is canadian senate reform due?

the canadian senate is having some difficulties lately... while senate reform has been tossed around before, we may be seeing the beginning of a serious attempt to do a complete overhaul.
while listening to cbc radio, i heard this idea: randomly selected senate. the idea is basically like how juries get selected, but for choosing senators.
an interesting idea. a heck of a lot better than an elected senate (see america), and would remove partisanship from the "house of sober second thought".
any other ideas about what we should do with our senators?

Juries in Canada aren't randomly selected. The initital jury pool is (excluding anyone under 18, prisoners, ...), after that, the selection process is anything but random. The idea of randomly selecting our leaders is insane though, even if you could.

I like the idea of the USA version, replacing the aristocracy (as represented by the house of lords in britiain) with elected representatives with longer terms to hopefully take a longer view of politics. Unfortunately, party politics is even worse there, if that seems possible, and the few mavericks who break through are never in either house, but rather governers or presidential candidates dismissed as crackpot or even villified such as Nader.

I don't have any hope for senate reform until the old guard party system is no longer entrenched by our first past the post electoral system.

mrzed said:

Juries in Canada aren't randomly selected. The initital jury pool is (excluding anyone under 18, prisoners, ...), after that, the selection process is anything but random. The idea of randomly selecting our leaders is insane though, even if you could.

I like the idea of the USA version, replacing the aristocracy (as represented by the house of lords in britiain) with elected representatives with longer terms to hopefully take a longer view of politics. Unfortunately, party politics is even worse there, if that seems possible, and the few mavericks who break through are never in either house, but rather governers or presidential candidates dismissed as crackpot or even villified such as Nader.

I don't have any hope for senate reform until the old guard party system is no longer entrenched by our first past the post electoral system.

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Agreed: It would be colossally stupid to have your government representatives randomly selected.

The biggest problem with the system in the United States is the 17th Amendment to our constitution. Prior, Senators were selected by the state legislatures and sent to Washington. They were also recalled in the same fashion if they screwed up. The house of Representatives represents the People while the Senators are supposed the represent the Sovereignty of the individual States. If you pay attention to the way The US used to be referred to as opposed to how it is referred to now, you will note a difference: In the past it was "These United States" and now it is "The United States". Since Senators are now elected by popular vote, there is no representation of the interests of the States in Washington.

It is for this reason, Canada should NOT use our model. We are actually following Canada and other socialist countries down a path to complete government control. Bad news for the people.

if those three senators had "misused" funds in the [Private sector they would all be facing CRIMINAL CHARGES... but..POLITICIANS DONT STEAL