Keep Checks and Balances in Place

June 11, 2007 Brian Marlatt (The Hill Times):

The Senate is a philosophically-conservative institution intended to provide a check on the excesses of partisan elected politicians in the Commons, meaning particularly in the 21st century the Prime Minister and Cabinet. But that is lost on a government which sees as its ideal the executive power of a president and an Upper Chamber designed to jealously pursue the divisive parochial interests of state or provincial “rights”; indeed, “Canada’s New Government” patterns itself after 1776 not 1867. Brian Marlatt

Harper clearly has more than one purpose for his parliamentary agenda. In particular he has used every opportunity to present arguments against the senate which have been entirely too facile to be meaningful, yet entirely too simple and therefore effective with the masses.

You can imagine the election advertisements already… carrying on with the theme of “entitlement” from the last election.