Senate Reform?????

clipped from www.thechronicleherald.ca Farcical reform Wed. Nov 7 - 4:47 AM TALK is cheap, and especially so when it comes to current plans to reform the much-maligned Senate of Canada. The upper chamber has become the whipping boy for federal politicians. Prime Minister Stephen Harper vows to enact major reforms. A Tory-sponsored bill restricting terms to eight years got bogged down in the Senate; while encouraging provinces to stage Senate elections, with the prime minister making future appointments from the winners, has mostly fallen on deaf ears. Only in Alberta, where calls for Senate reform have been the loudest, have elections been held, producing a list from which Mr. Harper filled a vacancy. Liberals are reluctant to reform a chamber they now control, while New Democrats have just raised the stakes in their crusade to abolish the Senate by calling for a national referendum. "It’s a 19th-century institution that has no place in a modern democracy," Jack Layton told party faithful in Winnipeg on Sunday.