Saturday, October 24, 2009

1094...Mindelle Call Me Mindy Makes Sense

Mindelle Jacobs the Sun writer out of Edmonton drops some words into the Friday Ottawa Sun that are so right and shows the absolute hypocrisy of Stephen Harper.

Commenting on the plans of the Tories to increase the number of seats in the House of Commons Ms. Jacobs points out that when Stephen Harper was a Reform Party member he argued for a smaller House of Commons and now, a decade and a half later, he wants more seats, especially out West, a gift for the Tories.

She compares our system to that of the Americans who in 1911 froze the number of seats in the House of Representatives at 435. In perpetuity. Each state gets two seats in the Senate and seven have only one Congressman.

Such a thing, the thing be the fact that, due to population shifts, Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois have lost a lot of seats, in the case of Illinois about a third and in California representation has exploded, couldn't and won't happen here.

It is absurd that PEI, which has less people living in it than my building, has four seats. But, due to an ammendment to the Constitution back in 1915, the rule is a province cannot have fewer seats in the House of Commons than in the Red Chamber.

Of course, Stephen Harper could be true to his Reform roots. A Triple E Senate: Equal, Elected, Effective.

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