08 January 2009

The Final Nail?

This just disheartens me so tremendously:

Facing an emboldened opposition and the possibility of defeat, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making a significant switch in tactics, dropping his reliance on confidence votes and moving even further toward stacking the Senate with Tories.

A top aide said yesterday that Mr. Harper will no longer threaten elections to force opposition compliance on secondary policy matters.

He is also planning to fill Senate seats as they become vacant and will not stop until next January when his Tories will finally have the majority in the upper chamber, according to two senior government officials.


The middle part is good, but it is sandwiched by the news that Harper has forged ahead with the politics-over-principles agenda regarding the Senate. There's a part of me that would like to believe that he's doing this only to get the necessary numbers in order to actually reform it in 2010 or some year thereafter. That in itself would be acceptable. But would counters that is the seeming knowledge that you just know he's going to be filling those vacancies with cronies and decades-long contributors and supporters of the party and its predecessors. And that irks me to no end.

Tomorrow's going to be a very interesting day indeed . . .

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