint under a dark entrance ramp. We're already halfway down the homespun "9:30 in Newfoundland" rabbit hole, while the basic concept has yet to be fully fleshed out. — MaxEnt 19:22, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Article too long

Per WP:BETTER#SIZE, at 84,147 bytes this article is too long, period. Further, it doesn't contain enough information about what the senate actually does today, and how it came into being. It does contain a lot of unreferenced information in the "Chamber and symbols" and the "Senators" section, as well as a lengthy section on Procedure, which is entirely unreferenced. The history section, which mostly contains a well-referenced discussion of failed senate reform, contains too much detail for a general article and should either be deleted or moved to a separate History of the Senate of Canada article. While ostensibly well referenced the article contains a lot of links that redirect to home pages. Thoughts? --Cornellier (talk) 00:31, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Since there hasn't been any comment, I'm working on consolidating some info in this article. E.g. the "vacancies" section could be merged into the appointment section. Also info from the Reform section could be put there, e.g. Trudeau's changes to the appointment process which do not constitute reform per se. Other info can be moved to History. --Cornellier (talk) 14:48, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Current Numbers of Senators (by affiliation)

If my addition is correct isn't it 60 (not 59) independent senators with the appointment of Tony Loffreda? Cheers--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 22:13, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Not sure what's meant by affiliation here. The article says there are nine "Liberal" senators. "Liberal" links via a bit of a WP:EASTER to Senate Liberal Caucus which states that "The caucus is not formally affiliated to or recognized by the Liberal Party". So are we saying they're both affiliated and not affiliated? --Cornellier (talk) 22:27, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the affiliation I am referring to is how they register with the Senate. Of course, the Senate Liberals are a unique case because they remain Liberal Party members, but are not part of the Liberal Party Parliamentary caucus in the House of Commons (unlike the Conservatives). It is not really WP:EASTER because there is a footnote next to it which explains. That is all besides the point though. My edit did not affect the Liberal numbers. It was to add a Independent Senators Group member, Tony Loffreda. And make that table consistent with the one in the article here.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 22:38, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Tony Loffreda is non-affiliated and not in the ISG. Source https://sencanada.ca/en/senators-list/ . There are two kinds of independent Senators in the Senate, members of the ISG, and non-affiliated. Until the official senate page shows that Tony Loffreda joined the ISG (if he wishes to do so), he is a non-affiliated senator and not an ISG senator. I have corrected the standings. DeCoolRuler (talk) 03:00, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Canadian party colour for the parliamentary groups in the Senate

Hi everyone,

I've restored the Template:Canadian party colour transcluded template in the "Current composition" and Infobox of this article. At Template talk:Canadian party colour, we're currently discussing updating the colour for Progressive Senate Group.

Similarly, at commons:File talk:Senate of Canada - Seating Plan (42nd Parliament).svg, I've initiated an RfC discussion to look into updating the Senate seating chart.

Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 21:40, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Question about updated 43rd Parliament seating plan, mainly for Arctic.gnome

I'm asking this here because the above-captioned image file, kindly updated and/or originally created by administrator Arctic.gnome, is hosted on the Commons whereby the talkpages seem to be seldom watched.

Great work on updating this seating plan, Arctic.gnome. : )

Some questions (below transcluded copy of seating plan):

1. Are the 105 individual boxes (seats) inclusive of the Speaker's chair? If so, I think we should update the Speaker's chair to light grey for non-affiliated and reduce one of the four grey chairs to, presumably, white/vacant.
2. Where are the 5 vacant seats? This does not need to be an exact seating plan of where each Senator will sit, as we don't know that yet and the Senate provides such a seating plan; however, I think we should update 5 of the (presumably) ISG seats to reflect their vacant status. Note, too, that even when nominated by the Prime Minister, there is usually a time lag of 1-2 months from the appointment effective date. So, it's likely these seats will be vacant through most of the winter months.
3. Semi-related question for GoodDay, do you know, off-hand, if the individual Senator article pages' infoboxes specify their appointment or nomination date? I know the office parameters say "assumed office," but just wondering if anyone's ever verified that we've used the correct date and not the date on which the PM first put out a press release of the nomination.

