Time to Put Apples in Their Mouths?

   The pigfest probes into the Canadian Senate, the grandest of Ottawa’s many swineries, have created storms of reporting and comment, but two critical questions remain.

   First, ask yourself what the Senate has done to improve your life, and the lives of your fellow Canadians. If you find that the Senate did do something to improve your life, was it worth the estimated $100 million a year it costs to operate this chamber of “somber second thought”?

   If you conclude that the Senate simply is another costly and useless layer of bureaucracy (sort of like Ontario’s super bureaucratic Local Health Integration Networks), then the next question is: How long will it take to chase it from our lives?

   The Harper government has sent the question of Senate reform, which might include abolishment, to the Supreme Court of Canada to ponder. Some members of the politico-bureaucracy say the Senate cannot be abolished, presumably because of the Constitution.

   This is both disturbing and amusing. Why would we leave the question of the Senate to nine lawyers and the bureaucrats?
   In a democracy the people are supposed to decide what they want and what they don’t want. And roughly 24 million minds are better than nine. Put the Senate to a vote of the people. That’s the way it should be done.

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SPECIAL NOTE

Oz and the boys at Golden Gate

Sometime in the next week or two this blog will be turned over to Ozzie, my rockstar granddog who lives in California. Ozzie, me, my daughter and two grandsons will be travelling from California to Shaman's Rock in an RV. I'll be helping with the driving, and Ozzie will be doing the writing. He has a different take on many things. So watch for it as On Shaman's Rock makes room for The Ozzie Dog's Blog. It promises to be a howl.