By Doug Draper
While we in the greater Niagara region and other regions across the continent continue slugging our way through the worst economic times since the ‘Great Depression’ of the 1930s, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in Canada has given us its answer as we enter the New Year.
No more stacking of Canada's Senate, please! Send the political hacks packing, with apologies to pigs of the four-legged variety.
Forget about calling back Parliament to deal with a bonafide economic crisis. Forget about trying to find some way of coalescing with other parties in Parliament and rest of us to forge a plan for a more promising future.
That would show a federal government that has the capacity to bring disparate groups together and can at long last play some kind of a leadership role for all Canadians. It would show a government that is at long last willing to role up its sleeves and show some responsibility on behalf of the millions of people across the country it is entrusted to serve – a government that has some heart for working to ensure that families across the land have some hope for the future.
Instead, we’ve got a Harper government that has said, in so many words, let’s take advantage of the extended Christmas break of Parliament to stack Canada’s useless and un-elected Senate with more politically appointed hacks. And while we are at it, why not take advantage of the same period of time to prorogue Parliament so that the opposition parties cannot ask us any more questions in the legislature until March, rather than the last week in of January when Parliament was otherwise scheduled to resume. Continue reading
