Dead Chamber costs explode 220% - 3 times more than program spending

You never hear from them (except as spam). No one ever cast a ballot in favour of them. And there isn’t a soul in the land who could tell you which one is supposed to represent their part of the country.

Yet we are all obliged to pay $81 million dollars a year to have partisan hacks in the Senate masquerade as legislators on par with elected MPs. Obliged because, unlike New Democrats, a succession of Liberal and Conservative Prime Ministers haven’t had the courage to say “enough.”

Today the NDP’s Peter Stoffer exposed the exploding costs of Canada’s unelected, unaccountable Senators. Anyone who believes in democracy will find the details appalling.

In the past 14 years, the overall costs of government program expenditures has increased only 73 percent and the cost of running the House of Commons has increased even less: 69 percent.

Yet Senators – including those appointed by Stephen Harper racked up $19.5 million in travel and office expenses – 219 percent more than in 1994.

Senators have no constituency offices, they have no case work, and they sat only 61 days last year. Yet Stephen Harper thinks it’s A-Ok for partisan hacks to spend an average of $187,000 each on travel and perks last year.

Stephen Harper used to say “An appointed Senate is a relic of the 19th Century.” But that’s before he gave up any shred of accountability in favour of doing politics just like Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien used to.

The full details of how 105 strangers are spending your money on their lavish lifestyle are here, courtesy of the New Democrats:

091105-Senate-Costs-FY2008-09

Ignatieff hits sour note with Canadians: poll

Less than a week on the job and already Peter Donolo’s supernatural powers are at work.

In response to news that Michael Ignatieff has plummeted to a miserable 15% approval rating among Canadians – 11 points below NDP leader Jack Layton - Donolo’s communications team are scrambling to put together their response.

So far, this may be the best they’ve come up with.

Telegram to Kevin Page: TORIES RUNNING LOW ON DITTO PAPER [STOP]

What if you held an Economic Action Plan and nobody noticed?

That's kinda what the Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has been asking. Seems to him you can't talk about what the stimulus is or isn't achieving, or where it is or isn't going (hear that Gerard Kennedy?) unless you can analyse the raw data.

Realizing that "the secretive Conservative Government" was beginning to appear "the paranoid Conservative Government", Harper finally relented by providing the data Page asked for in the paper format preferred by accountants of 40 years ago.

The New Democrats' finance critic zinged the Cons on their retro-style of transparency in question period today:

Mr. Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have the ability to secretly record another party's caucus meeting. They can get HD copies of the Prime Minister's audition tape on every government website. They have even found a way to turn Mike Duffy into spam.

However when it comes to providing the parliamentary budget office with details of stimulus funding they are still in the Diefenbaker era.

Does the minister realize that providing boxes containing thousands of pages of untreated information without so much as a synopsis, much less a spread sheet, is less than useless?

Even with all the brain tonic the Conservative front bench had consumed, they weren't able to provide much in the way of an answer.

Hubris or narcissism? You decide.

Especially in light of today’s apocalyptic poll results that show Iggy reaching sub-Dion levels of popularity, no one will deny that Liberals really (like, REALLY) need a pick-me up.

But this is just way too much. He’s just a chief of staff, kids. You’d think Liberals hadn’t just churned through four of them in the past year.

Way to manage expectations, gang.

Welcome to the abattoir, Mr. Donolo

It’s fair to say that Peter Donolo arrives to replace Ian Davey as Ignatieff’s Chief of Staff with expectations on him as high as those that were on … well, Ian Davey.

In recent years the Liberal leader’s office has become something of a political abattoir, as senior staff said to hold great promise one day are disposed of with a shrug the next.

So, in walks Donolo at a time when Liberals, tumbling in the polls, plagued by perpetual integral fights, and directionless on policy are openly asking “what happened to Michael Ignatieff?” In their rush to replace Dion, did they actually make matters worse for themselves?

This part of that Macleans story is telling:

"In March 2005, when Ignatieff, not yet a declared candidate for office, addressed the national Liberal convention, he was all potential. He was touted as another Trudeau—a dashing figure of intellectual vigour. He spoke then of liberalism, social justice, national unity and education. The subjects and themes were not far from what he touts now. Perhaps something has been lost."

It reveals more than Liberals intend that for many of them, the moment they set their sights on Ignatieff as a potential leader was his keynote speech to the 2005 Liberal convention.

Sure, just like then-State Senator Barack Obama, Ignatieff appeared to come out of nowhere with a great speech at a convention. Just like Obama, people began to expect great things of him. And just like with Obama, faced with a devastating election defeat, partisans, through their own despair and nostalgia, hoisted that speech to Churchillian heights to leverage the political future of a relative unknown.

Unfortunately, that’s where the comparisons end and Liberals are forced to face the superficiality of their choice.

While both men gave a fine speech, Ignatieff doesn’t have the benefit of 12 years running for elected office. It’s only been in the last three years that he’s had any experience of being challenged on his positions by ordinary people. Instead Ignatieff has the record of a man who, as a fine intellectual, has taken controversial positions on issues like torture and the invasion of Iraq. A man who has shown every appearance of having no interest in running to be Prime Minister of Canada.

So is it any wonder that within days of challenging Harper to a duel, the party Ignatieff heads disintegrated from its own internal turf battles while Jack Layton walked away as the parliamentary power broker on EI and now pension reform?

Michael Ignatieff’s problem is his lack of experience in politics. Yet he allowed himself to be convinced he was ready to be a party leader – a job he never prepared himself for and is proving inept at.

For its part, the Liberal Party’s problem is cohesiveness. With no consistent policy, and factions within factions posturing for advantage, it is a party that makes no sense unless those factions can be silenced, crushed together and held that way by a force more powerful than its parts.

The un-leader and the party that makes no sense. Welcome to it, Mr. Donolo.

UPDATE: Though with a funnier analogy, Paul Wells reaches the same conclusion.

Liberals and Conservatives: Two parties, same problem

How about that. It was only four years ago this month that the inquiry onto the Sponsorship scandal wrapped up its first report. A report that damned the Liberal Party as an institution for its culture of entitlement. For "clear evidence of political involvement" in the sponsorship program. For kickbacks and illegal contributions. For treating public money like their own.

The punch line is that Stephen Harper pledged to be different. He promised to do away with the old politics. But the second he became PM he jettisoned the very principles of accountability that got him there.

Liberals and Conservatives: two parties, same problem ...

Voters giving Layton a closer look

While Iffy has had to fight back challenges to his leadership, the New Democrat leader has been making parliament work ... and Canadians like what they see from Jack Layton.

All that, as depicted by the Sun's Sue Dewar: