Harper will soon have a chance to clean up the Senate will he take it ?

Moose Jaw - I know times may be getting tough soon and it may be hard to find work, but there is an easy, low stress job out there that pays six figures - a handsome salary where most people in the business live well into their 70s.
The job? A Canadian senator.
I was taking a look recently at the list of current trough sniffers who have bellied up to the Senate's red velveted bar and discovered that most Canadian senators make it to retirement age.
Any senator appointed since 1965 has to retire at the age of 75. While a few have taken the resignation or the dirt nap as options for exiting the "house of sober second thought," the majority have made it to 75. In total, of the 188 senators appointed since 1965 that are no longer there, 106 made it to 75, while 43 resigned and just 39 died in office.
Now, many senators were seniors when they were appointed but even then, it appears life in the Senate didn't do much to shave years off their lives.
Heck, with no need for re-election campaigning and no requirements to attend committee meetings or even Senate sessions, it's about as stress-free as life can be for a politician.
So some like new Senator Patrick Brazeau should be able to expect more than 40 years of blissful senate relaxation until his retirement in 2049.
However, current Prime Minister Stephen Harper still wants to shake things up in the Senate and ensure its not really that blissful.
Personally, if we're going to keep the Senate, then I hope it does get some updating. Elections are a nice start but there also needs to be more accountability including requirements to attend 90 per cent of sittings and to belong to committees to ensure each members is actually being productive.
While the elections that Harper has touted are the right thing to do to make the Senate more responsible to Canadians, there is an opportunity that will soon present itself to the prime minister to put politics over the people. The question is, will he take it.
Harper swore up and down that he wanted senators to be elected, and then appointed 18 to the Senate two months ago.
In the next 11 months, 13 senators will retire because they have reached the magic age of 75. Of those 13, nine are Liberals, two are Independents, one is a Progressive Conservative and one is a Conservative.
Currently, there are 59 Liberals, 38 Conservatives and eight others of a variety of political stripes. If Harper were to replace all 13 of the retirees with Conservative partisans, he would suddenly find himself on the cusp of control of the Senate. Those appointments would give him 50 Conservatives, to go with 50 Liberals and five others.
This may be a very tempting opportunity for him to make it easier to push through various items.
So, the question is, will Harper choose to revolutionize the Senate, politics be damned, or will he allow it to continue to be the lifespan-lengthening monument to irrelevance it has been for a long time?

Jason Small can be reached at 691-1255.