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If Harper can fix the Senate he's a constitutional magician By Link Byfield web posted November 12, 2007 It's odd how the issue of reforming the Senate keeps coming back. But not surprising. Canadian SenateThe Senate is the great Unfinished Business of Confederation. It should have been settled 140 years ago. Now it looks like Stephen Harper's Conservatives are angling to fight a national election on it. Unfortunately, the politics have become truly Byzantine. Everything about the Canadian Senate is paradoxical and deceptive. Conservative Senator Hugh Segal says he has the blessing of the Prime Minister to introduce a motion...

Now and again Canadians get a tantalizing glimpse of the sort of radical innovator Prime Minister Stephen Harper might be if he were operating with a majority, instead of the half-mandate he was handed at the last election. One such glimpse came last week, when Harper appeared before a Senate committee and pretty much told Senator Jim Munson to "bite me" when Jean Chretien's former media flack complained that the PM wanted to make reform of Parliament's upper chamber an issue in the next election. "There are critics who believe that you would like nothing better than to fight an...

Prime minister announces new senators; one is snubbed by NDP 1 hour, 11 minutes ago ALEXANDER PANETTA OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin announced nine new senators Thursday, but his attempt to appoint the first ever New Democrat was swiftly rebuffed by the NDP. Martin's unusual step of nominating three opposition members only caused confusion as the party affiliation of each was immediately called into question. The NDP refused to allow a Saskatchewan appointee to sit in its caucus and two other appointees rejected the new Conservative party, choosing to sit as Progressive Conservatives. The partisan kerfuffle threatened to...