[redhatmamma]

What was Harper supposed to do in the face of the Liberals not supporting elected Senators - leave all the spots empty until the Liberals get back in so they can stack it !!

The Liberal Senate killed lots of stuff, they have no cause to complain.

[herbie]

andyt wrote:

Unsound wrote:

2 senators per province and territory. 10 year terms, only 1 term. no parties for senators.

Would these be voted in by popular vote province wide? In BC, that would mean Metro Vancouver would be electing the Senators, while the rest of the province's votes would be more or less irrelevant. Since Metro Vancouver and Victoria are more lefty/liberal, while the rest of the province are a bunch of rednecks, it would make for some very unhappy people.

GOOD.

Fucking rednecks around here think they'll get more grant money and extended EI if they vote Tory.

[Lemmy]

redhatmamma wrote:

The Liberal Senate killed lots of stuff.

Name one.

[Freakinoldguy]

Apparently the Liberals have only themselves to blame for the lack of debate on the bill.

Quote:

In a vote of 43 to 32, the Senate killed Bill C-311, a private member's bill introduced by NDP MP Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay-Superior North, Ont.).

Conservative Senators Bert Brown (Alberta) and Pamela Wallin (Saskatchewan) both told The Hill Times last week that while the Liberals and opposition MPs in the House are criticizing the Conservative Senators for the bill's defeat, it was Sen. Mitchell's own procedural mistake that led to the vote.

When the bill was called for debate on Nov. 16, Sen. Mitchell, the bill's sponsor in the Upper Chamber, said, "I do not want it to stand."

Sen. Brown and Sen. Wallin explained that once Sen. Mitchell said that, he forced a vote on the bill as there was no one there to debate the bill.

"His own leadership looked at him, our guy, Gerry Comeau, said, 'Maybe he made a mistake, because he's not the new guy on the block,' so our guy gave him another chance, and he stood up again and said, 'I won't let this stand,'" Sen. Wallin said last week.

According to Senate rules, when a bill is called, it must be dealt with in the form of debate or a vote. If a Senator calls for a bill to "stand" on the Order Paper, it simply is passed over until the next sitting day, and the next order of business is dealt with. It remains on the Order Paper and at the next sitting day, the same procedure can occur if no Senators are prepared to speak to the bill. According to the Senate Hansard, Sen. Mitchell said, "I do not want it to stand," which means that the bill had to be dealt with.

According to Hansard, Senate Speaker Noel Kinsella then asked, "If debate has concluded on this item, are honourable Senators ready for the question?" which led to a vote at second reading.

But Sen. Mitchell said that the purpose of him saying he didn't want the bill "to stand" was to force someone from the Conservative side to speak on the bill because it had already been in the Senate for 193 days without any movement.




"The implications of that, from my point of view, was they could say, 'Okay, we'll get someone to speak.' I was pushing for someone by doing that to get someone to speak to it. It's been 193 days. The temperature of the planet has gone up since I submitted that bill. That's how long it's been," Sen. Mitchell told The Hill Times. "They won't talk about it. I've asked before, and I've asked people who were supposed to be the ones who would talk about it, and they would say, 'Yeah, but I'm not allowed to.' I'd go back to the House and talk to Marjory [LeBreton], the [government] leader [in the Senate], and ask, 'Why don't you let someone speak?' And she said anyone can speak if they want. So I'm getting two different messages. The real threat is that it would never have been voted on. And I began to think that that's what they wanted to."




Procedurally, Sen. Mitchell said, if the government was not ready to speak to the bill, or if the government did not want to defeat the bill, it could have simply called for a vote on adjournment of debate rather than a vote at second reading.




Sen. Brown told The Hill Times last week that part of the mistake was that Sen. Mitchell did not ask for the bill to go to a committee.

For the whole article see:

http://www.thehilltimes.ca/page/view/le ... 11-29-2010

Once again the giant clusterfuck that is the Liberal Party has been the cause of it's own demise and all the caterwalling in the world isn't going to change that one bit.

Maybe it's time that the left gave the NDP a real chance since it's quite apparent that the Liberal Party is on a every quickening downward spiral, with no leader, no policy, no Senators and basically no hope of ever being elected again until they actually stop thinking it's still 1968 and fix those things.

