Starting a new year let's resolve to end an old wrong. For 135 years Canadians have been denied the fundamental democratic right to elect the membership of their own Senate. The power to appoint the membership is held by one person. In no other advanced civilization in the world does one person have the power to appoint one entire chamber of Parliament.

Arguments about the undemocratic nature of appointing, instead of electing, the membership of the Canadian Senate stretch back over many years. In most instances reaching a satisfactory solution has been stymied by disagreement over what should replace the system of appointment.

Let's leave that aside for a moment and concentrate on what is a totally undemocratic denial of the right of Canadians to chose their own Senators.

That most controversial of Canadian documents, the amended Constitution adopted in 1982, contains five sections under the heading "Democratic Rights" in Schedule B, commonly known as the Charter, its full title being the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In the original Act of 1867 there was no reference to democratic rights. Those acknowledged in the 1982 Charter are rights that became manifest in succeeding generations, rights that are incontrovertible in our present age.

The first of the five sections reads:

Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.

Contrast that with the continued denial of that right in the case of the Senate, given in the following example:

Every citizen of Canada is denied the right to vote in an election of members of the Senate of Canada and to be qualified for membership therein.

There is a stark contradiction. Canadians have the right to chose the members of the Commons, but do not have the right to chose the members of the Senate.

Even if every Canadian had the right to vote in an election of members of the Senate of Canada, every Canadian would not have the right to be qualified for membership therein.

Why?

There is an arcane stipulation that prospective Senators must possess "land or tenements worth $4,000 over and above all mortgages, debts, and incumbrances."

There is no such stipulation in respect of members of the Commons.

When the suffrage was first introduced it was strictly limited to persons of a certain worth. Over time universal suffrage did away with property qualifications. Canada, however, retains that limitation on membership in its still appointed and unelected Senate.

The story gets worse. There is a discrimination based on age.

The Constitution stipulates in section 23 (1) that a Senator, even an unelected one, "shall be the full age of Thirty Years."

There is no such age restriction in the case of members of the Commons.

The Canadian Constitution professes to uphold fundamental freedoms. In practice it circumscribes the freedoms of Canadians. In particular it denies them the freedom and the right to vote for their own members of the Senate.

The omission of that right from the Constitution creates an inconsistency, a contradiction within itself, that must be resolved if Canada is to become a true democracy.

In essence the Constitution itself is, by any norm, a denial of a fundamental freedom and a fundamental right.

What's to be done?

Our public representatives have failed us thus far.

One avenue that remains is a referral to the Supreme Court of Canada on the power exercised by one person to appoint the membership of one chamber of Parliament, and on the discriminatory provisions of the Constitution that are based on age and ownership of property.

In the Year of Our Lord 2002 Canadians are still seeking "Justice to all classes, monopolies and exclusive privileges to none", which was the masthead motto of the original Vindicator of pioneering Canadian newspaperman Dr. Daniel Tracey.

In what is sometimes termed "the Mother of Parliaments", major reform of the British House of Lords is underway. Surely Canadians can no longer be denied the right to elect their own Senators.

In the case of the Canadian Senate, let's resolve to end an old wrong.