Canadian Senator: Constitution Fails to Restrain Government

Following months of gripping political scandal* surrounding what has been widely reported in the Canadian mainstream media as wildly excessive and inappropriate spending of government funds by Conservative Party Senators Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy, members of the "upper house" debated, this week, a motion seeking the suspension of the three senators in question.

Senator Pamela Wallin wonders, if the Constitution fails to
restrain government in its treatment of politicians, what could it
"do to an ordinary citizen who crosses the government of the day"?

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/ The Canadian Press

In response to the allegations against her, and the motion to suspend, without pay and privileges, herself and two of her colleagues, Senator Pamela Wallin delivered a scathing speech on the floor of the Senate, Wednesday. Wallin claims that both Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and her Senate colleagues' efforts to suspend her are in violation not only of standing Parliamentary rules and procedures, but also the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, an addendum to the Canadian Constitution.

No doubt supporters of opposition parties (Liberals, NDP and Greens), who have, for the past several months, taken every opportunity to criticize the conduct of Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy, will hail Wallin's speech as proof of the incompetence and brazen disrespect for the rule of law of the Harper Government.

Of course, critics of Harper's Conservative government will quote only the lines from Wallin's speech which malign the current Prime Minister and serve their own political agendas; lines like,

"Due process and the rule of law [which Wallin claims are being disregarded by the government, in her case] are all we have to protect us from the tyranny of those with power and from the passion of the mob."

"This process is not in the interests of an independent, functioning and effective Senate – although it is most clearly in the interests of those who want to abolish this chamber." (The Harper government)

I can only imagine that if the shoe were on the other foot - that is, if the senators in question were belonging to the Liberal Party, under the infallible leadership of the young, handsome, and shampoo-savvy Justin Trudeau - critics of today's government would jump to their defense, claiming (as Wallin has), that the expenses were justified, since they were being "activist senators" who were actually attempting to get things done, unlike their Conservative colleagues.

Ultimately, whether or not Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy spent government resources outside the scope permitted by the rules of the Senate is of little importance. The most important remark made by Wallin in her speech to the Senate is this,

"If this chamber can take this extreme action with regard to a sitting senator, imagine what it could do to an ordinary citizen who crosses the government of the day."

The bottom line is that every single member of the unelected Senate, as well as the elected members of the House of Commons, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and opposition leaders Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair, see it as their moral right to steal money and property from you and me in order to pay their salaries; first by instructing  CRA bureaucrats to pen threatening letters demanding a portion of your income and, failing that, by sending armed men to retrieve your property and throw you in a cage, should you resist.

If the "rules" outlined in the Canadian constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is supposed to guarantee the fundamental rights of all people living in Canada, has been powerless to prevent these politicians from forcibly stealing from Canadians, then in what fantasy world could we expect the same politicians to reverently observe the rules that they wrote in respect to the manner in which that stolen property should be disposed of?


*This would be an appropriate place to use a sarcasm font.