Before his Conservative party was elected as government in 2006, Stephen Harper mused about the challenges of working with a then-Liberal dominated Senate.
“I hope that better judgment will prevail and the unelected Senate will play the role that historically it has played, which has been a useful technical role but will not try and interfere with the democratic will of the elected House,” he was reported as saying at the time.
While Liberal senators used their majority during the first years of the Harper government to change pieces of legislation or delay bills, they never killed any bills supported by a majority of the House of Commons. No, the interference with the democratic will of the elected House came from unelected Tory senators last week, who voted to kill the Climate Change Accountability Act, without debate and without even sending the legislation to a committee, a situation with which Harper has expressed no problems.
A majority of Canada’s elected representatives in the House of Commons had voted in favour of climate change legislation, trying to take at least some action to set long range goals to curb carbon emissions. To have it slapped down by a bunch of fat cats appointed to their position through political patronage, something Harper has repeatedly condemned and is now seemingly supportive of, is blatant hypocrisy. The Conservatives have proved that senate reform is only something to which to aspire as and when it suits them – namely, when they’re in opposition.
The bill had required the federal government to set regulations to establish targets to bring greenhouse gas emissions 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to set a long-term target to bring emissions 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. It wouldn’t have tied the government’s hands to real action, but apparently, even to pretend to do something about environmental protection is beyond Harper and the Tories. This government seems content to sit on its hands and do nothing about the most serious threat to our global collective future, but protect their political jobs and the unelected and now Conservative-stacked Senate.
