Senate Picks

With Duffy gone, what political TV will I be able to watch without my blood pressure rising precipitously?

Help!

It's hilarious that the Liberals and the NDP depend on the ignorance of their own supporters for their smear campaigns to work. Anyone with half a brain knows it is normal for the PM to appoint Senators. Most people on the left do not want an elected Senate, the commies want to abolish the Senate; so, by all rights they should approve of the appointments since that is their preferred method. It is too bad that Harper can not directly ask the opposition if they would prefer Senate elections because they seem to be arguing both sides.

More jouranalists receiving reward. I like Duffy but I cannot stand this practice, whether it is done by Cons or Libs.

Honestly, no journalist should ever accept an appointment like this from a government. But that of course assumes journalism is a profession, which it isnt.

Did Lew McKenzie make it in, he and Dallaire can wrestle it out in the Senate...of course I think McKenzie makes a more credible GG than does Mme Jean and could actually fulfill the role as Commander in Chief...but while the role is cermonial, Greeter General, then a appointing telegenic journalists works fine until they actually have to do something.

So, regarding Duffy. Will we now see journalists getting all upset now, when they didnt over Jim Munson and Mme Jean.

I wonder if Craig Oliver is all upset now.

The full list is up over at stephen tayor's site, including the offical release from the PMO.

More jouranalists receiving reward. I like Duffy but I cannot stand this practice, whether it is done by Cons or Libs.

Ditto. I laughed inside when paranoid Libs kept saying Duffy was angling for a Senate appointment. Geez, I hate it when they're right. And I hate it more when the principles I believe in get stomped by the party I now kinda, sorta believe in.

The only thing Pamela Wallin and I have is that we are both cancer survivors, because we differ in gender and I have certainly never considered Pamela a conservative.
And as far as Duffy goes, geez he will be kissing Liberal senators asses in the senate.
If Harper had any conservative balls still attached to his body he would have at least named kate McMillan as a Saskatechewan to a senate seat.
And Happy Hnaukkah to Kate's Jewish visitors!

Harper had a caveat that these guys would step aside or run for election. did he keep it?

would the press report it.

It'd be nice to work for The Duff. ;)

Rat, power corrupts. That's why reducing the power and scope of government is a good thing and making it bigger is a bad thing.

I vote CPC because they are making bigger at a slower rate, not because I believe they are paragons of virtue. If we watch them really close and kick them when they stray, we may be able to de-fund and disempower government in this country to the point where it isn't actively dangerous to us.

Harper being able to sling around billions and billions of dollars to broken companies, appoint buddies to nice cushy Senate jobs, that's dangerous. But the Liberal's green shaft, that would be frickin' suicide.

Just thinking of the consternation of Mansbridge and Oliver makes me smile--very broadly.

Schadenfreude, for sure: it couldn't involve a more deserving twosome!

Hey Rat, do your principles include having members of the Bloc Quebecois in the Senate?

Just like the "CPC was shut out of Canada's three biggest cities" lie the media was pushing, I am getting sick of this "stacking the senate" line.

What stack? Is Harper going to appoint more than there are vacancies? No? THEN THERE'S NO STACK.

Section 26 of the Constitution Act allows for a stack - that's it. I can't describe how much I detest allowing the left to purloin legitimate words in order to twist them in their media to advance their biased agenda.

Does anyone know if the people who were "senators in waiting" after being voted for in provincial elections were appointed?

I am happy to see the Duff get a senate seat. I will miss MDL the only thing I've watched on TV other than Fox. I was also hoping for Don Cherry who would have brought lots of life to the senate. Maybe next time.

Tis hard to reform the Senate when there appears to be no appetite for democracy from the provincial governments. Although B.C. has senate election on the books they have never acted upon it. The senate setup as is, is quite unfair to the West, but on the whole is idiotic at best. At least Pamela Wallin has agreed to step down and run in a senate election in Sask. as soon as it happens. Regretably this is the best that can be done now. Craig Oliver and Don Martin must be positively apoplectic over this turn of events.

Imagine my surprise to learn that the US Senate is not always filled by election but by appointment as well. As usual, Mark Steyn hits it right on the nose:

"Gov. Paterson is said to be considering appointing Princess Caroline of Kennedy to Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat. After two and a third centuries of republican experiment, America has finally worked its way back to the House of Lords."

Including Richard Neufeld, BC MLA and Minister of Energy, from the northern BC Peace region...

Excellent! Excellent!

Appointing journalists into the government should be illegal. It promotes bias. We have enough of that already.

I cant get over the amount of Disrespectful comments towards Duffy on the G&M's comment board re: these appt's
Some are just plain disgusting ref: Duffy's weight

Well, I think the Senate is waste of taxpayers' money.

However, were I appointed to it, I'd have to take time for some reflection ("parliamentary tradition," "need to balance the Commons," "sober second opinion of the Upper Chamber" etc., etc.).

$134,000 per annum, eh? You don't say.

