{"id":2380,"date":"2009-08-27T23:48:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-28T03:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2380"},"modified":"2009-08-27T23:48:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T03:48:00","slug":"same-old-same-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2380","title":{"rendered":"Same Old, Same Old"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform &#8211; on their way to the top &#8211; but once they are elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the Government&#8217;s agenda. Nothing ever gets done.&#8221;<\/em><br \/>-Stephen Harper, Speech on Senate Reform before Senate Committee, September 7, 2006<\/p>\n<p>The recipe for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/politics\/harper-looks-to-even-out-the-senate\/article1266017\/\">Senate appointments<\/a> rarely changes, does it?<\/p>\n<p>-Round up some party cronies<\/p>\n<p>-Make sure at least two thirds are men<\/p>\n<p>-Add an <span class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_0\">athlete<\/span> (preferably a hockey player) to deflect attention away from the patronage<\/p>\n<p>-Make the announcement at a time when no one&#8217;s really paying attention<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the Liberals used the same playbook for years. It&#8217;s just, you know, they were always fairly upfront about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform &#8211; on their way to the top &#8211; but once they are elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the Government&#8217;s agenda. Nothing ever gets done.&#8221;-Stephen Harper, Speech on Senate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}