Would anyone care? There were better times on Parliament Hill when being a Member of Parliament stood for something. They were times when being an elected Member or an appointed Senator was a source of pride. It was honourable. It was devoting oneself to a higher level of service to Canadians. You could stand proud at those times as you rolled out the rhetoric for those decisions of importance to your constituents. You stood to your name in the roll call of voting for a better tomorrow. And then came Steve Harper to the Hill and it has been headed downhill ever since.
And no one cares about to-day’s nobody Conservative MP. They are not elected to serve their constituents but to serve the needs of an imperial Prime Minister. These MPs are lackeys, bought and paid for with the quasi-legal funding schemes of a rapacious Conservative machine. They are elected under the clouds of nefarious actions that besmirch the honour of all concerned.
And then there are Senators. They are also parliamentarians. Sure, they are the bagmen, the party apparatchiks, the former MPs that the Prime Minister’s Office deems worthy. It is under Steve Harper that the wholesale dissemination of Senate seats to the hangers-on and party sycophants has destroyed the veneer of usefulness that the Senate previously tried so hard to maintain. Harper stepped beyond the bounds of knowledgeable party people and brought in people with their own sense of entitlement and their own egos. He promised to reform the Senate. Instead, he destroyed it.
This is not to suggest that others were blameless. The Liberals on Parliament Hill were so busy during the Chrétien era with the infighting between the loyalists and the Martin rebels that the party lost interest and wandered. When the rebellion was over, there was nothing left to support a weak Martin regime. The sponsorship scandal in Quebec even revolted Quebeckers.
What this has left Canadians with is a disinterested electorate, a dysfunctional parliament and a growing disgust around the world at Canada’s disintegration. Canadians can do much better.
The one glimmer of hope is that there is an opposition in Ottawa. And it is not just the news media. While there is not a great strength behind him, Thomas Mulcair is starting to rag the Prime Minister on his parliamentary excesses. Eventually Mulcair is going to capture more of Harper’s attention and tie-up some of his efforts.
That leaves Justin Trudeau at liberty to do the job he has to do across Canada. He has to pull together a renewed Liberal Party. He has to give it the infusion of youth it needs. And the defeat of Harper in 2015 will become more than just a possibility. That is the only hope for a restoration of parliament.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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