L. Ian MacDonald fleshes out Hugh Segal's strategy to use a referendum on abolishing the Senate as an excuse to impose the Cons' preferred U.S.-style chamber. In short, the goal is to have a majority vote for keeping the Senate, such as to confer "legitimacy" which is currently lacking, then claim that legitimacy as reason to reform the chamber.
Now, I'm far from convinced that the vote would be to keep the Senate in any event. But even if that part of Segal's plan worked, there's still another serious question about the whole scheme: if the Senate is "legitimized" through a national referendum - particularly one where the referendum question doesn't actually include any mention of reforms - wouldn't that confer a similar amount of legitimacy on the current Lib Senate majority to stonewall against any attempts to reshape the chamber?
No comments:
Post a Comment