If There is a Referendum, I Will Vote to Abolish the Senate

There is a lot of discussion about Stephen Harper's plans to reform the Senate, by placing term limits of nine years, but only on those appointed after 2008.

Most of the opposition is coming from Harper's own senate appointments, many of whom have been rejected by the electorate, so would have difficulty finding such a cushy job, not to mention a pension for life.

Harper's other plan of an elected senate, would require a referendum, but even his current tweaking, demands a consensus from the provinces.

Being a Senator use to mean something in Canada, but the Senate is now just a $100 million a year drain on tax dollars, as a home for Harper flunkies.

They used to be there to protect us from someone like Stephen Harper, now they only protect him from people like us.

A three year study on poverty in Canada by the Liberal dominated senate, with vital input from Conservative senators, was presented to Stephen Harper. He gave it a glance then threw it in the trash.

The Parliament debated and passed a climate change bill. The Conservative dominated Senate gave it a glance, then threw it in the trash.

And any Senate bills that might help Canadians or make government more accountable, never have a chance. Even if they could get enough support from Conservative senators, the Harperites have found a way to make sure they never see the light of day.

In 2009, the Canadian Press learned of the tactic they used to hijack senate bills.

Normally, the author of a Senate private member's bill arranges to have a sympathetic MP sponsor it once it clears the upper house and arrives in the Commons. The sponsor informs the clerk's office that he or she will take responsibility for shepherding the bill through the Commons. But last month, Tory MPs began rushing to the clerk's office to sponsor bills almost the moment they were introduced in the upper house, whether or not they actually supported the bills and without waiting to see if they'd actually ever make it to the Commons.

A bill automatically dies if its sponsor fails to show up twice for debate on it. The Harperites who rush to sponsor the bill, make sure that they never show up to debate, stopping it in its tracks.

Ralph Goodale said the latest ploy is "an effort to muzzle a house of Parliament," and part of the government's continuing "vendetta" against the Senate. He said it's particularly hypocritical given the Tories' denunciations of the unelected chamber as an affront to democracy. "What they're basically saying is these topics (in the senators' bills) will not be debated. So it is very clearly the stifling of free speech."

It has just become another body that Harper can control at his whim.

A senator, especially a Conservative senator, is nothing more than a high priced bench warmer.

I did get my own back on one of them though. Senator Hugh Segal lives in Kingston, but we only hear from him when there's going to be an election. Like Wiarton Willie, if we see Segal's shadow, we know we're going to the polls.

When Stephen Harper was in Kingston, protesters were treated like criminals, kept behind imaginary lines and vivid barbed wire.

I was there, and when it was over made my way to the restaurant to use the bathroom and phone my husband. The door I normally used was locked, but I spotted Segal coming out the side door.

I approached him, and with all the innocence I could muster, asked him if he worked there, and could he let me in. He bent his head slightly, perhaps thinking I hadn't recognized him, and "feared" that I might ask for his autograph. I knew who he was, but it felt good to pretend I didn't.

He's done nothing to earn my respect, and that's something I don't hand out for free.

So if there is a referendum, I will be voting to abolish the Senate. It no longer has a legitimate function.

The New Conservative Party was Not a Marriage But an Abduction

As the Conservative Convention attempts to change the rules in determining leadership, many in the media are calling the "new" party a marriage between Red Tories and the Reform/Alliance.

This was not a marriage, it was an abduction. The majority of Red Tories had no interest in joining the neoconservative movement. We knew what it was and knew that it was all wrong for Canada.

Back in the day when we were allowed to call Stephen Harper a neoconservative, one of those Red Tories wrote a book on the subject. Beyond Greed: A Traditional Conservative Confronts Neoconservative Excess.

The author of that book was Hugh Segal, a man who has now joined the Harper cheer leading squad as a senator, embracing all of the undemocratic maneuvers he once sounded the alarm over.

