Senators-elect meet with Ralph Klein

[ivbinconned]

November 29, 2004

The Senate can be reformed easily and effectively
if Alberta makes it an issue

Well, Alberta's Senate election is over. Now the real fight begins--again.

I came fourth among the four winners with 236,000 votes. I was right behind Onoway farmer and former MP Cliff Breitkreuz, and comfortably ahead of six other candidates.

First place went to Edmonton businesswoman Betty Unger with 308,000 votes, followed closely by Calgary-area farmer, Mr. Triple E himself, Bert Brown.

The question has been asked, what did the election achieve?

I think it has been answered by over two million marks on Alberta ballots. The mere fact that most voters chose to cast Senate ballots proves that they believe Parliament's upper house should be elected, not appointed by Paul Martin.

No reform could be more reasonable, nor do as much to change the way the federal government operates.

The main problem with Canada's system of government is that the prime minister has amassed far too much personal power. We have become an elected dictatorship.

All those who could and should be able to challenge his decisions--premiers, senators, judges, Liberal cabinet ministers and backbenchers--owe their positions or their revenues to his goodwill.

There are now so many appointed Liberals in the Senate even Liberal senators publicly complain that it no longer functions.

The prime minister unilaterally decides fiscal policy, defence policy, social policy, foreign policy, and justice policy. His word is law. The thousand minions who staff his two offices (the PMO and PCO) face none of those power-balances which normally prevent constitutional democracies from descending into corrupt, ugly little tyrannies.

That's why the Chretien PMO could secretly run the sponsorship program which saw $100 million stolen from the federal treasury. It's why we can't ditch Liberal boondoggles like the gun registry, which most Canadians now oppose.

If the Senate were independently elected, much of this problem would vanish overnight.

We don't even need the old Reform Party idea of provincial equality. We can do it with the regional equality which is in the Senate now. All we'd have to do is reduce the Atlantic from 30 senators to 24 (a fluke of history), so it has the same number as Quebec, Ontario and the West have always had.

If this regionally equal Senate were proportionately elected, and even if Canadians voted the same for the Senate as they did for the House of Commons, the Liberals would have lost control of the Senate in all of the last three elections.

I did the math. After this year's election, out of 99 senators (96 for the four regions and one each for the northern territories), today's Senate would consist of 40 Liberals, 28 Conservatives, 17 New Democrats, 12 Blocs, and two Greens.

More importantly, the previous two elections, which saw strong and abusive Chretien majorities in the Commons, would have produced similar Liberal minorities in the Senate.

Small wonder that Paul Martin has changed his mind about letting provinces name or elect senators, a promise Klein says he made to the premiers at last year's Grey Cup in Regina.

Martin's skating on thin political ice. The premiers--especially Ralph Klein--could break that ice by making this an issue.

Let's hope Klein does before Martin fills Aberta's vacant seats with three more Liberal flunkies.

You can suggest this to the premier by e-mailing him at premier@gov.ab.ca, or through his Web site, www.gov.ab.ca/premier.

- Link Byfield

[ivbinconned]

The Alberta Senate election creates a new democratic platform for Albertans to promote federal reform and provincial rights.

Democracy functions properly only with "checks and balances." In Canada today, the courts are too strong, the prime minister is too strong, and the central government is too strong.

Meanwhile, the provinces have become too weak, and the premiers too politically dependent on federal money. Canada wasn't supposed to work this way, but it does now.

A reformed Senate--one that's democratically accountable to the people of the various provinces--would be a useful check on premiers and prime ministers.

And the only way to reform it is to keep electing senators, to force the issue.

Paul Martin says he wants to end western alienation, and to close the "democratic deficit" in Parliament.

Well here's your chance, Paul, on a platter!

Federal reform goes well beyond electing senators, of course, but senators-elect (whether appointed or not) have a democratic mandate to speak for their province to the people of Canada.

We should stop relying entirely on premiers and provincial governments to do this, because they don't. How often, for example, have you heard any Alberta politicians mention that Ottawa siphons a net $10 billion each year out of their province? If they started talking about such things, people would expect them to do something about it.

Now, however, with oil reaching $50, the minority Liberals will soon recall how they won huge national majorities a generation ago. They only need to promise to deliver Alberta's resource earnings to eastern voters--all in the "national interest," of course. It worked before and it will work again.

Albertans need to be ready to fight back with everything they can.

That's why this Senate election matters!

- Link Byfield

[wilagro]

Thanks Ivbinconned...just what we needed. More cut and paste articles by good ol' "Link".

It will take a good many articles before I am convinced that our Alberta "election" of senators was a legitimate exercise.

Only when ALL of the provinces AGREE on the process of senatorial selection will Alberta's scheme have any validity.

[ivbinconned]

Happy to oblige wilagro.
It has to "start" somewhere!!

“All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which the are accustomed”
Thomas Jefferson

[cowman]

The US senate started out the same way...appointed and useless! When the states started electing them they became effective because they were elected. They now had a legitimate claim to be relevant!
They also became a very effective brake on the concept of the "dictatorship of the majority"? Do you think we might need this in Canada? What is to stop the majority right now from ripping off Alberta? In reality hasn't the rest of Canada been doing that for quite awhile? We send them $10 billion per year...that works out to about $3000 for every man, woman and child in Alberta!
Only with a truly triple E senate will the west move away from being anything more than a colony for central Canada.

[cowman]

Heard Senator Banks on CHED at 5:30 this morning advising that not only should we rid ourselves of our gas guzzling SUV's but we should consider biking it to work !!!
Guess the honorable gentleman has never had to make his way around rural AB. on a morning like this. There have been times and not only a few when I have had my SUV or my 4x4 pickup in 4L to get through foot deep snow on the main roads in order to get home !!! My BIKE just would not cut it !!!!