[uwish]

lets talk about the senate in general how many of them have been elected???

thats the point. It needs to be reformed or abolished. You won't find many Canadians that disagree with that.

[DerbyX]

uwish uwish:

lets talk about the senate in general how many of them have been elected???

thats the point. It needs to be reformed or abolished. You won't find many Canadians that disagree with that.

Then by all means lets find out and put it to a referendum. Many people talk about how the FPTP system needs reform too with some form of proportional representation, at both the provincial and federal levels. Ontario has twice had a referendum (both nay) and BC just had one (nay as well).

If the people truly support senate reform then they'll vote it in via a referendum.

The remaining question then becomes will the provinces all support it because they had their chance before.

[ryan29]

Iggy once again has came out with another terrible idea . and isn't even close to real senate reform .

i'm sorry but why on earth would i want some commission of bureaucrats or mp's or whatever deciding our next senators ? why don't the liberals want to give canadians the choice of electing senators at some point ? the commission idea he has announced is an absolute farce and i could only imagine the reaction it would get south of the border . it would be laughed down so quick it be funny .
sure harper has appointed a number of senators but the end goal is to have a reformed senate at some point and hopefully some senate elections .

[ASLplease]

DerbyX DerbyX:

No, the senate is doing exactly what it is supposed to do and that is being a sober second thought check.

By making the Upper House equal and elected, it will become the effective chamber of sober second thought that was first envisioned. We owe this to Canadians.

[Zipperfish]

ryan29 ryan29:

Iggy once again has came out with another terrible idea . and isn't even close to real senate reform .

i'm sorry but why on earth would i want some commission of bureaucrats or mp's or whatever deciding our next senators ? why don't the liberals want to give canadians the choice of electing senators at some point ? the commission idea he has announced is an absolute farce and i could only imagine the reaction it would get south of the border . it would be laughed down so quick it be funny .
sure harper has appointed a number of senators but the end goal is to have a reformed senate at some point and hopefully some senate elections .

Well, you have to admit, it's better than Harper's "Hey let's just appoint patisan hacks for life."

[romanP]

uwish uwish:

"There it is again.. "They did it, so we can too!"

When will this childish nonsense end?"



it will end when the senate passes bills that the sitting government WAS ELECTED TO DO. It took Harper 4 years to finally admit there was NO OTHER WAY than play the game the liberals wanted. So, done, the senate is now under new management. Stuff will finally get done now. There were 18 vacant seats in the upper house when the CPC took office, from past Liberal governments, that would have been filled within the first two years of office.

I don't see stuff getting done. In fact, nothing can be done until March.

[OnTheIce]

romanP romanP:

uwish uwish:

"There it is again.. "They did it, so we can too!"

When will this childish nonsense end?"



it will end when the senate passes bills that the sitting government WAS ELECTED TO DO. It took Harper 4 years to finally admit there was NO OTHER WAY than play the game the liberals wanted. So, done, the senate is now under new management. Stuff will finally get done now. There were 18 vacant seats in the upper house when the CPC took office, from past Liberal governments, that would have been filled within the first two years of office.

I don't see stuff getting done. In fact, nothing can be done until March.

I guess spending time with the people that elected you isn't good enough? Spending a month within your community? GASP!

Perhaps spending time arguing in the legislature, passing bills that will be rejected by the Senate would be a better way to spend the time.

[romanP]

There is a very good reason why we don't elect senators, and why having a vetting process would work better. If we got to elect our senators, our senate would be just as braindead as the House of Commons. Just imagine how dysfunctional our government would be if the senate decided they were going fishing for three months because they didn't like the bills they had to work on.

[romanP]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

I guess spending time with the people that elected you isn't good enough? Spending a month within your community? GASP!

I don't know what you're going on about. It is not the Prime Minister's job to pander to only those people who elected him. He is a representative of the entire country.

$1:

Perhaps spending time arguing in the legislature, passing bills that will be rejected by the Senate would be a better way to spend the time.

You don't think there might be a good reason why those bills were rejected by the Senate? It's pretty childish and cynical to think that just because you passed a bill through the house that you must have shit a gold brick. You've got to have a pretty delusional head on your shoulders to think that every bill you want to pass is the best thing since sliced bread.

[herbie]

You know a plebiscite might be the way to go, it would be more democratic than involving the feds/provinces/etc and probably faster.
But first there'd need to be a preliminary vote
- keep Senate as is
- reform the Senate
- abolish the Senate
Say a 60% majority required, and without it everything stays the same.

If reform was chosen, there'd need to be a Citizen's Assembly to recommend how.

I think it would all come to naught, but people would get their voice.

[romanP]

Abolishment shouldn't be an option. There needs to be that degree of separation from bills being rammed through the house and passed into law. Those who propose such things have a poor understanding of the processes of government and why we have them.

The Senate prevents crazymonkeyballs bills that go through the house from being becoming law. If we abolished the Senate, and the house passed a bill that all households must now have a rhinoceros in their garage, it would be one step easier to have that bill become reality. It's not perfect, because no system can be, but we're all slightly more sane with it than without.

[uwish]

unfortunately roman, bills being RAMMED through has happened under every governments watch. I will say however, more so under the Liberals but that might only be because they have been in the drivers seat for a longer period of time.

[OnTheIce]

romanP romanP:

I don't know what you're going on about. It is not the Prime Minister's job to pander to only those people who elected him. He is a representative of the entire country.

Yea, which probably explains why he's been all over the World on Canada's behalf while sending a massive amount of aid to Haiti while offering to match every Canadian donation as well.

The PM works while the House isn't sitting. To think otherwise just shows that you're not very informed.

romanP romanP:

You don't think there might be a good reason why those bills were rejected by the Senate? It's pretty childish and cynical to think that just because you passed a bill through the house that you must have shit a gold brick. You've got to have a pretty delusional head on your shoulders to think that every bill you want to pass is the best thing since sliced bread.

Come on dude, who are you trying to kid?

Everyone and their red-headed step-child knows that the Liberal stacked Senate did anything and everything it could to stall tons of legislation coming from the Conservatives.

[bootlegga]

uwish uwish:

hum... term limits, precisely what the CPC was / is trying to do. Does this guy ever have an idea of his own?????

Uh yeah, had you read more than the first paragraph you would have seen this;

$1:

Ignatieff proposed a 12-year term limit on Senate positions and an arms-length committee tasked with vetting candidates.

uwish uwish:

you mean like any other government has done? yet now its evil because harper is doing it? I think not...

No, it's not evil, just another broken campaign promise, like Chretien's promise to scrap the GST.

[bootlegga]

KorbenDeck KorbenDeck:

The only chance the Conservatives have at reforming the Senate is to have enough people in the Senate who support the change. Iggys idea still doesn't go far enough, the Senate should be either done away with or become elected by the Canadian people every 4 years.

Wrong.

The only chance the Conservatives (or any party for that matter) have at reforming the Senate is to amend the Constitution, either by having a referendum or having all 10 provinces ratify it. Both options have already been tried and both failed.