Committee performance in the Senate of Canada: some sobering analysis for the chamber of ‘sober second thought’

While Senate reform is a continual topic of interest for partisans, academics, and the media in Canada, the nature of the Senate's legislative activity is less widely reported. That the Senate provides sober, well-researched political advice through its committee work is the refuge of ardent Senate defenders. However, what type of policy work do Senate committees accomplish and in what volume? This paper investigates Senate committees' policy reports and legislative output with an original dataset covering the 34–40th parliaments (1988–2011). The findings highlight committees' contributions to the legislative process, empirically testing long-held hypotheses about the Senate's legislative behaviour.