In related developments, sources at CTV reveal the Senate is “unelected”;
Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to fill 18 vacancies in the unelected Senate with Conservative loyalists before Christmas, CTV News has learned.
Sources said Harper is concerned the Senate committee system isn’t working properly because there are only 20 Conservative senators sitting in the Liberal-dominated Red Chamber.
But according to insiders, what really drove Harper to move quickly and fill the vacant Senate seats is the possibility of losing political power in January at the hands of the Liberal-NDP coalition
I know. It came as a shock to me, too.
Nope, ted, you are the one who is playing with semantics. Those words by Harper are his agenda. You can’t make a promise that can’t be fulfilled.
And you still haven’t answered my questions; How is Harper to get his AGENDA of an elected and accountable Senate through, when your party in particular, doesn’t want such an agenda, and refuses to allow an elected and accountable Senate? How about answering my questions?
You see, ted, you are operating within the Liberal mindset of politics, which sees the government as a Ruling Party rather than a Political Party. A Ruling Party operates by sovereign decree and to hell with opposition. A Political Party acknowledges the MPs who act as MPs, ie, representing the electorate. Harper doesn’t operate as a Sovereign, but as a politician bound by rules.
Your Party, the Liberals, operates only as a Ruling Party; it does not acknowledge the electorate. By the way – the electorate want an elected and limited term Senate. Your MPs don’t. Hmm.
Your Party, the Liberals, has signed an undemocratic agreement that rejects the electorate and inserts the Bloc as the ‘Maxwell’s Demon’ controller of the government, so that your Party can Rule. Hmm. Oh, and set it up so that your coalition won’t go to the electorate for their approval. Hmm. How’s that for sovereignty?
Again, ted, what can a leader do to fulfill his stated agenda, when the other parties oppose the will of the people – and refuse to allow for an elected, limited term, and accountable Senate?
So I take it Ted that your are impressed with what the lietards did when they asked 800 reps. to who should lead the lietards in the next election.
Thanks “Marie’ for that. The media spin was he was the last to sign.
Good one ‘Warwick’. If you have to do it. Do it right.
“They are already spinning the Conservatives as right wing, next it will be ‘extremely right wing’.”
~Merle Underwood
“Right wing” is the new euphemism for ELECTED.
“Extremely right wing” will come to mean elected with a majority.
note:
Wikipedia lists the NDP as “center Left”.
🙂
“Harper doesn’t have the power to keep his promise”
So why did he make the promise in the first place???
Harper will say anything to the Canadian voter if he thinks it will get him into power and he will do anything – like cancel opposition days and cancel Parliament – if he thinks he needs to to keep power.
Ted,
“So why did he make the promise in the first place???”
Oh, let me open up my crystal ball and hazard a guess… let’s see now, here it is… it’s clearing up… Yup. The plan was to get a F’ING MAJORITY. Generally one makes promises based on the assumption that you’ll be elected with a majority and thus the power to make your plan happen.
Without a majority, no promise can be kept unless it corresponds with the promises or convenience of the other parties.
I don’t have to explain math as well. Do I? No Majority = all bets are off. You do what you can until you have the majority.
“he will do anything – like cancel opposition days and cancel Parliament – if he thinks he needs to keep power.”
Gee, who does this sound like… thinking… it’s right on the tip of my tongue… oh! I got it! It sounds like you are describing PAUL MARTIN. You know, the guy who lost 5 confidence votes and just pretended they didn’t happen until he had bribed some opposition members into his cabinet to stave off a 6th confidence motion. You know that time the media shilled for him and pretended those lost money-bill votes and non-confidence amendments weren’t actually non-confidence votes? 5 TIMES.
Now I’m not suggesting that Harper hasn’t also attempted to cajole the opposing benchwarmers to cross but if Harper had lost a vote that smelled something like the kind of thing an illiterate journalist might mistake for a confidence vote then the median, the opposition and all of their leftarded like-minded shills would have demanded the coalition be coronated without another moment’s hesitation.
Spare me the hypocrisy. Harper is playing by Liberal rules and you Liberals can’t stand it.
Well, if you expect Harper to play by the former rules you shouldn’t have changed them when it suited you. So sod off about it now.
PM Harper said during the election campaign that since he is having trouble getting any cooperation on Senate reform from any of the other parties and ESPECIALLY not the Senators that he may have to put this oon hold while tackling the more immediate problems with the worldwide economic collapse.
He said that the inequities in the Senate with such an overwhelming Liberal majority had to be addressed and he would address it.
People who were listening and voted for the Conservatives knew he was going to do this.
It was also alluded to in the Throne Speech, I believe, which was passed by the majority of the HOuse which had CONFIDENCE in him on the THurday night they passed the Throne speech while on the Friday they were plotting their coup because of NON CONFIDENCE.
Cynical?
Oh, let me open up my crystal ball and hazard a guess… let’s see now, here it is… it’s clearing up… Yup. The plan was to get a F’ING MAJORITY. Generally one makes promises based on the assumption that you’ll be elected with a majority and thus the power to make your plan happen. Without a majority, no promise can be kept unless it corresponds with the promises or convenience of the other parties. I don’t have to explain math as well. Do I? No Majority = all bets are off. You do what you can until you have the majority.
Warwick, that doesn’t make any sense. The minority House passed all of Harper’s senate reform bills just as much as a Harper majority would have.
And please keep up with the talking points. Your fellow commenters here have been whining that it is the senate’s fault that Harper has not put a process in place or even discussed with the Premiers a process to have elected senators.
No, ted, you are missing the point. The Liberals objected to Senate Reform. Got that? Liberals.
The House passed Senate term limits, with the Liberals knowing full well that the Senate Liberals would refuse it.
The House passed the Accountability Act, with the Liberals knowing full well that the Senate Liberals would refuse it.
They were abusing the parliamentary process, using the unelected Senate to fulfill THEIR agenda, which was to keep the Senate as an unelected power broker for their patronage appointments.
Then, the LIBERAL and Red Tory govts of Ontario, Quebec, Nfld, NB, claimed that they insisted on a constitutional opening of the question.
Now, would you, yet again, please answer my question. How do you fault Harper for being unable to fulfil his agenda of a reformed Senate when the House and Senate refuse to support this agenda?
ET, Warwick et al:
Please – you know better. Ted tries to promote himself as a legitimate Liberal (as if such a thing exists) but we all should know by now that he is nothing but a disgusting troll. A somewhat clever troll but disgusting nevertheless.
I don’t know why anyone bothers trying to have a rational discussion with Ted (and his ilk) when time and time again he’s proven himself to be totally incapable of grasping even the simplest of points. He’s the poster boy for the saying “if it weren’t for double standards he wouldn’t have any.”
Van/BCer: I’m just holding up a mirror so you folks can see what you’ve become in two short years. I once had very high hopes for Martin, so I can understand how difficult it is to be forced to see your party and your leader for what they really are when it is so much easier to pretend that there is still some small part of Harper/CPC circa 2005 left somewhere in Ottawa.
I wonder if Harper has considered having some candidates move from under-represented provinces to Quebec and the maritime provinces in order to somewhat equalize the numbers per province. I bet that there are no rules prohibiting a senator from moving to another province once appointed. If we can not have an elected senate perhaps we can work toward a more equal senate. Of course, I thought that removing the $1.95 subsidy was a brilliant idea.
Yeah Gus, I figured cutting the $1.95 handout was a good way to start to show that the government was being prudent with our tax dollars. Just like the $50 million in “arts” cuts that were in fact just getting rid of programs that had finished their original objectives.(btw, nobody ever mentions that most of that money went back into other programs but that’s another rant.)
Danny Williams for Senator!!
Electing the Senate is a bad idea. If 62% of voters dont vote Conservative what is the point of electing Liberal senators. The NDP wont run candidates because they want the Senate eliminated so the 62% would elect Liberals. What a dumb idea!!
Hate to say it, but Ted is right and ET IS playing with semantics here with her creative distinction between agenda and promise.
He DID say he would appoint no senator who had not been elected. Period. Obviously this is why the seats had been left vacant.
