,With the retirement of Senator Jerry Grafstein in January the Senate of Canada will look as follows:

Assuming the five vacancies are filled by members who will support the government, the Conservative Party will have 51 Senators compared to 49 for the Liberals. The five remaining members will hold the balance of power in the 105 seat chamber and none of the five are natural supporters of the Harper government.

After almost four years in power are the Conservatives set to control the Senate? I put that question to Bruce Hicks,

political scientist at the University of Montreal, via email. His response:

While the Senate will no longer be technically a Liberal dominated Senate it is likely Harper and his ministers will continue to characterize it as such. There is mileage in doing so with his voter base.

Plus, Senators are notoriously independent (if they weren't then why have them) and in the face of a Senate blocking legislation the rhetoric is always framed by Prime Ministers as "unelected Senators blocking the will of the democratically elected government" (even though technically governments under our system of government are equally unelected).

The Senate following the retirement of Jerry Grafstein may be a case of the same old same old. But one thing is certain, the discussion over of the role of the Senate will continue.

Below is an interview with Prof. Hicks we conducted earlier this year about his report on Senate reform: