For all those lefty AND righty whiners complaining about Harper appointing Smith, Verner and Manning to the Senate….Tough freaking noogies.
The Liberals had control of the Senate for 65 of the last 70 years. And now that Harper has chosen to stuff it full of cronies all I hear is Wahhhhh Wahhhh Wahhhh. Grow up people. This is not TiddlyWinks or Go Fish. It’s Big Boy Monopoly and Harper is playing by the rules. He tried to change things and the other parties told him to go pound sand. So now everyone else can go pound sand.
He also told the provinces to nominate their own Senators and the PM would appoint them but only Alberta has chosen to do so. Again, shame on the provinces for not taking advantage of this.
I hope another 20 Senate appointments come up and that Harper shoves another 20 forty year old conservatives in the upper house. Maybe when the other parties see that they will not regain control of the Senate until 2050 they may change their minds about Senate reform.
Keep on rolling Mr. Prime Minister.
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TOUCHE!!!!!!
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Thank you.
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I’m surprised Saskatchewan has not followed suit with holding their own Senate elections, considering the Saskatchewan Party is made up mostly of federal Tories.
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Excellent post. Couldn’t agree more.
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Yet again, we find ourselves on <a href="http://thetrustytory2.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/theres-nothing-democratic-about-the-senate-stupid/"the same page. You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!
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Oops. I guess html links didn’t work. Sorry for clustering your comments.
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Excellent summation! Carry on Mr. Harper and to all those complaining, get on the senator election bus as we in Alberta have done and are leading the way!
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Oh yeah!!!!!!!!
Ain’t it the truth!
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Right on! Keep on appointing senators until the Provinces get the message. . I Expect this from NDP Dexter in Nova Scotia but Brad Wall not so much. This is mostly driven by the Media Party.
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I am an original Triple E Senate advocate – time and reality have caught up with my idealism. The problem isn’t Senate reform – everyone, including those that oppose – know the institution needs to change. They object to reform because they are indebted to the status quo. Time to move on – if that involves incrementalism so be it. Join the 21st century one step at a time. We are waiting for you. Cheers.
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Wow, have Conservatives changed. Liberal pork is bad. Conservative pork is incrementilism. Frankly, I’ve lost interest in the Senate. I would just settle for the Conservatives being consistent. If larding up the senate is okay then go for it and don’t cry when the next government does it. If the senate pork is bad then Harper should not lard it up. Just want all the stuff that the conservatives ere against 5 years ago to be still stuff they are against today.
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Lol, Harper has given them two ways to move towards Senate reform. And he has offered to give up his prerogative to appoint cronies but only Alberta has taken advantage of it. So he has not changed his view. He has just accepted the fact that no one ELSE seems to want the reform.
But nice drive by….come again.
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Change can really happen now as conservatives will have the committee chairmanships. Those can only be redrawn after an election or prorogation, and one needs an absolute majority to get those chairs. The PM didn’t have that until the 3 appointed yesterday. Had he waited till after June 2 the liberals will have kept them and nothing would get passed. The PM could appoint all vacancies coming up, but those chairmanships would not change.
So, premiers and the opposition can agree to term limits or face 79 conservative senator by the end of 2014. That leaves 21 liberals to try and get anything thru should they ever get back at the trough. Same goes for Layton.
And those 3 appointed were not defeated by Canadians, they were not running for the Senate, and if they were, the entire province would have been allowed to vote. They were defeated by voters in their riding, not Canadians as a whole.
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The Senate reminds me of that clunker of a second car many of us need to run our households. You’d love to drive it off a cliff, but you can’t. And neglecting it costs you even more in the end. Whaddya gonna do?
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So during mulroney’s 9 years in office he didn’t ajppoint any Tories?
Paul Martin appointed Liberals, Tories, Independents and even an NDP Senator.
Let’s see if PMsH can man up and show some measure of non partisanship.
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Sam troll . Wake up buddy “HE DOESN’T HAVE TO” Hell he should put his son Ben in there if he turns 18 before the next election. Them your lefty heads would defiantly explode.
As for lying Brian Mulroney he was a closet lieberal under the control of Power Corp so why would he appoint conservatives to the house of naps rest??
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Re. Mary T’s post – so why didn’t the media, who are supposed to be so smart, know this? Goodmove by the PM.
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Ben could be an mp but must be 30 to be a senator. I think you also have to have 1000.00 in the bank.
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Carl H,The media knew this and just don,t give a crap.They want to scream and holler and twist the facts as usual.I am afraid we are in for 4 more years of media bias,they just won,t learn their lesson.Maybe it is time to go to the next step and boycott the advertisers in these newspapers.This could be done one paper at a time.Or swamp the papers with complaint,s.There has got to be a way to make these ass holes pay for their biases reporting.I am sure most people have cancelled their subscriptions and if they have not,then they should.
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I think these appointments were particularly offensive because Fabian Manning and Larry Smith were just defeated on May 2, and they had actually resigned from the Senate to run. Now that they are officially losers, they’ve managed to sneak back in. I had to go back as far as the 19th Century to find a Prime Minister who appointed recently defeated candidates in the Red Chamber. I do believe Conservative PM John A MacDonald was in office at the time.
And this isn’t just some left wing hate fest. Brad Wall is no Liberal, but I guess if he wanted to do something about this, he should start by having Senate elections this fall alongside the provincial vote in Saskatchewan.
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Has anyone noticed that everyone is talking about Senate reform?
Those fainthearted people seem to have forgotten that PMSH is one of the smartest PM’s My Canada has had in a very long time,and he has the patience of a rock.
He needs to get people talking and paying attention be fore he can do anything as big as Senate reform.
Underestimating PMSH has made monkeys out of the opposition before and will again.
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That Liberals are complaining definitely is a bit rich. But be serious here. Are you interested in building a better democracy, or just in trying to create a one-party state of your own?
You’re no better than a Liberal.
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Sixth Estate. I prefer an EEE Senate. However, if the carrot doesn’t work, it’s time to try the stick. And if that doesn’t work then it truly is a battle of ideology. All that being said, Yes, I prefer my ideology to theirs.
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I just want the Senate to be effective. Elections are pointless: why have another hundred or so wealthy demogogues running around Ottawa? Same with term limits: why the hell make it almost identical to the House of Commons? One of the problems is that it is particularly difficult to find a hundred talented people who would take the job. Most won’t. The talented ones who would take it seriously realize how much time it would take, and it wouldn’t be worth their time.
Whatever you mean by “equal”, odds are the ones benefitting from any inequality will force you to pry it from their cold, dead hands. It’s a no-go constitutionally. Term limits might require a constitutional amendment as well.
Heck, if you just randomly selected people from the CPP rolls you wouldn’t do any worse than the present system. Hell, if you have a term limit, hold a lottery instead of an election. A hundred randomly selected / self selected citizens over the age of 30 would be more democratic tgan our goofball parliamentary elections like the one we just had.