President Harper

I think I've said it often enough, but I'll say it again; we live in world comprised primarily of uninformed idiots and the masses can not generally be trusted to decide most matters of public interest.

So when Stephen Harper announces that he wants to go U.S. style (this seems to happen a lot with Harper) and have members of the Senate elected by the people, I cringe, furrow, shake my fist in the general direction of Ottawa, and open up Blogger to have my say.

I don't think people, myself included, have enough information about experience, job descriptions, responsibilities, candidates, reputations, and all the other things that may be of importance for these positions. Sure, the simple answer is to get that information out to the public - whom we know don't pay much attention to these matters. Back to square one.

Besides my gut reaction to this announcement there are other issues; first, we have the usual unbalanced representation that favours the East over the West where "a province like Nova Scotia is represented by 10 senators, while a province like Alberta, with about five times the population, only has six senators."

Secondly, while it would seem that Harper has left a window open on the possibility that nothing will really change because the election results will be non-binding and the ultimate decision of who to appoint will still fall to the Prime Minister. Currently the Prime Minster appoints senators without public input - so why are we bothering with this new bill if basically nothing changes? Because "if passed into law, the bill would allow Harper to make changes to the Senate without reworking the Constitution, which would require co-operation from the provinces." Yep, it's just another bid by Harper to change the Constitution or to change it without actually changing it all without the bother of getting National support. That guy can not leave the damn Constitution alone - just like Bush keeps taking runs at their Constitution.


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