Senate Appointments: Hypocritical or Good day?

Posted on 29 January 2010

I’m going to say both.  And yes I know that seems strange.  Especially from a Liberal.

Before I get to hypocritical, I figure I should explain why it is a good day.   Why is it a good day?  Well, as a friend pointed out to me, there is one less excuse for Harper now.  He can no longer say “the Senate is blocking our legislation” so he can’t use that as an excuse for being unproductive, or proroguing parliament anymore.  It just isn’t true anymore.  So I hope to hear less spin from our Prime Minister going forward – he has the majority in the Senate he was looking for.  Time for new reasons for not doing your job Steve.

But here is the deal – today Prime Minister Harper appointed five new Senators: Current Ontario Conservative MPP Bob Runciman, Vim Kochhar from Ontario, Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu from Quebec. Elizabeth Marshall from Newfoundland and Labrador, and Current Conservative MLA Rose-May Poirier from New Brunswick.  I will be honest, beyond Runciman I have very little clue who these folks are, but that is beyond the point.

The point is that for the third time in one year Harper has appointed Senators, while he campaigned on and still claims that he wishes to make significant Senate reform, which may actually be the only Conservative platform point I actually agree with.  Unfortunately he hasn’t even close to lived up to this promise, and keeps doing the exact same thing his predecessors did – stack the chamber in their favour and neglect to actually move forward with reform which is so sorely needed.

So the Conservatives now hold a majority in the Senate.  They have a higher proportion of seats than they hold in the House of Commons.  Now that makes sense to me.  Democracy in action folks.  And considering Harper keeps going back on his word on this?  Hypocrisy in action.  Always great from the leader of our government.

So in the end, as much as I hate that Harper is once again being a hypocrite, I can’t neglect to say it would have been nice to get one of those Senate seats myself.  Now that is job security.  Apparently I need to be all buddy buddy with Steve to get in on that though, and that’s never going to happen.