Incredible as it may seem, when I was a lad I didn’t play baseball or chase reluctant maidens. Instead, I sat indoors in an overstuffed chair and dreamed about being a senator. I mean a senator dressed in a toga, a Roman senator. Those old boys made themselves useful. Senators stuck their knives into Julius Caesar and another one, who was good at oratory, preached his eulogy. You’re not likely to find any Canadian senators who are as active today.
I perceive in the Canadian Senate a certain laziness and disinterest in political duties. I find no other fault in them. You take the cases of Mr. Duffy and Ms. Wallin, for instance. The mud-slingers of the press and the opposition parties are out in force, pelting them with all sorts of accusations short of murder. Nonsense. Their only faults are a deficiency in the study of accounting principles and a shaky acquaintance with the atlas of Canada. No rules have been broken. Just show me where the senate rules require members of that august chamber to be accountants and geographers. I’ll bet you can’t find anything.
Another reprehensible thing is happening. People are blaming the leader of my government that is in Ottawa for appointing them in the first place. They even go further. They want to abolish the Senate or, at least, turn it into an elected body. They have no understanding of the time-honoured principle that makes new senators the appointees of the government in power. In order to be sure the right ballots went into the box in the next election, Mr. Harper appointed Mr. Duffy and Ms. Wallin as political sex symbols. Come to think of it, Mr. Duffy still looks kind of cuddly and I suppose at one time Ms. Wallin did, too.
As a loyal Canadian, I have advice for my government that will help it to maintain the powers and prerogatives which it presently holds:
• Don’t pay any attention to First Nation agitators. Their ancestors never had a valid title deed.
• Don’t sit in quiet dignity and let the CBC say nasty things about you.
• Don’t back off on your law and order agenda. I know a lot of people who should be in jail. Building more prisons will stimulate the economy.
• Don’t back off on your treatment of temporary foreign workers. You can make Canadians do the work they are doing. Just stop paying Canadians for not working. Kill all the support programs. Set up the Dominion Potential Employees Assessment Program (DPEAP) to direct non-working Canadians into positions they are physically and mentally able to fill. Pay for the program by an extra tax on employers that presently hire cut-rate TFWs.
• Explain to people that you can’t be bothered with a lot of domestic stuff while you are cooking up trade deals. Explain that we need to get oil and liquefied natural gas to China and India and we can’t let whales, caribou and Indians get in the way. Explain that these increased exports will bring untold wealth to the oligarchs and that they will share some of it with the rest of us.
• Explain how necessary it is for us to follow the American lead in everything military until the Keystone Pipeline is approved.
• Be prepared to accept the advice of outside, non-oligarchic sources of wisdom such as me. I work professionally as the Bureau of Unlimited Resources Program (BURP).
If there is anything more I can do for my government that is in Ottawa, a person in authority has only to ask.