Reform's power in the federal election of 1993, achieved during a clear Progressive Conservative vacuum both in leadership and policy, emerged from the capacity to divide. Increasing anti-Quebec animosities in the west, encouraging intransigence on native land claims, feeding an anti-politician and anti-government cynicism, arguing for tougher law and order treatment of the most juvenile of criminals, doubting the appropriateness of liberal refugee policies, attacking equalization between rich and poor regions in the name of fiscal restraint — all these speak to the Reform party's attempt to maximize their gains from the power to divide. (1)

When Brigette DePape stood in silent protest as this neoconservative agenda was being realized, she shared the concerns that Segal once had.

Anne Lagacé Dowson writes for The Hour:

Parliament has never witnessed such excitement during what is usually a sombre event – the Speech from the Throne, which outlines the government’s plans for the next session of Parliament, such as the Conservative scheme to cancel taxes for the richest and most powerful corporations. Reading between the lines, the speech also means that more Canadians will be imprisoned for what were once minor infractions in the relentless war on drugs, never mind that last week a blue ribbon panel, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, pronounced the war on drugs a lost war. More Canadians going to jail is just dandy since Harper intends to build spanking new prisons.

Picture the scene. Harper is a control freak and on that day he had total control. Control over the Commons because he won the election by splitting the opposition vote using the basest of Republican scare tactics. Control over the Senate because he appointed three Tory hacks who had just lost their elections, which gave him a majority of Senate seats. Control over the Governor-General. Former governors-general Michaëlle Jean and Adrienne Clarkson both maintained a certain regal aloofness from the governments that appointed them. Not Harper’s appointee, David Johnston. At his swearing-in ceremony we were witness to the extraordinary moment of the Governor-General giving a fist-pumping cheer to the new Conservative cabinet.

Johnston was an old Brian Mulroney crony who tried to suppress the inquiry into the Airbus scandal.

The Reform party has maximized its gains from what Segal called the "power to divide". But the senator also warned that Canada's neoconservatives risked becoming "captives of their own propaganda".

Anyone following Stephen Harper's career for more than a week and a half, know that he is not in any way imaginable a moderate. However, in his path to power he has had to tap into the worst of people, and now that "worst" wants action. And for the next four years, that worst will get it, while the Canadian identity is systematically destroyed.

But what's worse than Harper's tapping into the "worst", with all of his Quebec, women, progressives, gay bashing; is that he has used the power of the American neconservative movement to get where he is today. And they too have come calling.

He has sold the Canadian soul to the devil, and the devil has a signed contract.

Now About This Marriage Nonsense

The new Conservative Party of Canada is not the offspring of a marriage between Red Tories and the Reform/Alliance. It is an illegitimate child of a backroom affair. The bastard of Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper. Or if I can continue to be crude, the result of a gang rape.


The bait was a signed contract between Peter Mackay and another PC leadership contender, David Orchard. Mackay promised that if Orchard threw his votes to him, he would not try to unite with the Reformers.

Orchard, perhaps not willing to take Mackay at his word, demanded that he sign a contract. MacKay did, but before the ink was dry, met his political lover Harper, and a new generation of conservatives was born. (You can read more about that here and here)

Oh, but the Progressive Conservatives voted on the merger, you say.

Yeah, about that. Enter Craig Chandler, a card carrying member of Canada's Religious Right.

The controversial Chandler had worked behind the scenes to not only "unite the right", but also to have Stephen Harper head up the new party. He had held a 'Roots of Change' conference, to draw in the fringe elements. And during the vote on the merger, created The 2Cards Campaign.

Chandler, the founder of the Progressive Group for Independent Business (nothing at all like its name implies), ran for the PC leadership to get to the convention, where he helped to defeat Resolution 9, which sought to ban dual memberships in the PC and Alliance. He then launched the 2Cards initiative.

As you are well aware both the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the Canadian Alliance are sending the Merger Package for full ratification. The Tories and the Canadian Alliance are sending the proposal to their memberships and each party is different and this the real issue. Our polling numbers from The Strategy Group Inc show that 80 - 83.5% of Canadian Alliance members would support any effort for a united conservative movement. Also, since the Canadian Alliance only requires a simple majority to accept the Merger Package our efforts will not be focused on persuading Canadian Alliance members.

However, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada is where the battleground is. The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada's Constitution requires a 2/3 majority vote from participating members to ratify this Merger package and this is where the problem lies. ... How can we insure that the Tory membership will embrace the Merger Package? Quite simply, by following the initial plan of the www.2cards.ca campaign.

This meant that Alliance members would get to vote twice. The one within their own party was a lock, but the majority of PCs were opposed to the merger.

It worked and the hostile takeover began.

Canadians Not Blameless

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." Plato

Canadian artist Joe Mendleson, a former PC insider, does blame Mackay, but also blames the Canadian people for being asleep at the wheel.

“I view us as a people in decline,” he says. “We are a society that is very lost and completely uninvolved with democracy.” He himself has been involved in the past, becoming a card-carrying Progressive Conservative working for Prairie populist David Orchard in the 2003 leadership race won by Peter MacKay.

“I was betrayed by Peter MacKay,” he says, referring to the deal between MacKay and Orchard in which MacKay promised, if he became leader with Orchard’s backing, not to seek a union with the Canadian Alliance. The deal was eventually broken when the PCs joined the new Conservative Party with Harper as its leader.

His disenchantment since has only deepened. Canadians, he says, have become “anesthetized – they’re asleep about their country ..."

He calls on us to protest. We have, but I believe there will be larger protests in the near future. People are just not mad enough yet.

Another Canadian artist also wrote of the "new" Conservative Party. Robert Bateman in the Wildlife Art Journal says: Why I Am A 21st Century Conservative

I am a conservative. This is why I deeply resent the neo-conservatives who are not conservatives at all. They are the opposite: radicals who are destroying cherished institutions and wreaking havoc on our human heritage as well as our natural heritage.

I do not consider destroyers to be conservative.

So many cherished institutions have been built with great care and dedication through the decades by well-trained people with good hearts. These are being smashed and weakened in great haste by politicians and ideologues who do not even understand what they destroy. Creation is long and difficult; destruction is quick.

Hugh Segal once espoused the same values as Mendleson and Bateman.

Power in a democracy comes not from the ability to divide or even the ability to direct. Power in a democracy ultimately comes from the capacity to persuade, and be persuaded by, the essential moderation of the population as a whole.
The ability to persuade is based on trust, and trust is based on a clear and established practice of not abusing that trust. Using government to divide, using government to impose narrow fundamentalist biases, using government to encourage unfairness by sins of omission or commission is precisely such an abuse.

Leaders or putative leaders who encourage a retreat from moderation seek to bolster the legitimacy of their narrow views and purposes by seeing the population become as disengaged as they are from a balanced view. These are the leaders who work not to prevent crisis but to create it and expand upon it. They seek to leverage it for their own purposes rather than prevent it by true and fair-minded actions.

The moderate imperative explicitly provides that a democracy's only real power is power shared and used sparingly, and where possible not at all. The legitimacy of a public office holder or aspirant seeking to lead by building a shared consensus about common responsibilities to each other is more enduring than the opponent who seeks power by turning one demographically distinct voter group against another. (1)

Boy did he fall hard.

So to my friends in the media. Never, ever suggest that Red Tories were privy to the building of this dictatorship. Aside from those like Segal who have sold out for power, most of us detest Stephen Harper as much as the Liberals do.

Instead of doing background checks on pages, maybe we should be doing them on these "new" Conservative senators. I'd like to know the exact date that Segal contracted out his soul.

Sources:

1. Beyond Greed: A Traditional Conservative Confronts Neoconservative Excess, By Hugh Segal, Stoddart Publishing, 1997, ISBN: 0-7737-3053-2, Pg. 153-155

Wiarton Willie's Shadow Says There Will be an Election

Kingston has a senator though you'd never know it. The only time Hugh Segal shows his face is when there's going to be an election.

He has recently poked his head out of his hole, so that means we should be heading to the polls soon.

The last time we heard from him was when he was campaigning for local candidate Brian Abrams. Then he went into hibernation.

But he's being quoted now, working for our new neocon candidate, Alicia Gordon.

Remind me why we pay for senators again. I'm pretty sure it isn't to fundraise and campaign for the Corporate Party of Canada. They have enough money.

