For the fourth time ... Senate term limits
Originally, I read that the Conservatives and Liberals agreed on 12 years but the bill that will be introduced in the House of Commons is 8 year senate term limits. I think they should be 6, but I'll settle with 8. This is the fourth time this will be brought forward in the last four years.
And here we have some classic "insenaty now", but not from the Liberals, but from the NDP...
NDP MP David Christopherson called changing the term limits of senators "tinkering around the edges" and not real reform.Oh brother. So there Mr. Christopherson, you genius you, if there are rarely ever any vacancies in the senate, we'll sure have a lot of elections for it, won't we?
"What we care about is not so much how long senators are in the Senate, but how they get there," he said, speaking to reporters after the news conference had ended.
And I thought the NDP simply wanted to abolish the upper chamber, not caring about reforming it.
But if we have term limits, we'll have the potential for more vacancies and thus more calls for elections.
Remember, Stephen Harper plays the long game and reforming the senate has proven it is not going to happen overnight, over one election period, or in some failed accord.
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3 comments:
I agree with Christopherson, that was a big part of conservative senate reform and still should be. In a minority government where it was difficult to pass bills and impossible to see them through the liberal dominated senate, we had no choice but to change the balance in the upper chamber. A stronger hand in the lower house can lead to real senate reform. The senate can be re-jigged to help overcome some of the current inequities in the lower house re: representation issues as well as help counteract partisanship which has become a cancer in the lower house. (real conservative)
A six-year limit seems far too short -- it doesn't provide nearly enough time for Senators to gain serious experience and learn the skills that make for better legislators.
But FIRST, we must create a groundswell, as follows:
A Congress of career politicians will NEVER allow us to constitutionally term limit them by an amendment. But... WE CAN IMPOSE term limits on them in Congressional elections (‘2010, 2012, 2014......):
1. Never reelect your Congressman or Senator.
2. Always vote, but only for the strongest challenger , regardless of party .
If Congress has not passed a term limits bill by 2014, repeat this in 2016, 2018....
Our only intelligent choice is to NEVER REELECT anyone in Congress!
The only infallible, unstoppable, guaranteed way to get a truly new Congress, AND a new politics, is NEVER REELECT ANY INCUMBENT! DO IT EVERY ELECTION until term limits is ratified. In other words, don't let anyone serve more than one term until Congress passes a term limits bill!
NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS. DO IT EVERY ELECTION! ... until we ratify term limits.
Nelson Lee Walker of tenurecorrupts.com
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