Should it stay or should it go? Or should it just be reformed?
The Canadian Senate is back in the news for all the wrong reasons and calls for it to be reformed and even abolished are getting louder and more common among politicians and the public.
Embroiled in issues related to personal financial miscounting and expense account errors, the Senate is losing credibility quickly.
Isn't the purpose of the current Canadian Senate to understand and make decisions on complex legislation, yet certain individual Senators cannot even seem to keep their own personal finances in order – unless of course, these “accounting errors” were more like tests to see what Senators can get away with.
And when it is proven that more money was pocketed than was supposed to be, as was the case with former Conservative and now independent Senator Mike Duffy, where is the accountability? Where are the repercussions that normal working Canadians would receive should they be found to have taken money they were not entitled to?
And the federal government's response to Duffy's situation: the Prime Minister's chief of staff Nigel Wright cutting a personal cheque from his personal account for more than $90,000 and giving that to Duffy to pay back the excess amount of taxpayer money he took in.
Senators are appointed on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, they are not elected; yet they are paid for by taxpayers and seem to be taking advantage of that lack of accountability – which can happen when the ones paying the wage are not the ones holding the Senators accountable.
Maybe it's time for that to change. Maybe it's time for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to step up and follow through on his election promise of more than seven years ago to reform the Senate.
Because, ironically, the exact thing Harper vowed to change during his 2005-06 campaign is now creating the very controversy that could eventually force him to actually follow through on one of his election promises.
