That's my message to Calgary Grit and all the Liberals out there who accuse Harper of breaking his campaign promise. Sorry guys, but in the last three years Liberals have done all they could to block the Senate reform. Heck, some Quebec Liberals even went as far as threatening legal action against the government if there would be no other way to stop bill C-20. So quit blaming Harper. It's not his fault that we still can't have a general election to fill those 18 vacant Senate seats. The only thing he can do now is to make an agreement with the soon to be appointed Senators that would require them to resign and contest an election as soon as the Senate election bill passes.
And by the way - since when are Liberals against filling Senate seats by appointment? Where were they when a Liberal Prime Minister (Paul Martin) chose to ignore the Alberta Senate nominee election, appointing unelected Liberals and Liberal-leaning PCs instead? Then, when Stephen Harper chose to stop appointing unelected Senators, wasn't it a Liberal caucus in the Senate which wanted to force new Senate appointments either through a private member bill (S-224) or through a direct appeal to the Governor General? They wanted appointed Senators - they got them! So what's the problem then?
The problem is that some Liberals apparently see themselves already in power. So it frustrates them that a man whom they regard as merely an interim Prime Minister is giving away what they regard as "rightfully theirs". Senate appointments were part of the coalition deal. If those vacancies are gone - Liberals could no longer offer 6 Senate seats to Jacques Parizeau and his separatist friends, let alone giving a 20-year sinecure to Elizabeth May. That's what upsets them so much.
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