The Editor,
At one time, it was just common sense to abolish the Senate. However, since Canadians now realize that their Senate is redundant, superfluous and a complete embarrassment, politics has replaced common sense, with the Conservatives and Liberals feeding us nonsense. They are spending gobs of money to make us believe that the Senate, in some form, could be viable.
The Senate's only purpose is to give a "sober second look" to work that has already been completed in Parliament. Senators do not have any control over Parliament.
To make the Senate workable, politicians argue, we need to elect senators, and redistribute and add seats to provide a semblance of representation by population.
To do this would probably result in a duplicate Parliament occupying the Red Chamber, requiring even more tax dollars, with no better results or benefits.
No matter how far back we go in the history of the British parliamentary system, our forefathers knew that this duplicity would never work, so they opted for what was believed to be the less obvious; they established the House of Lords (the Senate) and the House of Commons (Parliament).
One of the other points politicians make in their quest to reform the Senate is to give senators a purpose for being; that is, to do something constructive rather than making mischief. Ways to provide this purpose have been suggested, such as having them appoint judges.
But without senatorial influence, Parliament would be in an improved position to efficiently proceed with improvements to the ways that things are done in our national capital.
Cliff E. Van Alstyne, Port Moody