Here’s a promise he could have made and which he would not now be breaking:
“One of my top priorities will be the reform of the senate which will include, inter alia, the election of senators. Only if I fail to pass this legislation will I appoint a senator who has not been elected.
In this instance, only if he failed to make these efforts would he have broken a promise.
Let’s man up and just admit he broke a promise as a justified reaction to a completely inappropriate coaltion which included a party whose main objective is the destruction of the country. And maybe regret his rookie utopian naivety.
One must be very careful operating on principles when none of the opposing parties ever do. Politics is no place for principles. Leave those to the philosophers and moralists.
There’s no guarantee that the stooges are dead yet. First there was Moe, Larry and Curley, now we have Moe, Curley, and Shep! Best to fill those seats (as I said a week or more ago), to Keep as many conservatives in, and the BQ and Ellie May out.
sorry, me no dhimmi, an agenda and a promise are two different things. You cannot make promises in a political campaign; you only make agendas.
IF you achieve a majority, THEN, your agendas can be accepted as commitments to be fulfilled.
IF you don’t achieve a majority, THEN, there is no way that your agenda can be considered as a commitment – because it can’t be fulfilled.
I think that’s pretty simple. Your verbiage is simply the articulation of the above two sentences.
Since he was elected with a minority, and since the Senate is stacked with Liberals, THEN, he could not get any Senate reform, despite his several attempts. So, I absolutely disagree that he ‘broke his promise’. That would only be a valid conclusion IF he had the opportunity to fulfil such a promise.
Again, ted still hasn’t explained what he expected Harper to do to fulfil that so-called promise, when the House and the Senate refused to reform that Senate.
Again, I think it’s very important to differentiate between a promise and an agenda. You can only make a promise when you have the power to fufill it. Otherwise, it is an agenda, a plan, a goal.
I object to politicians telling us voters that they ‘promise to fix the economy’, promise to end poverty in ten years’, promise to stop global warming, promise to….whatever. These cannot, ever, be promises, and I’m tired of the rhetoric, by both the speaker and the listener, that assumes that they are.
They are agendas, goals, intentions, and as real actions affected by complex other realities from other parts of a nation and from other nations, are vulnerable to other realities that impinge on their end result.
“You cannot make promises in a political campaign; you only make agendas.”
Has anything more ludicrous ever been said by any partisan, left or right? Honestly here, folks.
So McGuinty did not break a promise not to raise taxes, he only had an agenda not to raise taxes????
So Chretien did not break a promise to cancel the GST, he honly had an agenda to cancel the GST???
So Conservatives were making stuff up when they put up “Promise Made. Promise Kept.” ads because they did not make promises during an election, just made agendas????
Read a dictionary, ET.
Again, ted still hasn’t explained what he expected Harper to do to fulfil that so-called promise
I have time and time again. He could have kept his promise and not appointed unelected senators. Period. Just like his promise to keep spending in control: no one forced him to go on historic record-breaking spending sprees.
No one is forcing him to appoint senators. If principle mattered to this PM, he simply would stand up for his principle to make a bigger point to the public. But he has none anymore. In fact, the senate tried to make him appoint senators earlier in this term and he attacked the senate for doing so saying that the senate had no legitimacy. What an affront to our Constitution.
We will know Harpers plans for the Senate by who he chooses.
This was of course unavoidable in light of this weeks freak show. A mixture of The Rocky horror show & SAW 3 ™.
Harper is a Fox, in a den of dull witted Dino‘s.
I’ll bet Peter Wolstencroft, a professor from Waterloo (I think) isn’t asked back to comment on CTV again: he had the temerity to both keep his cool altogether and state that it’s entirely constitutional—reasonable too!—for the PM to name 18 senators to the empty seats.
On Mike Duffy Live just now, the commentator from Calgary (sorry, I can’t recall her name) made it clear that PMSH is NOT abandoning his commitment to Senate reform at all: all the new appointees will be required to sign an agreement to step down and run for their seat if there is a time when Senate openings are to be elected.
From the spin of the lefties, I don’t understand why they don’t just abandon day to day, rational life and become certifiable whirling dirvishes.
ulianov @ 1:34 “So much for the Triple E senate…these flip flops keep getting better and better.”
