Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen Succumb to Denialism, Senate-Style

Senate scandal - it's not just for the rookies any more.  Veteran Tory senators, Dave Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, have issued statements denying they knew anything about the backroom deal between Harper chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and the beleaguered Cavendish Cottager, Mike Duffy, to cover Duffy's Senate tab.

Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen deny that PMO deal had anything to do with their laundering of the Senate

report into Duffy's expense problems - even if that might have been part of the deal between Duffy and Wright.

"It was all a coincidence, ya see - a pure coincidence.  Coulda happened to anybody, see." 

CTV News reported that Tkachuk had a pact with Duffy whereby, if Duffy took Wright's handout and settled his Senate tab, the audit report would be less critical and questions about Duffy's residence problem would go away.   What is this, The Sopranos?

Senate Residence Requirements Are Not a Frivolous Formality

Canadian senators are appointed to represent their home province.  Although some, like the barnstorming Cavendish Cottager, may appear to represent their party, not the country and not their province, that isn't the obvious intent of the residency requirement.

Senators are supposed to spend most of their time in their home province to make themselves accessible to the people of their province, to hear their concerns, so that they can take those thoughts and interests back and represent them in the Senate.

A senator from Prince Edward Island fundraising in northern Alberta is doing squat for the people or province of Prince Edward Island.  He's not promoting Prince Edward Island in northern Alberta.  He's not promoting the Senate while he's in northern Alberta either.  He's shilling for the guy who's running the House of Commons.

What do these people need, a formal "job description"?  They're like a classroom full of school kids with open-ended hall passes.  Who wants to sit through a math class when you can be out in the playground with a frisbee?

Kudos, therefore, to the NDP for calling on the government to scrutinize every member of the Senate to assess whether they meet the residency stipulation.  We don't have to throw out the defaulters but we do need to hit the "reset" button and put them on notice that they're appointed to represent a specific province and that means spending most of the year there.

Steve Harper's Personal Freak Show - the Senate of Canada

Steve Harper has some curious thoughts.   Not a lot of them, admittedly, and what there are tend to be astonishingly shallow and always just a bit quirky.  That certainly comes through from the maladjusted freaks and lunatics Steve has packed into the Senate apparently for his personal amusement.

PostMedia's Sue Riley has done an excellent job in her latest op-ed piece, "Gloves are off in the war against the greens", in which she chronicles how Harper has unleashed his flea-bitten attack dogs against Canadian environmentalists.

"At a recent meeting of a Senate committee examining foreeign contributions to Canadian charities, Conservative Senator Percy Mockler described some respected environmental organizations - including the Sierra Club and David Suzuki foundations - as 'bad, not to mention ugly.'  ('They're all anti-Canadian' chimed in Conservative Senator Mike Duffy.)"

Senator Don Plett queried whether the environmental movement would accept funding from anyone.  "Would they take money from al-Qaeda, the Hamas, or the Taliban?"

Anything that stands in the way of the Tar Sands, notes Ms. Riley, is to be denounced and demonized, something entirely suitable for Harper's handpicked Senatorial swine.   She concludes by aptly summing up our Senate's Team Harper.

"There is a lunatic fringe, of course, anti-Canadian zealots unconcerned how many jobs are shipped offshore or how much we poison the planet.  They fiercely defend foreign oil companies' right to exploit our resources without limits or conditions.

"You won't find them at clandestine gatherings of green extremists, however.

"They sit in the Senate of Canada."

The Case For the Senate

I've heard the criticisms of the Canadian Senate but I always found them a little thin. So they're unelected, so what? The type of people you want in the Senate, the "best and brightest," with some exceptions are the type you wouldn't find running for office. Being unelected they're also less beholden to the party machine. And as the Globe's Simpson routinely points out, being unelected keeps them advisory while elected senators would have a legitimate claim to be legislative. No thanks.

Look in the House of Commons and you'll see lots of elected types you sure as hell would never want in the Senate.

This week the Senate made the case for keeping it as it is. The defence committee's unanimous report on Afghanistan spoke a truth we could never hope to hear in the lower house. Conservatives and Liberals came together to serve Canada by exposing the truth about "the mission" in Afghanistan. Their report was infinitely better than anything from the Commons including that faux debate.

"Sober second thought" it is, for this guy anyway.