SIMS: Saying ‘No’ to Abolishing the Senate makes no Sense

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Well, this is awkward.

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A left-wing grassroots prairie group is insisting we keep the Senate.

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The group, Alberta’s Voice, is headed up by well-known Alberta lefty, Stephen Carter.

Alberta’s Voice is insisting the Senate of Canada, the atavistic holdover of the land-owning House of Lords in England, should be staunchly defended.

It gets even weirder.

Alberta’s big referendum day is asking 10 different questions.

Only one question asks if we should hold a referendum on separating from the rest of Canada.

Question No. 7 asks whether Alberta should work with other provinces to abolish the unelected Senate in Ottawa.

Abolishing the Senate should have been a lay-up for the Alberta’s Voice collective.

Yet, the website warns: “We are not going to eliminate the Senate [because] the constitutional implications are too extreme.”

Does this mean federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis is extreme?

Lewis told the Canadian Taxpayers Federation he’s keeping with his party’s longstanding policy demanding the Senate be abolished. The federal NDP is crystal clear on the issue: “The Senate is an archaic institution that violates the most basic principles of democratic government.”

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Was the late NDP leader, Jack Layton, extreme?

He wanted to abolish the Senate, too, calling it “outdated and obsolete, a 19th-century institution that has no place in a modern democracy in the 21st century.”

Or was it the grandfather of the NDP, the former leader of the CCF, Tommy Douglas, who was the extremist, in Alberta’s Voice’s view?

The CCF’s foundational platform, the Regina Manifesto of 1933, states Canada must “amend the Constitution to abolish the Senate.”

It gets weirder.

The website also states: “The wording gives voters no concrete problem that Senate abolition would solve.”

Costly institution

Taxpayers can think of about 140 million problems that abolishing the Senate would solve.

The unelected chamber is costing people more than $140 million to run this year and it’s cost more than $1 billion over the last decade.

For the union hall monitors keeping score at home, that would have paid the salaries of about 1,000 nurses for 10 years.

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What about 1,000 union-due-paying teachers instead of the unelected chamber full of party bag men and pastured broadcasters?

So. Awkward.

The Alberta’s Voice website goes on in its defense of its best friend, the Senate, saying there’s “no replacement for the Senate’s role as a national check.”

If we had recall legislation in Ottawa’s House of Commons the way we do in Alberta, people could fire politicians between elections.

What about a free press in Canada, one free from government control and funding? That used to be a pretty good check on power.

In any case, unelected, government-appointed, rubber stamp-wielding senators provide no substantial sobriety or second thought to check our democracy.

Finally, the lefty website states there’s “no realistic constitutional path for getting every province and Parliament to agree.”

The referendum question says Alberta would consult with other provinces. Since when is that extreme? Is Saskatchewan bad for passing a motion with unanimous support to abolish the Senate? What about Quebec? Should Alberta refuse to speak with those provinces about dumping the Senate?

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Now who sounds extreme?

It’s OK to be contrarian. Some of us might have been kicked out of class repeatedly for arguing with teachers for the sheer joy of it. Some of us have turned contrarianism into a profession.

But, one day you might sit down for your breakfast of organic wholegrains, fair trade coffee and orange crush while you gaze up at the portrait of Tommy Douglas that you placed over your table.

And it might dawn on you that your contrarianism has landed you on the side of an Alberta Argument™ that is defending the existence of a wasteful, expensive, undemocratic chamber of quasi aristocrats wielding power in a far away capital city.

And hopefully you will realize that Albertans should vote yes to abolish the Senate.

Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

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