Friendly pings: Kawnhr and MikkelJSmith2, who may or may not wish to be apprised of this discussion.

Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 19:19, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't think the seating matches the numbers. GoodDay (talk) 21:22, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

GoodDay, Okay, I just counted them and all, and it almost matches except for two seats; however, the colours for Independent Senators Group are off by five. The five in the top left corner should be updated to white; the Speaker should be updated to light grey; one of the light grey seats should be updated to purple for the ISG; and the two seats directly below the Speaker's chair should be deleted. Doug Mehus T·C 21:43, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Yup, the File image does need corrections. GoodDay (talk) 21:49, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

I think we need @Bearcat:'s participation, here. GoodDay (talk) 21:59, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure that the seating chart has any value at all, if we're not committing to keeping it updated or actually marking it for what specific seat any individual senator sits in. If we're just using it as a very general visual representation of caucus standings, could we not just find some other way to do that? Bearcat (talk) 22:49, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Bearcat, True. To Arctic.gnome's credit, he does seem to updating it semi-regularly; however, with Senators retiring, usually upon their 75th birthday, every 3-4 months for the foreseeable future, we'll need to either update it more regularly or just provide a generic approximation (i.e., not delineated by seat).

Side comment: With more than 75 Senators now being "independent" and non-whipped Senators, we may not even need the colour coding except for prettiness. Doug Mehus T·C 23:02, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, vacant seats are accidentally shown as ISG; I'll try to fix that. But I'm not sure whether to change the speaker's seat. Notice on the published seating charts for the last parliament by the House and Senate, the Senate shows the Speaker as having their own seat in the benches, while the House does not. Bearcat, I agree that the seating plans are mostly just a visual aid of party sizes, but they are used for Wikipedia articles about many countries' legislatures, so we should consider why they are so popular before we think of getting rid of them. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 23:11, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Arctic.gnome, Ah, good eye about the Speaker's seat then. Yeah, that's probably because the Speaker can participate in debates in the Senate (I think). So, we can have 106 seats in the Senate seating plan, I guess. ;) Doug Mehus T·C 23:13, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Once again, my answer would be that we don't really need to do things the way other countries do them for the sake of consistency. If there's a reason why the way other countries do things is uniquely not suited to Canadian reality, then there's no overarching principle of "everything has to always be done the same way" that would require us to overlook its lack of value in Canadian-specific circumstances. In the case of the House of Commons, depicting party standings that way makes some sense — but in the case of the Senate, which now consists primarily of independent caucuses with no party affiliation and no party colours and no defined ideology except who wants to work with who, it's a lot less clear that there's any actual value in doing it this way. We've had to delete a lot of really stupid stuff from Wikipedia that was started on the grounds of "if the United States has this article, then the exact same thing automatically has to exist for Canada too even if the entire concept of it is completely meaningless in the context of Canadian politics". (Majority-minority ridings in the Canadian House of Commons, list of Canadian prime ministers with facial hair, etc.) Bearcat (talk) 23:18, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Bearcat, List of Canadian Prime Ministers with facial hair? That was actually a list!? Doug Mehus T·C 23:30, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Yep. Didn't survive AFD, obviously, but it really happened for real. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Prime Ministers of Canada with facial hair, if you want to check it out. Bearcat (talk) 23:31, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Bearcat wrote: To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure that the seating chart has any value at all, if we're not committing to keeping it updated or actually marking it for what specific seat any individual senator sits in. FWIW there is a Canadian Senate seating plan page, but it is wholly outdated. — Kawnhr (talk) 19:03, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Kawnhr, Nice seating plan table, but you're right, it's wholly out of date. I've nominated it for AfD. Doug Mehus T·C 19:28, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Kawnhr & MikkelJSmith2, Canadian Senate seating plan closed as delete, so that's one less thing we need to update. ;-) Doug Mehus T·C 22:08, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, I thought the discussion ended a while back though? Btw, I've updated the seating plan, but was waiting for feedback from Arctic.gnome before posting it. This is what it looks like on my PC : https://gyazo.com/c64e90ac6a79624fe988d90993b81ae2 MikkelJSmith (talk) 23:59, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Seating plan by province