I don't like unelected government figures who make laws that affect us. Period.

With that said, I appreciate what pundit Norman Spector said this morning (paraphrasing) :

What was Harper to do? If he appointed no one then the Liberals would just fill it with their own folks when they achieved power.

Also, there must be a Senate or else no laws can get passed in Canada.

Finally, the Senate can never get removed because it requires a Constitutional Amendment and we know for all intents & purposes that this will forever be a Practical Impossibility. Thanks, Mr. Trudeau.

Duff what a great pick could not happen to a better Canadian in my opinion.

I am getting sick of this "stacking the senate" line.

besides, what in hell would you call what the coalition was going to do, particularly their intent to give that repulsive, loudmouthed slob May a senate seat?

Would have liked to see Mario Dumont in the Senate from the Action Democratique Party.

I had to laugh at the pick of Michel Rivard - maybe for two seconds the singer Michel Rivard of Beau Dommage fame and the Culture in Peril YouTube video that sank the Conservatives in the Quebec election thought he was picked!

One more nail in the coffin for the MSM, as this is one more proof that journalists are biased and refuse to admit it. Kudos for Ms. Wallin for being able to feed out of both ends of the patronage trough in one lifetime!

In all of the reporting they neglect to mention the total number of seats in the Senate and the total number who call themselves something other than conservative, like Liberal!

There are currently 58 members called Liberal, 35 called CPC, 4 Ind, 3 Progressive Conservative (heh), 1 Ind NDP (lol) and Cools who shows no affiliation.

Just out of curiosity I looked up the Martin appointments and noticed that he appointed 16 members in 2005. While not 100% partisan he appointed 11 Lib, 3 CPC, 1 PC and the lone NDPer. Of course he had the ability to be magnanimous since the Liberals held, and continue to hold, the majority in the upper chamber for some years to come.

So the PM appoints people to these seats knowing full well that had he not done so they would be filled by someone else not quite as friendly to the CPC.

Here is an idea, for all the proportional representative people out there, how about using the Upper Chamber for PR and leave the Lower Chamber the way it is. Seats in the Senate would be allotted based on percent of votes and appointed by the leader of the party. A minimum of 2% of popular vote would be required to earn a seat and there would be no need to worry about allotment based on region... of course the provinces would have to approve the change and that would never happen, but it is an idea.

Also conspicuously absent in the snarly CP report is mention of the fact that PMSH has tried to introduce Senate reform, passed in the House but...stalled in the Senate.

Duffy needed to retire anyway.

Hey Rat, do your principles include having members of the Bloc Quebecois in the Senate?

No, my principles include appointing people who, you know, deserve it, have "earned" it in the way someone can earn a gift like that, and they don't include paying off friendly journalists, bagmen, and failed politicians. Jeez! Another journalist? It's nothing but payoff and that's just plain wrong.

congrads to mike Duffy..
I also would have like to seen Don Cherry in the senate. and how about rex murphy. the lone cbc radioo Conservative man. he is fair and Balanced.

minuteman at December 22, 2008 1:43 PM,

I prefer the term Senator-elect; after all, that's what they are. :)

Bert Brown now sits in the Senate with Betty Unger and Link Byfield next in line. Neither was appointed today because they were no Alberta vacancies.

My guess is that Harper is appointing journalists to the senate as a carrot to other journalists to be more fair. Journalists now know that they have pork in their future by being a conservative suck up and not just by being a liberal suck up.

While all the commentators here live in the fairy tale land of Small Dead Animals, Harper lives in the real world of Canadian politics. He has to deal with the world as it is and not as place where whatever some Conservative ideologue wants gets done. Changing Canada back to a Conservative country is a long slow process that will be fought tooth and nail by media, academia, unions, public sector, culture industry, etc. If you want a conservative country roll up your sleeves and start working towards it - don't just whine every time Harper isn't 100% ideologically pure. Besides who are you going to replace him with?

Rat,

I can understand your distaste for appointing bagmen, but really, what's so horrible about Duffy? He's been covering politics for years, so he knows the issues, he knows how things work in Ottawa - and I have yet to work in any organization where there isn't an "official" way to get things done, and then there's the real way - and he's not a raving loony like Oliver. Does have a bit of a thin skin, though; I remember him suing Frank magazine for calling him "The Puffster".

As for Wallin, she's the senior adviser on US-Canada relations to the Council of the Americas in New York, and was Consul-General there for 4 years. Presumably she knows many of the movers and shakers in American politics and business, and could provide an informed perspective on bilateral issues. And, like Duffy, she probably has a very good idea of how Ottawa works.

I don't like appointed Senators either, but you can't say that's Harper's fault. He followed through on his promise, and the Liberals blocked it. I would like to know if Harper was able to extract a promise to resign from all of the new Senators if elections are brought in, however.

It's no wonder us Canadians are taken so lightly by Americans. The Puffster and Over-the-Hill Greene named to the Senate. What a disgrace. One has an out of control eating problem and the other has done little of note since the sixties.

