With no one showing any appetite to reform the Senate, the government should change the pay to reflect the duties
After 17 years in the provincial legislature, including a long stint as the minister of energy, Richard Neufeld is due a gesture of appreciation from the public he served.
It's also understandable that at 64, an age when most Canadians are contemplating retirement, he looks forward to slowing down from the sometimes grueling pace of a cabinet minister.
So for his sake, it's nice to see that he was able to land one of the lucrative and not too taxing seats in the Senate that Prime Minister Stephen Harper handed out as early Christmas presents to 18 more-or-less deserving Canadians.
The two other British Columbians who were similarly blessed have also demonstrated public spirit and are no doubt worthy of some recognition.
Still, their appointment to a part-time job with a salary that would comfortably support the families of two unemployed forestry workers does nothing to elevate the low esteem in which the Senate is held by most Canadians.
Nancy Greene Raine, who became a national hero 40 years ago when she won two skiing gold medals at the Grenoble Olympics says she'll be able to continue with her current positions as chancellor of Thompson Rivers University and director of skiing at Sun Peaks Resort.
Yonah Martin will likely only be known across the country to Canadians who read the agate pages following national elections to see who lost. She was the Conservative candidate for New Westminster-Coquitlam and lost the Oct. 14 election by almost 1,500 votes to the NDP's Dawn Black. Despite her record of local community service, Martin's appointment reeks the most of old-school patronage and at her relatively tender age of 43, she can legally collect her senatorial salary -- currently about $130,000, for another three decades before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.
The political spin around Harper's appointments -- the most in a single day since Confederation -- is that they are somehow less odious that those made by the Liberals because first, he tried without success to make Senate reforms including elections and term limits, and second because the people he appointed are committed to those reforms.
True though these process arguments may be, they don't change the result. The women and men sworn in as Harper appointments will still be senators, part of an institution that exists at great expense but little purpose.
The problem with the Senate is not even that it couldn't be useful, but there is no appetite by any governing party for it to do anything other than rubber stamp the work of the House of Commons.
So the Senate exists primarily as a monument to the failure of Canadians to amend our own constitution, which is the only way it can be reformed or abolished.
What we can do without a constitutional amendment is revise the pay grid to reflect the service being performed.
Rather than a set annual salary, senators could be paid $1,000 a day for the days the Senate actually sits -- which averages around 70 a year.
That would still be enough to attract qualified candidates looking for a cushy part time job on their way to retirement, but not so much as to continue to scandalize taxpayers concerned about getting value for their money.
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