Questions on Senate Reform
It seems like our categories are being divided into two main themes, so feel free to contribute towards the questions on Senate Reform in this thread.
In terms of a Senate poll, perhaps the ruberic under which we conduct the polling could be, "How do Canadians feel about the Senate?" I know this is rather straightforward, but I think it's good if we organize our questions under a general umbrella.
In addition to the questions you guys have already come up with, perhaps we could also ask some questions that are directed towards people's existing knowledge of the Senate. Such as: "On a scale from one (very little knowledge) through five (comprehensive knowledge), how would you gauge your knowledge of how the Canadian Senate works?"
Also, we could ask: "The Canadian Senate's role is classically defined as the chamber of 'sober second thought'. Do you think such a role is necessary in a healthy parliamentary democracy?" Yes/No/Don't Know.
We could also potentially ask how people feel about the allocation of senators... Because proportionally it is really unfair. Each region gets 24 senators so thats 24 for Quebec and Ontario, 24 for the Maritimes (10 each to Nova Scota and New Brunswick and 4 for PEI (population appox 100,000). Meanwhile, Western Canada (Man, Sask, Al, BC) get 24 so thats only 6 for BC, which has a population of around 4 million.
What do citizens think of this? Is it a problem? I don't really know what to think because the system seems to work in the States, where each state gets two senators regardless of population.
Grace, I worry about asking how knowledgeable people are about the senate because our scale would be arbitrary. How would we know, and how would the responders know, what a knowledge level of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 is? We could maybe ask, "Do you know how the Canadian Senate works?" Yes/No, but then again, I don't see what information we could get from those response. I see now that senate reform questions are difficult because we don't know how much people know about the senate. I fear we'll only get "no" or "I don't know" responses.
Adding to Blythe's line of thinking we could potentially give the current number of senators each 'region' gets and ask whether it should stay the same, if regions should get same number of senators, or if each province should get the same number of senators? (and then we may need to take the territories into consideration, they all currenty get one).
True Deanie, the scale is arbitrary. Then again, lots of survey questions that try to gauge people's opinions use scales created by the pollster; perhaps if we assigned values to each number (0 - no knowledge, 1 - minimal knowledge, etc. etc.) we could narrow the scale down a bit. I'm just thinking that if our question is going to be "What would you like to see happen to the Senate?" Abolish, Elected, etc. etc., it'd be interesting to see how Canadians actually rate their understanding of this somewhat behind-the-scenes institution.
Meh, wrote a bunch on my phone and then accidentally hit a link. Shame on you iPhone and your touchscreen.
What I was going to contribute here is the possibility of adding a question in order to make everything just more clear for the respondents, and to make it possibly easier for us to calculate the data results after they come back. It's up to everyone whether it's worth another question to do this, and I'm not all too sure myself whether it's necessary. It would look something like this:
Q1: "Which statement best reflects your view about the senate?"
1. The senate is ineffective and needs to be abolished.
2. The senate is ineffective and needs to be reformed.
3. The senate is effective.
4. Don't care/Don't know.
[If I've missed any other reasonable responses to this question, feel free to add them.]
This question can then be followed up by asking:
Q2: "If you felt that the senate is ineffective and needs to be reformed, which of the following reforms do you think are necessary?" (Select all applicable answers)
1. The senate should be elected.
2. The senate should be proportionally divided according to population.
3. The senate should be proportionally divided according to region.
4. The senate should have term limits.
5. Senators should have reduced salaries.
6. Other
[Again, I'm thinking of these on the spot, feel free to add/subtract/criticize any of these options.]
-- In response to Deanie and Grace, what kind of distribution do you expect? Part of what I think we should measure isn't necessarily the validity of people's reasons for what they believe, but simply the *sentiment* of the population.
If a person puts a "1" for their knowledge of the way the senate works, would this condition them to answering "Don't know" on further questions? This also matters because it's surprisingly difficult to measure yourself against an invisible standard. I personally wouldn't really know how to answer that question. I might say I'm a 2, a 3, or even a 4, depending on my mood. This is a 50% variation when a scale only goes from 0 to 5.