On dropped priorities

In case there was any doubt that Stephen Harper has officially abandoned any commitment to making the Senate anything other than a patronage factory, his party's spin in the wake of his latest set of appointments should put the matter to rest.

Yes, at least one Con is trying to pretend that some kind of change is still on the table, if only by claiming that his party's past lack of past action should be taken as evidence of good faith in the future:

Tory senators had a majority in the Senate before the election call and made no effort to pass a bill in front of them that set out a process for the election of senators.

Now with a 10-member Senate majority, (Tim) Uppal suggested his government could be trusted to pass its reform bills — one which sets senators' term limits to eight years and another that deals with election of senators — before the end of its mandate in 4 1/2 years.

Uppal would not commit to passing the two Senate reform bills before then, saying it was not at the top of the government's agenda and the Tories' budget and crime bills would come first.

But even Uppal's position is based entirely on the view that doing anything to change the Senate is at most a minor priority which can be delayed indefinitely. (And no, a focus on two bills which the Cons have promised to pass within 100 days doesn't offer the slightest excuse for delaying other legislation for over four years.)

But then, a spokesman from the top makes it absolutely clear that Harper sees constant partisan appointments as the status quo:

Harper spokesman Andrew MacDougall said that as long as the legislation wasn't changed, if Manning or any other senator resigned again to run as an MP in a federal election and was defeated again, he might still be re-appointed.

"I can't predict the future. It depends on whether the other Senate bill has been passed. If it hasn't, the law of the land is still the land of the land. And I'm not going to guess what the prime minister would or wouldn't do in that scenario," MacDougall said.

Remember that with majorities in both houses of Parliament, the Cons face exactly zero barriers to changing the legislation surrounding the Senate. Which means that if a bill hasn't passed, it will be the result of the Cons' choice not to bother.

Yet a PMO spokesman is openly musing about continuing to have the option of handing out seats to rejected candidates after the 2015 election. And as long as they're delaying any legislation, they're also showing no shame whatsoever about continuing to dole out seats on a purely partisan basis - cementing an anti-democratic majority to prevent any future government from enacting policies that reflect the will of voters - as 25 current Senators reach their retirement dates in the meantime.

All of which looks to firmly establish that Harper's new plan for the Senate is to use it to further entrench his own power, past promises and democratic principles be damned. Which means that rather than giving him a pass for even a second, anybody who actually believes that its a problem for unelected nonrepresentatives to wield veto power over Canada's government should be starting to work now on ensuring Harper gets removed from office in 2015.