This is just another way to steal from us.

Senators agreed last month they can send newsletters with partisan content, such as the use of a party’s colours, photographs with MPs and endorsement for local candidates. “However negative comments against other senators are unacceptable,” the committee on internal economy, budgets and administration decided. “This is insane," NDP MP Peter Stoffer said. “They are unaccountable and unelected and they can use taxpayers dollars to attack … (NDP Leader) Jack Layton?” The House of Commons stopped MPs last spring from sending highly partisan “garbage” to other MPs’ ridings and the Senate should do the same, Stoffer urged. “We saved millions of dollars in the bullsh-- that was going out,” he added.

The Conservative-dominated Senate committee clarified the rules around mailings after receiving complaints Tory senators Bob Runciman and Don Plett had sent newsletters to Liberal ridings in their home province attacking the party for being soft on crime. Liberal MP Anita Neville, whose Winnipeg riding was targeted, said the mailings included a petition designed to obtain names of possible Conservative supporters.

So the Conservative senators kill a climate change bill drafted by people we elected, but then endorse theft of taxpayer money. I'm with Jack Layton. Enough is enough.

The Voter Subsidy is One of the Last Shreds of Democracy we Have Left

I posted over a year ago on the Harper government's secret plans to end voter subsidies. Secret because few in the media reported on it. But MP Steve Fletcher granted an interview to the Winnipeg Free Press, in which he revealed that he would be attempting to add more seats in rural areas and Alberta, hoping to create a neoconservative dynasty. And that he would be putting an end to voter subsidies.

And they are doing everything possible to make it difficult for Canadians to exercise their right to vote.

Voter subsidies were put in place by Jean Chretien, to replace corporate donations, as a result of protest, that the country's business elite was having far too much control over the politicians they financed. This amounts to less than two dollars for every vote cast, that went to the chosen party, enabling them to continue to operate.

The Conservatives don't need this, because corporate money flows to them through business financed think tanks and AstroTurf groups, like the Fraser Institute, the National Citizens Coalition and the Manning Centre for Democracy (started with a ten million dollar donation from one individual), and countless others.

Rightfully so, the opposition is fighting this, saying that it is a self-serving pursuit that hampers democracy.

In an interview with Postmedia News, Harper revealed that he would make ending the subsidies a key part of the Conservatives’ campaign platform. “A subsidy where parties make no effort to raise money is not acceptable, I don’t think, to Canadian taxpayers,” said the Prime Minister. Opponents to the subsidy cut say Harper is hampering other parties’ ability to raise funds outside of the private sector, giving the Tories a big advantage because of their ties to big business.

"Ties to big business"? Heck, they are big business. The only thing grassroots about them now is the grass they get on their expensive Italian leather shoes, when they leave the posh resorts where they are wined and dined for lucrative contracts.

Harper's former chief of staff, Guy Giorno was the top lobbyist for the oil industry. His new chief of staff, Nigel Wright, is a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, who is sticking us with those damn F-35s, because no one else wants them.

They are being nicknamed the "flying brick" or "Thud” (the sound the plane made when it hit the ground after failing to clear a runway, a rather common occurrence), comparing them to similar used in Vietnam.

And Harper is saying that tax payers object to the few million that our democratic votes provide to our chosen parties. Where was he when we were objecting to his $60 billion in corporate tax cuts?

There was an excellent letter in the North Shore News, which said in part:

Harper wants to undo this, and it's obvious why. Reverting to a reliance on private donors is clearly most helpful to parties who serve the interests of wealthy individuals and organizations. The Tories certainly fit that description. Harper's plan has nothing to do with fairness to taxpayers and everything to do with giving his party an edge. It should be rejected.

This campaign strategy could backfire, because Harper has clearly set his party up as the best friend the corporate elite ever had. And his policies that have favoured Canada's wealthiest citizens, have been to the detriment of the average Canadian, including the 125 billion dollar bank bailout with no strings attached.

And using the enormously wealthy Don Cherry to make bombastic statements, denouncing us, is not getting rave reviews.

The Conservatives have all the money and are using it to act in our worst interests. And that will be the choice next election. Corporations or Canadians.

