The Senate
I'm not going to argue that Stephen Harper didn't have the legal right to appoint his eighteen senators. He pretty clearly does have that right.
But what he doesn't have is a moral right to make the appointments. He's still prime minister only because he suddenly prorogued parliament in order to avoid a no-confidence vote (only a few weeks after an election result that he claimed would bring about a kinder, gentler, more cooperative government -- we all saw how well that worked out, didn't we?). He doesn't have the confidence of the house, and, since he holds power only as long as he has the house's confidence, his continued use of that power is morally suspect at best (no, Canadian voters, you did not vote for Stephen Harper directly. You only get to vote for an MP. That's parliamentary democracy for you.).
This is also the guy who has long argued that senate positions should be elected and "accountable". It's nice to see that he stands by his principles when push comes to shove -- as soon as it starts to look like he might lose power, he packs the Senate.
Now, again, he's well within his legal rights to pack the Senate. And he's not the first prime minister to do so when anticipating a loss of power (though that would usually mean an electoral defeat). But it's just morally skeevy for him to do so. And you'll notice he's doing it a few days before Christmas, hoping no one will notice. Or at least that we'll forget in January, when we're too busy paying our credit card bills to remember what our Right Honourable Prime Minister was up to over the holidays.
And while I'm at it, can I just point out that out of eighteen people, he was only able to come up with five women? What percentage of the population are we again?
