The NDP has stood for the abolition of the Canadian Senate for 50 years says Leader Thomas Mulcair, who told the Times Colonist “there’s an alignment of the stars right now” to push it further.
Mulcair is on a two-day swing through B.C. including Victoria on Friday to promote the NDP’s Roll Up the Red Carpet campaign, which has attracted 21,000 signatures online.
“It’s an occasion to concentrate people’s minds on an institution that we consider singularly undemocratic,” Mulcair said while waiting for a float plane to the Island from Vancouver. “And I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that we’re fed up with having unelected people being able to reverse the laws.”
There’s a unique opportunity given months of financial scandal involving Conservative senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin and Liberal Mac Harb, capped by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament — interpreted by opponents as a tidy way to avoid questions.
This November, the Supreme Court of Canada will begin hearings to decide how far Senate reform can go. The federal government is asking the court for direction on it can make changes to the Senate.
“It was also an attempt by Stephen Harper to show some form of movement,” Mulcair contended, given that Harper had a bill before the House of Commons to reform the Senate but failed to call “a single hour” of debate in the past two years.
One of six B.C. senators, Yonah Martin is a “particularly galling” Senate appointment, he said, given she was a defeated New Westminster Conservative candidate in 2008 whose campaign got into trouble with Elections Canada for exceeding spending limits. Martin was nevertheless among 18 senators appointed on a single day by Harper in 2009 even though the PM “swore up and down that he would never name an appointed senator,” Mulcair said.
Instead, he named 59, Mulcair said, and broke former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s record. “It shows a total lack of respect for our democratic institutions to keep going the way he has been going.”
Showing that it’s never too early to stump for the next federal election, Mulcair said “we want Canadians to be really clear that we’re seeking a mandate to get rid of the unelected, unaccountable and under indictment Senate.”
Forty percent of Canadians did not vote in the last federal election, including two out of three people 25 and under. He’s hoping the Senate issue will resonate with them. “This would be a good way to concentrate people on the fact that we actually want to make the House of Commons the one place that we’re going to make laws in our country and have the best possible people in there.”
Mulcair travelled cross Canada this week and will speak Friday in Victoria at 12:15 p.m. at 812 Wharf St.
