From the Washington Post:

In April 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada issued one of the more depressing rulings in its history: Voters, the judges said in a unanimous decision, were constitutionally forbidden from electing members of the Canadian Senate.

The Conservative government of the time had promised to end Canada’s status as one of the world’s few bicameral democracies without an elected upper house of Parliament — its 105 seats are filled by prime ministerial appointments who serve until they choose to quit or reach the mandatory retirement age of 75. In rejecting draft legislation that would have mandated Senate elections organized by the provinces, the court argued “consultative elections for the nomination of Senators would change our Constitution’s architecture, by endowing Senators with a popular mandate which is inconsistent with the Senate’s role as a complementary legislative chamber of sober second thought” — that is, a chamber Canada’s founders explicitly intended to be an elitist check on the “democratic excesses” of the elected lower house.

At the time, the ruling was seen as putting a stake through the heart of a democratic cause that had animated Canadians since at least the progressive era, if not the day after the constitution was written. Barring a federal government willing to instigate the complex chore of passing a constitutional amendment, an unelected Senate appeared here to stay. The Conservative Party accepted defeat and ceased to agitate on what had previously been one of its signature issues, while Justin Trudeau’s Liberals reimagined the idea of an unelected upper house as an opportunity to celebrate diversity and technocratic nonpartisanship.