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Senate of Canada - Seating Plan By Province

So, I've updated the image you can see here, but haven't posted it yet, since I'm not sure if it should be a new file or if I should just update that image. What do you think Arctic.gnome,GoodDay,Kawnhr, Dmehus? I'm asking you since you edit these pages frequently. To give you an idea the updated version looks like this : https://gyazo.com/12144e82c6fd9ab5ae951ad5c92dfb1a. It's an SVG like usual and don't worry about the table near the top, I'll do it before posting the image. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 15:00, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm content with whatever ya'll decided. GoodDay (talk) 15:02, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2, That seems fine, thanks, Mikkel. Only suggestion: add Vacant to identify the white box (will need to use a different font colour; I suggest black) Doug Mehus T·C 15:32, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, yeah I hadn't finished writing that. So, I should just update the image then, not make a new one? MikkelJSmith (talk) 15:34, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2, Yeah, I think so, but rename it to the same filename on the Commons so we can track revision history, commons:File:Senate of Canada - Seating Plan By Province.svg. Doug Mehus T·C 15:37, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, I'm done, but it seems I made have made a mistake somewhere. I corrected AB, since I had a mistake there, but I'm currently trying to find where my other mistake is. MikkelJSmith (talk) 15:51, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Nevermind, it seemed I just miscounted. MikkelJSmith (talk) 15:57, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

So, I'm having a problem, I'm not exactly sure how I update the current image to the new one. This is what the final version looks like : https://gyazo.com/c0cba0b4e1232bc418e70a421cd875d7. Do you know how GoodDay,Dmehus? MikkelJSmith (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

So, I've updated the file, but at times it shows the old version and sometimes it doesn't. I originally thought this was a mistake and reverted but it seems I only have the problem on the current browser that I used. It's fine now, it was just a bug. MikkelJSmith (talk) 17:29, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2, Thanks. I noticed the number of seats are in a serif font, but I think they should be a sans serif font to match the adjacent text? Similarly, they should be the same size and/or bolding.

Arctic.gnome, can you, or alternatively, {{help me}}, can someone, look into what we're doing wrong, why the Senate of Canada article isn't displaying the correct version when we click on the thumbnail? Doug Mehus T·C 18:20, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, for the font for the numbers, I simply used the original one. By the way, for the problem, it seems to only happen on Firefox, on all the other web browsers it shows the correct image. I have no clue what causes it. MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2, Hrm, Google Chrome isn't showing as correct for me? I do think that a sans serif font would be better for the numbers, if you think so as well. Doug Mehus T·C 18:44, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, maybe it's a cache and cookies thing? Try deleting them. MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:47, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

As for the #'s font, I honestly have no preference tbh. MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:48, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2, I just tried again, but nope, it's still showing the version without the PSG/CSG senators (clicking on the one in this talkpage, since the file name is the same). Also, this old version has the numbers in bold and sans serif, so I think we should use that. Doug Mehus T·C 18:51, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, I'm confused as to what's causing this. Sometimes I refresh and it gives the right version and other times it doesn't. MikkelJSmith (talk) 19:02, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, I made the font match the party text, so I'm going to update the pic now. MikkelJSmith (talk) 19:11, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, also, the picture thing just sorted itself out without me doing anything. MikkelJSmith (talk) 19:13, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2, Nope; not resolved for me in Google Chrome. Have used Ctrl + Refresh to force refresh multiple times. Still showing Liberal Party in the count; no PSG or CSG. I've reactivated help me request. Doug Mehus T·C 23:28, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Dmehus, I would follow Huon's advice since it may be a bug. MikkelJSmith (talk) 00:41, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Since the issue, likely a cache issue, resolved itself, I have turned off the help request. Huon (talk) 19:33, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Huon, It's not resolved, though. Going to reactivate it.

