The Editor: Stephen Harper's hyper-partisanship is tainting the Senate. The Upper Chamber is intended to be a check on excesses of partisanship in the Commons, particularly excesses of partisanship by the Prime Minister and Cabinet government. The Senate is a revising chamber, a chamber of "sober second thought" with a first duty through the Crown to all Canadians and all of Canada, not to party, province, region, or special interest.
Harper and Harper's appointed senators should know this, for these are both constitutional principles and therefore the Tory guiding principles for any Senate Reform set down in Tory policy - or were, but today the Harper Tories are not Tory at all.
Today Mr. Harper makes appointments with prior agreement to vote on specific legislation in specific ways and along party lines, his party. This is unprecedented and quite possibly illegal violation of the Canada Elections Act, in spirit and perhaps in law, which forbids prior written commitment to vote according to prior written agreements vote buying, in effect - appointment is a form of election. Harper, indeed, intends to appoint only elected "senators-in-waiting" as creatures of party and province, neutered in their responsibility of "sober second thought." Castrati of party partisanship.
Partisanship, patronage, and provincialism are the threats to democracy, independent powers to revise, and national unity are the reasons for Senate Reform constantly referenced. They are also inherent in the Harper appointments, as remarks by those like Plett and Runciman show us and Harper senators' voting record demonstrate clearly.
How to solve it?
Not election, which is by definition partisan. Leave it in the hands of a partisan prime minister like the unprecedented hyper-partisan Stephen Harper. That's patronage.
Allow provincial election? That's provincialism and a threat to national unity.
A solution does exist, though, in the Queen's Privy Council of present and past prime ministers and cabinets, G.G.'s and others including invited premiers, across party lines and generations. Nominations to the Governor General free of charges of partisanship, patronage and provincialism committed to "sober second thought" and to Canada first.
Brian Marlatt, White Rock, BC.
