Regarding the Reichstag Fire Option
Following the Auditor-General's report about the Senate's trough feeding, there have been over-excited calls for its utter reform or its total destruction.
Really.
The Senate is a non-problem. In fact it's a distraction from the disgraceful and disgusting attack on Westminster parliamentary democracy perpetrated by the "conservative party of Canada" which is about as radical a government as you can get without reverting to a police state. The fact that this is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta has passed almost unremarked by the Canadian Commentariat who might believe it's a car parts company.
Michael den Tandt appears to advocate the Reichstag Fire option, or perhaps the Guy Fawkes option, which is to destroy the institution entirely.
My response to this is the Glenn Greenwald closely reasoned response which is "Fuck you."
If you have the arrogance to believe you can make over British parliamentary democracy with a single act of destruction then it seems clear to me you have no respect for history or the fragile evolution of government that manages to avoid raw power politics, or feudalism, or totalitarianism, or a police state, or whatever you want to call the simple minded application of a simple minded solution to a complexity that is too painful to bear, which is reality.
Here's Winston Churchill;
Thus we arrive, by our ancient constitutional methods, at practical working arrangements which show that Parliamentary democracy can adapt itself to all situations and can go out in all weathers.
Here's George Orwell:
In power politics there are no crimes because there are no laws.
The Senate is the least of our problems. Fuck you.
