Do you have a mental image of the three major party leaders cowering in their campaign bunkers this year afraid of questions on the Senate? They will all tell you that they are in favour of Senate reform and just what that reform might entail and how they will accomplish the task are the questions they are afraid to answer.
Stephen Harper had been stiff arming questions about the Senate since his record of 27 appointments to the chamber in 2009. Yet the other day in Kiev, he said that the Senate was an independent body. And if you believe that, he has another Conservative zombie for you to vote for as MP in October.
Referred to in the media as the Class of ’09 Harper’s appointments to the Senate are a mixed bag of sycophants, trouble makers and childish entitlement. After initially saying he would only appoint persons elected to the Senate by their province, he gave up that idea and appointed enough new Conservative Senators to ensure him control of voting. He is still paying the price for that control.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau thinks he has solved the problem by saying that there are no longer Liberals in the Senate and that he will appoint no Liberals if he is Prime Minister. Instead he will take his lamp of Diogenes and search out the honest man or woman willing to serve. (It is the mark of the true politician that Justin Trudeau can so easily replace logic with glibness.)
Thank goodness that New Democrat Thomas Mulcair does not equivocate. He tells us that he is going to put an end to the Senate. Just how he is going to get the agreement of the provinces is the million dollar question.
What Canadians have to recognize though is that there is much more to address in Canada’s constitution than just the archaic Senate. At some point the country is going to have to elect a constitutional parliament to rewrite and update the way we run this country. It is something that we all need to approach with an open mind. We must redraw our country on a clean slate.
And even then, the agreement of the provinces should come in a country-wide citizens’ vote. The more democratic we make the process of change the more democratic will be our country’s future.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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