We get some lame commentary and analysis on politics in this country, but sometime it really takes the American press to take things to the limit.
The other day some opinionaut in the Washington Post actually called the Supreme Court of Canada's Senate reference opinion of 2014 (the one that confirmed that the Canadian constitution and the intention of the constitution-makers both require our upper house to be secondary to the elective, representative lower house) "one of the more depressing rulings in its history."
And then -- you cannot make this up -- he goes on to declare Jason Kenney, lately deep in the race to be declared Canada's worst provincial premier ever, a genius of constitutional interpretation for holding a Senate "election" in defiance of the court's wisdom.
This stuff probably has a ready audience in the United States, where few will have heard of Premier Kenney. Americans seem proud of the travesty of democracy that is their powerful, hugely unrepresentative upper house. Their Senate has 50% of its seats elected by 17% of the American electorate -- leading to the defence of slavery, the blocking of health care, workers' rights, social welfare, childcare, and much else, and making the antediluvian Joe Manchin into the median vote (a "moderate," a "centrist") in the current American Senate.
So a ludicrously unrepresentative Canadian Senate being given encouragement to overrule our elective lower house might not worry Americans. But no Canadian outside Jason Kenney's office should take it seriously. We have problems with our House of Commons, but the Senate is not the place to solve them. Kudos to the Supreme Court for reminding us of that.
Image: "The Supremes" by Charles Pachter