[Scape]

Quote:

Mr. Godin, whose New Democratic Party has been calling for Senate abolition for many years, said it is doing so "more than ever now... because this is not democracy anymore."

There has been not one but 2 separate prorogues killing off several bills on the floor that have to be then resubmitted. How much more stalling is the Tories allowed to get away with? If they run on a platform of law and order then by the &^*% put their money where there mouth is and pass it!

Quote:

But Sen. Mitchell said that the purpose of him saying he didn't want the bill "to stand" was to force someone from the Conservative side to speak on the bill because it had already been in the Senate for 193 days without any movement.

In other words: SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT!

[Khar]

The following is peripherally related to Lemmy's post, if possibly not directly (I explain why I say this later on):

Goods and Services bill. 1989. Blocked by a liberal-dominated senate. When Mulroney added senators on to break that block, the opposition parties enacted a filibuster to stop it from going through. This was a well publicized event, and would serve as an example of stuff getting killed in the senate, even when they held a majority. Eventually this bill was pushed through but not before it was killed.

Likewise, the NDP and Liberals waited once in a late night session to invoke closure so that some Conservatives and Bloc senators had left to get C-43, an abortion bill, finished in the upper house so as to avoid further debate on the topic.

NAFTA was delayed in our senate by the Liberals, which lead in part to the 1988 elections to resolve that issue. Upon the finishing of the election with Mulroney elected, the bill is enacted swiftly.

Bill C-55 and bill C-84, both immigration bills (one of which would be passed 20 years later under the Liberal Party), passed by the Conservative-controlled house, were blocked by the Liberal-controlled senate.

Keep in mind that these are bills which were actively tied up, and not "killed" for the most part. An apt way to describe it was as the video said in the first post -- a bill in the senate has never been killed without debate, not for 80 years anyways. I'm worried that the term "killed" is going to be a focus between people who are more technical in their use and those who mean that it's forcefully slowed or delayed.

In other cases, the Senate can simply not adopt a bill before the end of session, effectively shutting them down without having to actually shut them down. I worry this will become more semantics than not, but it certainly is not the first time that a bill has been tied up or used as a bludgeon against the opposition. Scape has pointed out how much of a problem it has been in recent years, and it's most definitely been a problem in the senate through successive waves of governments from both Liberal and Conservative parties.

From 1985 to 1996, we saw 13 bills defeated, tied up, or delayed specifically by the senate, with none in the forty years previous. A count of bills which were forgotten is not a tally. In a way, the article bringing that up is kind of funny, since that has been a problem for a very long time -- we don't know if it's gotten any better or worse because there's no real easy-to-find stats on that, and I'd be interested to know.

Personally, I'm not happy with this situation. I'm all for senate reform at the very least. This is a long running problem. Have the Liberal senators been shit disturbers in the past? Sure, there's been a few shouting matches which managed national television and a few breaches of protocol from both sides before. Conservatives have tied up or "killed" bills in the same way before as well, including one which would have updated the Toronto Pearson airport. It certainly doesn't make it right, and the Liberals and Conservatives should both remember their history a bit more if they want to make a cogent case here.

Will either side admit these problems? No. To get this to change, the Liberals would have to admit they've used the senate as a tool before, as would the Conservatives, both sides with various backing by the NDP and the Bloq. Working towards a solution means fingers on pens, not pointing at other senators whilst spouting flowery oratory.

This particular event is definitely an issue and is unique in what happened here. I'm a bit confused as to what is going on, so I'm giving it a few more days before I get a really solid opinion for all the first reactions to pitter away a bit. At the same time, it's part of an overlying issue which transcends party lines -- neither of our major party has made a significant change to the senate towards reforming it, and with the Bloq backing the status quo (as far as I am aware, please correct me here!) I don't expecting to see an actual shift in the senate anytime soon.

Just my quick thoughts, I admit to not knowing much and being concerned that this might be a nomenclature problem Lemmy is trying to point out, rather than what I may have actually responded to (I might have made an incorrect inference).

... what the hell, when did I get a medal?