If Only He Had a Battle Station - Then He Wouldn't Need the Senate

[jamesq]

Proroguing apparently means you can rush through 18 Senate appointments before having your political career put out of its misery. And here I thought it meant no government business except for the basic day-to-day stuff. I guess appointing Senators is something you do all the time, roughly equivalent to making sure that the civil service has sufficient toner for the copy machines.

Why did we have so many vacancies in the first place? Because Harper wanted to change how the appointments get made, which is fine and all since we have a mechanism for determining that (get 50% of the population and at least 7 provinces to agree). It is interesting to see that his idealism on Senate reform is taking a back seat to the practicality of his days being numbered.

Of course, Ignatieff isn't all that gung ho for a coalition, so maybe Harper will stick around. I wouldn't count on it though.

Comments

[canadianknight.livejournal.com]

All partisan feelings aside, I'm delighted he did this. The senate (as useful as it is) was so stacked with Cretien appointees it wasn't funny.

There needed to be a shake-up of the old-boys society, which is all the so-called senate is.

[jamesq]

I'm luke-warm on the issue. I can see there being some good reasons for Senate reform. I don't necessarily want to see it become a US-style senate, but things like term-limits are probably a good idea. Mostly I'd like to see a decent nation-wide discussion of what we want that stands a chance of passing the 50/7 requirement. Up until now it's mostly been one of Alberta's damn-you-Ottawa talking points, rather then a serious attempt at engaging other provinces in changing how things are done.

In this case I'm mostly against the timing and the rushed hypocrisy of it. It's the PM's prerogative to appoint Senators, yes. Doing it after telling everyone to go home because he can't face the music certainly violates the spirit (though probably not the letter) of proroguing Parliament. Plus we (the non-CPC voters) get to call him on the fact that he's only a fair-weather friend of Senate reform.

Finally, for all the talk of how the Senate is an old-boys network, I think most Senator's take the idea of "house of sober second thought" seriously. Did they clobber any CPC bill during the 39th Parliament on purely partisan grounds? Did they clobber any bill at all? I don't recall, but I'm sure the CPC would have made a big deal of it if they had.