There are now real calls from the North Coast left to abolish the senate.
Maybe we’re getting somewhere.
This all comes about because the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which held hearings in Rupert and Terrace recently, to endorse a recommendation to not proceed with the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (Bill C-48).
North Coast MLA Jennifer Rice — a vocal supporter of Bill C-48) told The Northern View that she really hadn’t had an opinion on the senate until now.
“But when I saw the conduct of senators in Prince Rupert recently, it pushed me toward the idea of abolishing the Senate,” Rice said.
Welcome to the fight Jennifer.
In the wake of Justin’s daddy Pierre Trudeau’s federal Liberal party efforts to bankrupt western Canada to ease eastern pocketbooks during the 1970s energy crisis by shoving the National Energy Program (NEP) down Alberta’s throat, a grassroots campaign began to either abolish the senate or reform it.
There was, many western Canadians believed, a need to have an upper chamber to give sober second thought to the actions of the ruling government of the day.
It was then that the Triple-E senate (Effective, Equal and Elected) became a rallying cry by western conservatives.
In the mid-’80s, farmers were carving EEE into their Alberta grainfields.
A truly transformational senate package was taken to the Charlottetown Accord negotiations, but central Liberals doused the proposals with enough amendments that it ultimately failed.
To be fair, the NDP and, of course, the Bloc Quebecois have called in the past for the abolishment of the Senate.
Simple seat counts in the House of Commons can indicate why that is, but senate reform or abolishment is a uniquely Conservative movement — so much so, it ripped apart the political right for more than a decade and handed Ottawa to the Chretien and Martin’s successive Liberal governments.
Forget about all the scandals and wasted money … all it took was a recommendation from a minor league committee to get the Northwest B.C. left-wingers on board with Senate change.
The left is now right.