It had to become obvious to Canadians eventually that Justin Trudeau’s version of a Senate is a disaster. Justin seems to think that an elite group of senators, picked by an elite committee will produce hard working senators. Well, it doesn’t and it won’t.
This was the equivalent of Justin promising voting reform when Justin knew very little about any of the alternatives. Canadians are used to first-past-the-post and it works for them.
But this Senate is now a problem. Whether you pick elites for the Senate or for the House of Commons, you are going to make mistakes. What frightens me is that these people do not understand the political realities. The problems that the prime minister created with his politically correct Cabinet were bad enough. I could care less if they were all women—provided they knew what they were doing and had some political smarts to help keep them out of trouble.
Justin threw the lambs to the wolves in both the Cabinet and the Senate. Stephen Harper at least had some basic criteria for the people he appointed. They had to be conservatives with some provincial or federal experience and his supporters. He had only a few failures.
Maybe he would still like to throttle Mike Duffy, but the reality was that Duffy did what he was told. The only problem was that Duffy, though he reported on politics, consorted with politicians and obviously had a generous expense account when with CTV, had no idea of the trust involved in the parliamentary system. Somebody had to blow the whistle on him.
Canada now has a Senate that does not function for us. You can hardly fire these people, so they are enjoying themselves. And what the hell is Justin going to do about it? It might be too late to swamp the Senate again with liberals. If ‘Chuckles’ Scheer wins the election on October 21, he will have a line up of conservative senators ready to appoint.
The reality in October could be a minority parliament. We will have a House of Commons that will take forever to make up its mind and the Senate will delay everything further.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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