Note to Closer: Please don't remove the tag, but rather close it. Doug Mehus T·C 23:27, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

You have two options at this point. Either you believe that this is some sort of cache issue on your end. Or you believe it's a weird bug that affects some people (including you) but not others (including me). In the former case there's nothing we can do here. In the latter case, see WP:Bug reports and feature requests on how to report this supposed bug. In neiher case is there anything other editors can do to help. Huon (talk) 23:49, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Huon, Can you show me a screenshot of what the thumbnail looks like for you, when you enlarge the screenshot, but not when you see it on the Commons? Note, too, that when I load this URL, I still see the old version. I have a feeling we're not updating something. Doug Mehus T·C 01:35, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how a screenshot of the expected behaviour would help. I see the new version (ie PSG and CSG, no Liberal Party) as thumbnail, and if by "enlarge the screenshot" you mean File:Senate of Canada - Seating Plan By Province.svg, then I see the new version there, too, just as I see the new version at commons:File:Senate of Canada - Seating Plan By Province.svg. Huon (talk) 02:04, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion for the mass changes by Cornellier which were reverted by MikkelJSmith2

I'm creating this discussion following MikkelJSmith2's reversion of the series of good-faith and constructive edits by Cornellier. Most of the edits, I would say, were good copyediting, but some detail that Cornellier removed, I think, should've merited a discussion. So, in general, I do think we should welcome most of Cornellier's edits, but some of the larger scale content removals do merit a discussion.

So, let's discuss...

Thanks,
--Doug Mehus T·C 18:04, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Comment Per this, I have undone MikkelJSmith2's good-faith reversion because (a) Cornellier did start a discussion back in October 2018, to which no one replied and to which could be taken as implied consensus and (b) because most of Cornellier's edits are likely to be accepted and, thus, it's easier to revert a select few edits than to redo all of the other good copyediting they did. I do think Cornellier could've been more specific on what needed editing; thus, one can not take that earlier discussion as carte blanche to take the proverbial "weed wacker" to the article.

 Question: So, let's discuss, which of Cornellier's edits should we undo (if any)?

Note: Please feel free to ping recent editors to this talkpage discussion using {{ping}}.

-- Doug Mehus T·C 18:11, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Dmehus, yeah, sorry about that, I'm fine with most edits, I just wanted us to have a recent discussion, since the original was from 2018. That's why I reverted. I should have been more clear about that. Thanks for what you did afterwards. MikkelJSmith (talk) 19:30, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2, Thank you, and normally, I'd agree with reverting the edits, but in this case, it really is easier to add back in the content we felt shouldn't have been removed. I'll try and take a look this weekend. Doug Mehus T·C 19:34, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts. I will hold back on any more revisions for now pending any further discussion. Please let me know the specifics. --Cornellier (talk) 23:26, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Veto versus rejection?

This article mentions that legislation passed in the Commons hasn't been vetoed since 1939, it then goes on to say that the Senate has rejected numerous bills. What's the difference between a veto and a rejection? Sounds a bit confusing and could maybe use clarification. SchizoidNightmares (talk) 10:36, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree, this is very confusing. Goes to the core about how powerful the Senate actually is. --El Chivo 3 (talk) 20:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Senate symbol/coat of arms?

Hey can someone add Canadian senate coat of arms the parliament of Canada article has their coat of arms and the House of Commons article has their coat of arms senate of Canada senate is the only one that doesn’t. 142.113.194.22 (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2024 (UTC)