So PMS wants to reform the Senate to make it more democratic. Talk about putting your democratic cart before your democratic horse.

How about reforming the institution that actually governs the nation? 22% of the Canadian voters (Green and New Democratic) are shamefully under-represented with their electoral choices holding a mere 9.5% of the seats in the House of Commons.

How about fixing the undemocratic process of appointing committee chairs?

“It is oddly incongruous for Mr. Harper to position himself as a champion of parliamentary reform when in government he has reverted to the same sort of high-handed tactics that he once condemned Liberal governments for using. For example, rather than permit chairs of standing committees to be freely elected by members, something he advocated while in opposition as essential for ‘reining in the powe rof the Prime Minister,’ Mr. Harper undermined the reform by choosing his own candidates for the jobs, candidates whom Conservative MPs then dutifully elected.’”

Or how about putting an end to the politicization of committees and begin allowing independent MPs to sit in them?

But, they’ve kicked me off the committee. Yeah, that, too.

This is a tad more profound than it might appear, since House of Commons committees are intended to be all-party affairs, and one of the only places where MPs from all political backgrounds get together to try and do constructive things. The fact I have been removed – the only MP on one side of the table with a financial and economic background, government experience and cabinet experience (facing two hugely experienced former Liberal cabmins and a very able colleague, plus a Bloc economist and an impressive NDP expert) – hints at the Harper Administration agenda.

This government has actually had a PMO senior staffer in national caucus recently instructing MPs on how to politicize the committees and turn them into instruments of government policy. Tory MPs are instructed to meet before committee meetings to plan strategy to help ministers, and to be assigned questions to ask witnesses. Attendance at these meetings is mandatory, and recorded.

If PMS were truly concerned about our democracy he’d make the undemocratic imbalances in the body that actually governs our nation a priority rather than go looking for them in an institution that has become mostly symbolic. But he’s not, so he won’t and will instead choose to continue the partisan gamesmanship that has supplanted good governance in the realm of conservatism.