I know what my choice will be.

Brian Abrams is Not the Only Kingston Conservative Missing in Action

The Whig Standard ran a great editorial last week on our local Conservative candidate, Brian Abrams, who has been missing in action over the Prison Farm issue.

They believe this will hurt his chances in the next federal election.

Because this was not simply about this important issue, but the Conservative Party in general, who keep their MPs silenced, while they themselves keep far too many secrets.

How does this cut Brian Abrams' credibility out from under him? Because the issue has long grown beyond the merit of prison farms. Even people who couldn't have cared less about convict farmers six months ago are wondering why the Tories remain so secretive. With each episode, the Tories' arrogance is magnified in a riding where the Conservative candidate has been strangely silent through the most important federal political debate locally in years.

As lawyer for the Kingston Police and an ex-RCMP, I suppose Abrams stayed in hiding so as not to have to weigh in on the police brutality at the Prison Farm protests, which included the rough handling of an 88-year-old woman.

And since party policy is "law and order", he would not be allowed to have an opinion contrary to the American style incarceration planned by Stephen Harper.

And he would not be allowed to have an opinion on further tax cuts for the rich, or on education, healthcare or CPP. Or the horrendous treatment of our veterans, and our seniors.

But Brian Abrams is not the only Kingston Conservative missing in action. We have a senator, though not many are aware of it. A Conservative senator appointed by Liberal PM Paul Martin, because he tried to be fair. Big mistake.

Now when I say that Kingston has a senator, that should mean something, but it doesn't. I've never seen the man. He ran Abram's campaign last election, so his name was in the paper, but aside from that he's pretty much a "no-show".

Kingston also had a Nortel Plant and recently Segal was part of the neocon controlled senate who dashed the hopes of disabled ex-employees, who will now lose all benefits as of January 1.

These workers deserved better from Nortel’s discredited management, which botched their disability plan. But also they deserved better from the new Tory Senators who owe their jobs to Stephen Harper, and will get their own gold-plated pensions and full disability coverage courtesy of the Prime Minister’s munificence.

These Senators rejected a proposal by Senator Art Eggleton to grant the 400 disabled ex-Nortel employees preferred status over other creditors when the telecommunications conglomerate is finally wound up under court supervision. Many of them are sick and unemployable, and say they will have to go on welfare. Eggleton notes that dozens of other countries have stronger protections for long-term disability.

This story is heart wrenching.

Here's Segal's contact information. This happened in his back yard and he did NOTHING. Let him know how you feel. In fact drop a bit of Christmas cheer on any or all Conservative senators, whose only function is now to simply do what the big guy tells them to do.

We should not have to pay for this.

Doug Finley Says "Let's Dance" Harper Says "Not Now Dear I've Got a Headache"

With the Omnibus Bill from hell, held up in the senate, the Neocons were promising an election over it. Doug Finley, one of the most blatant patronage senate appointments, said "Let's Dance".

He may have had a bit of false bravado after an Ekos poll suggested that Harper was 10 points above Michael Ignatieff. But the Reformers were quick to get out a memo telling their people not to get too excited because their own internal polling showed very different results.

And now they are saying that they are not quite as ready to go to the polls as Finley might suggest.

"Down Boy."

Conservatives are playing down the prospect of a fall election, despite threats of a snap vote from the party's national campaign director. Election speculation, never entirely muted in a minority parliament, went into hyper drive Thursday after opposition members of the Senate finance committee voted to strip a number of controversial measures out of the government's massive budget implementation bill.

The move prompted Tory Senator Doug Finley, the party's head campaign honcho, to warn that Conservatives are ready to plunge into an election if the budget bill is revised. However, a spokesman for the prime minister immediately let it be known that Stephen Harper "isn't looking to call an election this fall." And Harper backed that up Friday by bolstering Conservative ranks in the Senate, signalling that he'd rather fight to save the budget bill rather than call an election over it. Harper appointed former Tory candidate Salma Ataullahjan to fill the one Senate vacancy, bringing the Tories to 52 seats in the 105-seat chamber — just shy of an absolute
majority.

