Jul. 14, 2010 - Issue #769: Musician’s Survival Guide
Vuepoint
Flying to oblivion
The legitimacy and effectiveness of Canada's Senate is always up for debate. But every so often this non-elected body can prove to be useful, if not expressly helpful to opposition parties in making points of principle and stopping particularly egregious policy, especially when budgets are at stake.
This past week, the Senate met to pass the budget—a controversial budget which had already undergone contentious debate with attempts to remove sections regarding the privatization of Atomic Energy of Canada, privatization of Canada Post's international operations and drastic restructuring of environmental assessments. According to Liberal senators, these provisions did not exist in the original budget bill, but were put in the 900-page document to pass through the Senate unannounced to Canadians.
Through contentious and lengthy debate on each of these issues, which remained in the budget, it might be expected that the passing of the budget itself could be used as a final attempt to defeat these issues. That significance and opportunity was not lost on Senators who had every obstacle thrown in front of them to prevent their attending, from back problems to brain surgery. Well, except for seven Liberal senators who found the complications of airline travel too much to arrange a flight to attend the vote. The bill passed 48-44, and with five Conservative senators missing, the participation of the absent Liberals would have made the difference.
The defeat of this budget at the Senate level would not only have been crippling to the Conservatives, it would have led quite quickly to an election— something the Liberals, as they depart on their cross-Canada road trip, are not ready for. But, when the election does eventually come around, this same party will make claims, as every opposition party does, that they have done everything in their power to take this Conservative government to task on the issues that Canadians care about. Let's hope when these claims are made, as we cast our vote, we all remember who couldn't change their flight plans to cast theirs. V
More stories in front »
vueweekly.com comments: powered by DisqusPrivacy Policy:
Vue respects your privacy. We will not forward your personal information to any other organization except as required by law, and will use your e-mail address only to respond to your comments. We reserve the right to edit and remove comments for length, clarity and/or if they are illegal or inappropriate. Your email address is never shown to visitors to vueweekly.com. Read the whole policy at: http://vueweekly.com/privacy
Comments policy
Comments go online directly without first being seen or reviewed by editors at Vue. Don't personally attack people, don't be defamatory, don't be spam-atory, don't hawk your band, don't pretend to be someone else, be clear, be on topic, be nice. Read our extended comments policy here. »
We use Disqus for our comments system. What's that all about?
We found that managing the comment community at Vue was easier to do with a system like Disqus. If this isn't straightforward to you, get help here.