Abolish or reform?
It is rather interesting isn’t it what we Canadians consider to be important stuff.
China continues to cheat and scam
ISIS is beheading people for no known reason other than they don’t like them.
Greece is bankrupt.
The United States is selling more guns and gun silencers than ever before. Apparently they want to kill one another more quietly now.
The Middle East is playing Keep-It-Away with global oil suppliers.
In Africa, an American dentist killed a pet Lion in an awkward and embarrassing manner, which whipped up a firestorm of social media protests. Never mind that the safari grunt-workers were making about a dollar a day while the dentist paid $64,000 for the pleasure of beheading Cecil the security lion.
And in Canada, up until Sunday, our biggest issue, or so it seemed, was whether or not we should keep or eliminate the Senate.
Boy, do we need a reset button.
Maybe a lengthy federal campaign is exactly what we need, although I doubt it.
Stevie Wonder, that Harper boy, turned tough, joining Brad and the boys in declaring no more Senate appointments would be coming from his office. That’s easy, now that there is a solid Conservative majority in the red chamber.
This is no chamber of sober second thought. It’s a room full of hacks and partisan party fundraisers.
There are now 22 vacancies in the 105 seat Senate.
If Stevie hadn’t appointed his 59 stalwarts, there would now be 81 vacancies, and he and Brad would be very close to already meeting their objective of making the Senate more irrelevant than it already is.
Just think, with fewer than two dozen Senators rattling around in an echo chamber, they would soon run out of bodies to fill their self-serving committees. Redundancy would set in and before we could say Brazeau, Canadians could instead say goodbye. With senate numbers dwindled to the precious few they would be easy to forget.
If the PM stuck to this mandate, be it Stevie or someone else, the problem would solve itself with time.
Would it be legal to allow the Canadian Senate to die on the vine?
Who cares?
A court challenge on the topic would last a dozen years and make eight lawyers and 12 legislative nerds rich, but the cost would probably be less than what it takes to feed and water 105 Mike Duffys and Pam Wallins.
Now, if Stevie would like to appoint me to the Senate, well, I could quickly climb down off this high horse and adopt a whole new outlook on the subject.
But obviously he’s not about to do so.
And he just appointed the final person to the Supreme Court, some dude from Alberta (surprise, surprise). I didn’t make the short list for any of those 64 commissions and agency appointments either.
FIFA did not come calling for my nomination to rock the soccer world.
So that brings me back to being mayor of Estevan.
I’m still hoping the bride will cast a vote on my behalf, making it seven firm ballots in my favour, but I haven’t convinced her yet.
So far, Roy Ludwig and Co., have nothing to fear, but you never know.
Jim Prentice thought he was the emir of Alberta, and look what happened.
My campaign slogan remains the same. If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. I actually need to be appointed to something because I don’t particularly like campaigning. It’s way too hard.