Thank heavens there is one Progressive Conservative in the Senate who doesn't take kindly to tricks and bullying. In Kingston both Hugh Segal and the Reformer candidate Brain Abrams, claim to be Red Tories. No Red Tory in their right mind would ever agree to this. None.

Lowell Murray is not a Liberal. But the Progressive Conservative senator finds himself voting with the opposition Liberals against the Stephen Harper government these days to protest an abuse of Parliament. That it should fall to an unelected Tory senator to defend our democratic institutions shows how Canadians are being held hostage by the subterfuge of spin and cynicism that passes for federal politics in the Harper era.

A one-time Tory cabinet minister, Murray cannot stomach the government’s tactics in lumping together several complex issues into a grab-bag “omnibus bill” — tied to the budget to make it a “confidence” matter that would trigger an election if defeated.

As Canadians showed when Harper prorogued Parliament last December, they care deeply about abuses of parliamentary procedure. So too, at one time, did Harper. In 1994, Harper complained vociferously about a previous Liberal government’s omnibus bill that dumped disparate bits of government business into one piece of legislation as a way of quickly tying up loose ends. Back then, Harper argued that “the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.” But that old Liberal bill was a mere 21 pages long. His own Conservative omnibus legislation is an unprecedented 880 pages long and contains 2,200 sections.

These kind of Gestapo tactics should have died with the Gestapo.

Blake Richards Campaigns for Brian Abrams While Leaving His Own Constituents Disappointed

Conservative Blake Richards has been abusing tax dollars to mail attack ads to Kingston Ontario residents. He may be lost because Richard's riding is in Wild Rose Alberta. I guess you don't need a sense of direction to be what passes for a Tory these days.

Just ask Jason Kenney or Luc Harvey.

Naturally, these ads are on behalf of Brian Abrams, who can't yet abuse our tax dollars on his own, and Abram's spokesperson, Senator Hugh Segal, is actually trying to defend these men.

He claims that all parties are doing it, but that's not true and he knows it. I've seen a few Liberal and NDP flyers opposing government policy, but the Conservatives actually use theirs to campaign or launch silly push polls.

But then what can we expect from Hugh Segal? When Peter MacKay reneged on a written contract with David Orchard, and teamed up with the Canadian Alliance, Segal defended it by saying: "A lot of things have been said at political conventions that didn't have much substance after the event. There is enough grey there for legitimate maneuverability." (aka: Lying)

So next time you get caught in a cell phone or fitness club contract, that demands you to continue paying even though you no longer require the service; just tell them of the Hugh Segal law for 'legitimate maneuverability'. Maybe he'll post your bail.

But as to Richards, he might want to focus on keeping his own riding informed, because at least one resident found his 'information newsletter' all fluff and no substance.

MP's Report Short on Real Substance
The Cochrane Eagle
July 15, 2009

Dear Editor:

MP Blake Richards’ recent four-page broadsheet sent to Wild Rose constituents is disappointingly largely fluff. He had roughly 5,000 sq. cm. available to update us on real issues, but used only about one-quarter of this space to do so. The rest was fluff.

Of the hard information he presented, most was general Conservative policy, and only one short article gave us insight into Mr. Richards’ efforts on our behalf. He describes attending a meeting in the United States in June where he promoted farmers’ concerns.

While that short report was informative, I wanted to hear more of substance. I don’t care if Mr. Richards entered a Didsbury coffee shop or got his photo taken with a hockey trophy. I want to know if he is attending to important issues, ones I don’t see listed in his survey.

Why focus so much effort on crime when Canada’s crime rate is decreasing? What about his work on such critical issues as:

• curbing climate change;

• preparing farmers to function within major climate swings;

• a Canada-wide water strategy;

• economic diversification and a return to research and anufacturing;

• shortening food supply lines and supporting local production;

• curtailing (instead of promoting) endless growth and its demands on a finite planet.

Vivian Pharis

I think I might have to draft a little letter to the Cochrane Eagle myself. Ms Pharis won't believe the silly nonsense he's sending Kingston Residents.

Back to: The Blake Richards Story: Shameless Self-Promotion