Charlottetown Bob spewing Nonsense Again

It amazes me just how often Bob Rae favorably references the Charlottetown Accord. Senate Reform: well, Charlottetown Reform dealt with it and John Turner and I supported it. Native Self government: the Charlottetown dealt with that too. (Just an aside, whenever Bob Rae speaks about Native issues he turns off his brain and lets his heart bleed. Saturday was fine example of such a blood letting.)

The reason I find it surprising is that Charlottetown Accord was rejected by the Canadian people, was hugely unpopular in the western most provinces, it ruined the Progressive Conservative party, and, above all else, it was breathtaking in its stupidity. The document would have enshrined some of the very worst ideas in Canadian politics into law. One such idea, senate reform, I have spoken about before. http://themaplethree.blogspot.com/2012/01/fantastically-stupid-idea-of-senate.html What I have not mentioned before is some of the clauses dealing with Native Self government and Native rights.

Perhaps the most outrageous clause also concerned the senate. According to section 9 a number of Senate seats be set aside for Aboriginals. Aboriginal Senate seats would have been additional to provincial and territorial seats and not drawn from any province or territory's allocation of Senate seats. Implicit was the notion that -- as in New Zealand -- only aboriginal peoples would be able to vote for those standing for aboriginal Senate seats. In other words, aboriginal peoples would be able to vote for senators standing for election in the province or territory in which they lived and they would be able to vote for aboriginal senators standing for aboriginal senate seats. This would have meant that aboriginal Canadians living in one of the Territories, for example, would have at least three times as many Senate votes as their non aboriginal territorial brethren!