Preston Manning's plea to stop the insenaty

In a bold, open letter to all senators, former Reform/Canadian Alliance leader Preston Manning afronted them with the growing mood amongst democratic Canadians that the problem with not moving forward on senate reform is caused by the current senators themselves who've done nothing on it.  This, despite the relatively recent Conservative majority and a bulk of whom were appointed by recommendation of Prime Minister Harper on the basis that they would reform it.

With a recent Nanos poll indicating almost half of Canadians want the Senate reformed and just under that amount want it abolished, with few taking the status quo, it's the abolish side that is growing, probably because reforming it is seemingly less and less likely.

On this blog, I've gone on and on for years regarding politicians who say we reform the senate but offer no ideas, solutions or say it's difficult to do so there's no point.  This behaviour I've coined "insenaty".  Manning has basically painted the entire red chamber in asylum-white while senators sit back and strap themselves in straight-jackets whining that reform is a fruitless exercise.  Sigh.

I've offered my ideas over and over.  I prefer reforming it to abolishing it.  But even I've become frustrated, as I see little action despite my acknowledgement of Stephen Harper's term-limit proposal and preference for appointing elected senators (albeit only from Alberta thus far), he's the most reformist of all PMs in our history.

And as my frustration grows with my age, I lean toward perhaps abolishing it to then start from scratch may be the preferred route to rid the upper chamber of the "Ottawashed" and replace it with fresh electors, accountable to you, the voter, and not themselves.

Popular Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall now prefers abolishing it.  That says something right there.  I no longer see him suffering from insenaty.  His mind is clear.  Perhaps it is I and others who suffer after continually bashing our heads against the wall, expecting the same result.

As Manning said in his letter, even after decades of the infinite hours spent by countless people on the issue of senate reform, essentially the patience runs out, and it is time the Prime Minister, fed up with the complacency, proposes to free us from the chains and ends the thing.

At least then, finally, we can stop the insenaty.

Sun News Network tour!

That's right!   Lately, I've been religiously watching Sun News Network in various hotels rooms and I've been enjoying it.

I've been working in Mississauga for the last three weeks and have made some trips into Toronto on a couple weekends.  This past weekend, I hooked up with a friend of mine (I won't say who to protect his privacy) who gave me a tour of the Sun News Network studios on King St. East.  We started off with a peek see into Ezra Levant's "The Source" studio which is actually across the street at the Toronto Sun.  An impressive room with robot cameras controlled by joystick across the hall, with lots of books and trinkets on the back wall, and two books which I happened to help myself to a couple copies of were Ezra's "Ethical Oil" and "Shakedown".

Having been only on air for two months, Sun News Network is attracting radio hosts, journalists, and political pundits.  It recently hit 70,000 viewers on Brian Lilley's show "Byline".  Not tied to any other network, it is very independent and entertaining to watch.  It's amazing to me how many lefties in this country wanted to prevent this little network from reaching the airwaves.  Free speech for them obviously only goes so far for them, I guess.  But it's one of many battles and wars that Canadian conservatives are winning.

I'm watching it right now, and it's great to see them giving our dedicated troops currently in Kandahar a way to say hello to their family and friends.  I haven't seen that on other networks much.  They're also going to pump up Red Fridays more to support our brave soldiers.

I mentioned to my friend that I remember years ago when former Reform Party leader Preston Manning (then retired) wrote a newspaper opinion piece that for the conservative movement to succeed in Canada, it needed not just a political party to get behind, but other important institutions such as think-tanks, political training organizations, and also having a media class.

Since he wrote that, we now have a unified Conservative party which has had a five year minority government, and now at least a four year majority.  Behind that, Mr. Manning created the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, there were more newspaper party endorsements, and a plurality of the electorate that has become comfortable with Canadian conservatism.

So now in Canada, we appear to have a polarized political environment with the New Democrats (new?) on the centre-left and Conservatives (newer) on the centre-right.  The debate about senate reform has already become heated and interesting, but I was surprised when the NDP voted with the gov't to extend our mission in Libya.

Speaking of the NDP, I learned today that at their convention in Vancouver, they tabled whether to remove the postfix "ist" from their constitution and call themselves "social democrats" not "socialist" and replace "wealth distribution" with "economic equality". 

This is all good news for the Marxist-Leninist and Communist parties.  They like their "ist".

Anyway, whether you like SunTV or not, adding more voices to the national debate is simply good for our democracy and to deny it, well, you're being a ninny and stubborn. Canada has been subjected to liberal-friendly TV news for many, many years.  It's refreshing to have a new TV news network that opens the debate even wider.  I wish everyone at Sun News Network all the success into the future.

And yes, I also made time to call my dad back home in Edmonton and wish him a happy Father's Day, talk about Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open and them tell him I got a tour of the Sun News Network studios--a channel he's been watching since it went on air.  He thought that was pretty neat.  And so did I.

The Third Way

Do you think in Quebec, with the recent 3rd place finish for the PQ, the dramatic rise of the non-separatist/non-federalist/pro-automony/3rd way ADQ, that this situation obviously shows that Quebeckers don't necessarily want to leave Quebec, but they don't want federal intrusion so much. Hmmm, same sentiment in BC and Alberta I'd say.

What this also indicates is that everyone is sick of the see-saw debate between separatism and centralism. Sick of it I tells ya!

But it also exposes that the Liberals, a la Trudeau, have NEEDED the separatists to legitimize their idea of a centralist federal government for many years and the separatists NEEDED the arrogant Liberals to battle against hard federalism.

Many of us have known this for years and many of us know about the billions of loonies that has gone to Quebec, almost equating with the amount that leaves Alberta, as a bribe to stay in the country. The recent budget is definitely an indication of that, so not much has changed there.

However, there's a difference. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has declared that the fiscal imbalance with the provinces has been solved. I think what he means though is that this is the last time we're buying off Quebec, other provinces be damned anyway. After this, will there be a further break down of federal powers and overlapped spending to let provinces do their own thing, like they used to a long time ago? Perhaps.

But when the Liberals were governing, they liked to create "programs" and many a program they made, with plump Quebecois patronage, and wasteful spending there to create jobs for friends. The sponsorship scandal was the crux of a resulting corruption that had been going on for many years. This was Liberal centralism and this bribery is insulting to Quebeckers.

Stephen Harper's old roots in the Reform Party would have no money for Quebec, and more provincial autonomy. This policy was the called "Third Way" that Preston Manning used to trumpet a whole decade ago.

Conservatives shocked everyone with 10 seats last election. With the rise of the ADQ and fall of the Liberals and PQ, it appears that Quebeckers are now embracing this old idea as a new way.