To the editor:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's latest Senate appointments must be called into question.
Senators are to be a check on the prime minister, his cabinet and his House of Commons majority. They have the responsibility of providing "sober second thought" from their appointed positions.
Appointing defeated [federal election] candidates to the Senate is re-appointing those who resigned from the Senate to become partisan politicians cannot be considered other than directly conflicting with this responsibility.
Have Mr. Harper's purely partisan personal appointees committed to voting as he pleases?
Is that not vote buying?
Isn’t Mr. Harper again in contempt of Parliament in making such appointments - the very same contempt of our parliamentary democracy that defeated the government and forced an election March 25?
Harper wants to create a climate of opinion that will allow him to propose provincially run election of senators accountable to their province and party.
By doing this, he wants to create the United States of Canada, giving the prime minister presidential powers, an elected Senate with eight-year terms instead of six.
Neither abolishing nor electing senators serves the purpose for which it was to serve when Canada came into being in 1867. A process that will enable the Senate to play its designated role, which Harper has completely destroyed, is to have Senators appointed by the Governor General upon the recommendation of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.
Brian Marlatt
White Rock
