SOMETHING startling happened in Ottawa this week while the rest of us were busy not caring about who won the Stanley Cup.
Fifteen Conservative senators broke ranks with their notoriously whipped party and voted to gut a piece of Tory legislation. If passed as-is, the bill would force every union to publicly disclose all of its salaries and expenses.
This would be the same senate currently embroiled in an expense scandal.
Maybe it's because they were feeling the heat from some of their rookie cohorts who have been caught double dipping into hundreds of thousands of dollars and then having the Prime Minister's Office run interference for them. Perhaps the hypocrisy was simply too much for the senators to bear.
But the fact that they did it shows something important: the Senate might possibly have relevance.
As it is right now, the Senate is made up largely of people who carried sufficient amounts of water for the Liberal and Conservative parties in order to deserve a red velvet seat for life, a taxpayer pension that would make Bay Street blush, and access to a loosely guarded public purse.
The argument in favour of abolishing the senate seems to forget the Red Chamber is there to review and improve every bit of legislation our government would pass.
Reform? Sure. Maybe it is time to fill the senate with people who are elected on a proportional representation system. Make the senate more accountable? Absolutely. Abolish it? Maybe not if it continues to show independent thought.