These are not flip flops they are prudent measures.
Oct 15,2008 Globe & Mail : Newly-re-elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper today served notice that he will stack the Senate with Tory appointments if necessary to push through democratic reforms of the chamber.
Throne Speech 2008. Our Government will introduce legislation to move toward representation by population in the House of Commons for Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. Legislation will also be introduced to allow for nominees to the Senate to be selected by voters, to serve fixed terms of not longer than eight years, and for the Senate to be covered by the same ethics regime as the House of Commons.
I am delighted that PMSH is steadfast in his goal of a reformed Senate; we needed this step, a balanced Senate to pass the laws to reform its self. No Senate at all would be an improvement over their performance in the last 2 decades. PMSH will balance and reform the Senate, his predecessors should have done so, but they were lesser men. He will appoint people of quality. The “Old Guard” in the Senate will actually have to come to work most days.
In the fiscal update they said they would be appointing Senators, I think this is another proof that the Conservatives knew that the Liberals were bartering away our democracy (and Senatorial seats ) in their hidden agenda. Parliament could have fallen with the seats vacant; it still could fall, those seats must not be empty!
lookout: That was Joan Bryden. She made a lot of sense, unlike that CTV reporter, whatshisname, who said Harper has a lot of ‘splaining to do.
He has no choice, it has to be done. Even with those seats filled it’s still 58 Libs to 38 Cons & if he were to leave them open the Liberals would have them filled in a flash. With then 77 Liberal Senate seats – senate reform will be dead for another 100 years.
Filling them now is the way to go. This coalition is far from dead & even if they rule for a very short time – they can do a lot of damage. The senate has to be protected from their sticky fingers.
“He has no choice, it has to be done.
I see your point. Trudeau had a whole bunch of vacancies that he had to fill just before his last term in office was to end as well, and it had to be all his Liberal cronies. Mulroney was wrong. Turner didn’t have a choice.
Interesting that at the same time that Harper is breaking one of his fundamental promises and principles, he’s also :
Patronage speeds up in 2008
OTTAWA – The Harper government has made more than 500 appointments to federal boards, tribunals and commissions this year, including a batch just after the fiscal update triggered an opposition uproar that threatened to topple the Conservatives.
The Tories have given out 56 per cent more jobs in 2008 than in their first year in office. […]
The figure does not include the 18 Senate seats, the most coveted of federal plums, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to fill before Christmas. […]
In 2006, they made only 360 appointments. Some complained that delays in staffing immigration boards were slowing the processing of cases and leaving applicants waiting longer for decisions on their immigration status.
By Dec. 4 of this year, the cabinet had made 561 appointments to these types of jobs.
At least Trudeau had governed for 16 years and Mulroney had governed for almost 9 before the pork barrelling got under way big time. Harper hasn’t even been at it for 3 years! As his supporters have said, the Conservatives are getting done in 2 years what it took the Liberals 13 years to do (or 16 in the case of Trudeau and 8 in the case of Mulroney)!
Not sure what happened to the link there. A sentence was dropped. That should have been:
Interesting that at the same time that Harper is breaking one of his fundamental promises and principles, he’s also turning into Mulroney in other ways:
Problem is that Ottawa 76ers are just like the scum lurking in the parking lots this time of year. If they see something to steal, they will steal it.
“Harper would ask anyone he appoints to agree to step down and run in a Senate election if new legislation is ever implemented.”
HAHA, so senators are expected to step down if a democratic system is put in place?
Funny, I remember Harper losing the confidence of the DEMOCRATICALLY elected House. So where is the respect for democracy?
pdge – no, the House may have been democratically elected, but a vote by a coalition, which was not elected by the people as a coalition is not a democratic act. Furthermore, this coalition of two parties is unable to defeat the Conservatives; therefore, they signed an agreement with a political party, the Bloc, which is electorally out of the reach of over 80% of Canadians to support them, without even reading the Motion. That is not democratic.
Perhaps you think that IF the MPs were voted in, THEN, their subsequent behaviour would always be democratic. Not true.