Abolish the Canadian Senate!

It is high time Canada abolished the senate. How someone can be a continual loser in an election yet be awarded a lifetime position of power is beyond me. Stephen Harper has long said he wanted to reform the senate. Yet no change has been made. During these tough economic times I would suggest that abolishing the pointless upper house would save the GoC millions..each year! With 105 members earning approx $135k/yr the savings would be instantaneous. Additionally, this would save from having old hat politics subvert current day political tides. The senate, in effect, has a veto power over bills passed by the house. And since the senate is hand picked by the PM the majority of its members represent the party who has the longest control over parliament. Abolishing the senate would allow for the elected make up of the government to accurately represent its citizens. (Well, it would if we had proportional representation but that is another argument). Now some may argue that the upper house serves a valuable service in that they conduct research for the govt which the lower house does not have time to commit to. And currently this is true, our elected house of commons are lazy sobs (& dobs). But the lower house COULD conduct the same valuable research if it was required to ACTUALLY WORK while in session (and by being in session I mean not being pointlessly prorogued and given ridiculous amounts of vacation time as is currently provided).

 Did you know that MPs and Senators are permitted 21 days of absence from days when their house is in session? Considering how little they actually sit in session it should be nearly impossible for them to miss that many days! YET our lazy p...oliticians are routinely fined for missing greater than 21 days. The imposing fine they face? $250 per days. At $135k per year (low end) each day's pay is $370. And to further mask their attendance MP's have their records voluntarily self reported and are NOT admissible to the public record, Canadians will never know how little their elected MP actually shows up