The $83K or so after tax money wouldn't even keep my plane in the air and my Porsche on the road.

Nothing against the duffster but I am also of the opinion that journalists should not be in the running for any government appointment. The conflict of interest in trying to do fair and balanced reporting and trying to curry favour for your next career is too great.

I love the "stacked" reporting comments even though the Lieberals still have a majority in the Upper house. Poor buggers will now have to show up all the time just in case there is a vote on anything. Bummer, eh.

Remember the Senator who was cashing her daughter's pogie cheques and sending her the money in California? What ever happened to that?

Remember the Senator ......

What about the Liberal Senator that spent more time at his Villa in Mexico then his Senate seat.

question. did he appoint the people who were elected?

I'm crushed ... completely crushed.

Robert (conservative knuckle draggers)Fife didn't get an appointment.

I am rather disappointed with most of the senate picks.

Mike Duffy has never appeared to me to be fair and balanced on his show. He has a decided left wing tilt in my opinion, just like his MSM colleagues.

And I agree with the other posters here who question the continual selection of members of the MSM.

What the hell have any of them ever contributed to Canada?

Collectively, they have done more to confuse Canadians and misrepresent the actual state of affairs than any other group in our history.

My question as well old white guy, he sure as hell had better have or he just shot his own foot off.

Is there NO principle "Conservatives" won't
abandon at the drop of a hat?
(It's a rhetorical question, no need to answer. But let me guess.
That diabolical coalition made me do it, along with the evil msm.

"Opposition parties questioned whether Harper has the political legitimacy for a patronage spree, having averted the defeat of his minority government only by suspending Parliament until the new year.

They also questioned the timing of the announcement - given the dire state of the economy and public finances. They said filling those 18 seats will cost taxpayers $6 million a year.

"Stephen Harper keeps telling Canadians to tighten their belts," said the NDP's David Christopherson."

6 million per year? Isn't that about the amount of the subsidy the LPC gets from the taxpayers?

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?category=1&id=2363

The conditions are posted at the website.

Cheers and cheerup, you know, rock and a hard place....

Duffy gets TWO seats, though, right...?

/mean

So Harper says Dion is out to "destroy Canada" by working with the Bloc in Parliament just like Harper did, but then he goes and appoints a separatist into the senate? A guy who actually did work hard in Parizeau and Bouchard's governments to actually "destroy Canada" in the referendum and he is rewarded with a plum job.

So I ask readers here: which is Harper's biggest flip flop of the day:

1. appointing separatists to the senate?

2. appointing unelected senators when he promised he would never do so?

3. appointing a Supreme Court justice when he promised to only appoint them after a public hearing?

Folks, that's your Right Honourable Stephen Brian Jean Harper.

Pamela Wallin? The same PW who refused to interview a single Reform party member on her old CBC show? How the hell did she get classed a 'conservative?'.

I wonder if the clip is still around of Duffy giving Sh**(on air) to the liberal hack who tried to get(during the commercial break)Duffy to say what the liberals wanted him to say.

"question. did he appoint the people who were elected"

What people who were elected - Alberta is the ONLY province to have senate elections and Bert Brown was the ONLY appointment prior to this slate. Alberta did not need a seat; therefore no - he did not appoint any senators in waiting because there are none anywhere in this vast country - except Alberta.

Lots of talk that the PM does not have the confidence of the HofC. When did he lose a vote of no confidence since Oct 14. That is a coup d'etat term and a media term. Until there is a vote, he has not lost one. And he did win a vote re the Throne Speech.
I believe Paul Martin ignored a vote of no confidence, said it wasn't one, and then got some blond to walk across the aisle to save his job.
Funny how the media and libs forget these things.

Of course there was not confidence vote Mary. Harper undemocratically cancelled an opposition day that would have had one, then cancelled a vote on his own fiscal update, then cancelled Parliament altogether to avoid facing Parliament and save his own skin.

I believe Paul Martin ignored a vote of no confidence, said it wasn't one. No he didn't. A committee resolution is not a vote of non-confidence by the House. He also delayed an opposition day though and Harper (rightly) went nuts and then he faced Parliament rather than cancel it like Harper did. He won that vote even though Harper tried to buy Cadman's vote.

But he won it in such an appalling way that he lost a lot of the moral authority to govern after that. Harper cancelled Parliament and has not allowed it to sit since May 2008 in order to avoid being defeated by a confidence motion. His cowardly maneuvering has lost him a lot of the same moral authority to govern.

Funny how the media and libs forget these things.

Actually, in case you didn't realize it, Martin is no longer the leader of the Liberals. He actually lost an election 2 leaders ago. It is the Conservatives who have forgotten these things and are trying hard to make sure us Canadians do too.

I had no idea Pamela Wallin was from Sask. BUT on Steven Taylor's site it says she will step down to face election once we have our first Senate elections here.