In light of the plight that some of the senators (Duffy, Wallin and Parazeau et al.) find themselves in, more and more information is coming to light regarding the Senate per se.
This is very evident when Marjory Le Breton, the government Senate leader, makes the following statement: “The Senate should be abolished if it can’t be reformed.” Marjory LeBreton made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows recently to highlight a package of proposed changes to Senate rules on expense claims. She conceded, “The public do not see the Senate as a legitimate institution” and went on to say, “We have got to fix this, once and for all.” She further stated that “otherwise ... the Senate as an institution, cannot survive.” Wow! What a brilliant statement! She’s a master of the obvious! Is this the kind of work that Senators are paid to do? She was further quoted as saying “that the abolition of the Senate was one of the possibilities that the government has asked the Supreme Court of Canada to rule on.” I don’t recall any press releases made by the government to the effect that the Supreme Court be asked to rule on Senate abolition, do you?
The whole scenario would seem to be one of subterfuge at this point. All involved vow to find the truth. Some seem to play the ostrich game with heads in the sand. I would ask, how do you find something if you’re not making a conscientious effort to look for it? I suspect that nobody wants to really delve into things as they are afraid of what they might discover. The RCMP have entered the picture. What they will find, or will not find is anyone’s guess. The scenario could be as follows. They could find and report no wrong doing found or they might find a few minor issues requiring a judicial hand slap. Who knows? What the time frame here might be, is anybody’s guess.
As seems to be the custom, the wheels of government and justice turn very slowly and sometime not at all. Having said that, I suggest that you put pen to paper and bombard, yes bombard your MPs and any Senate member that you know with letters asking for definitive answers to the issues at hand. Complacency here will indicate that all’s well in the government kitchen. We know that it really ain’t so, don’t we?
In the words of Margaret Mead “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Ron Barillaro
Penticton