Conservatives have no credibility in regards to the Senate

Conservatives, especially of the populist Western variety, have argued that democratic reforms are needed in order to 'shed the elitist and corrupt character' of the Canadian Senate.  Since the 1980s there have been two 'elected' Senators nominated to the Senate; Stanley Waters, nominated to the Senate in 1990 and Bert Brown in 2007.  Both of them were nominated from Alberta.  Since then the Tories under Harper since 2006 have completed ignored the idea of promoting an elected Senate in Canada by nominating 38 Conservatives to the Senate in total, including three more today.

In a gift to Layton, Harper decided to nominate defeated House of Commons candidates Larry Smith, Fabian Manning and Josee Verner to the Senate.  The optics of the Conservatives' press release are terrible.  It states that the "government will continue to push for a more democratic, accountable and effective Senate".  To which Layton and the NDP predictably replied that "there's nothing democratic about appointing three people who were rejected by voters three weeks ago."  How does one compute those statements in a way that accepts the Conservative perspective?  Conservatives in the past could rightfully point at the Liberals and correctly argue that they also indulged in such abuses of the Senate, muddying the waters as they did during the 'in-and-out' scandal; they can't make such defenses with the NDP in opposition.

Adam Radwanski over at The Globe and Mail thinks that this issue of nominating failed Senate candidates is potentially a pretty nasty narrative running against the Conservatives out in Western Canada.  Possibly, but I've been cynical about conservatives' vision for the Senate for a while.  In particular I think that they view the Senate as a mechanism for the institutionalization of conservatism in Canadian federal governance; in particular through creating a new veto point for left-wing legislation.  There's certainly a 'western' element to Canadian conservatives' view of the Senate's role as well.  Western conservatives feel that an elected Senate could yield a solid voting block of Senators who can prevent the sort of 'abuses' that Central Canada has 'inflicted' on the West.  The visceral loathing of Pierre Trudeau and his National Energy Policy comes to mind in this regard.

The example of the United States is the best way of analyzing the effects of 'balancing' representation by provinces in the upper house and making it 'effective' and 'equal'.  Small states tend to yield particularist Senators who are easily bought and paid for by capital eager to make a massive 'return' on its 'investments' in political elections.  These Senators thus act as a conservative bloc that denies liberal Democrats the capacity to bring sweeping changes to the country through the legislative process by blocking or watering down bills.  The best tool in the US Senate at the moment is the abuse of the filibuster; forcing all legislation to obtain 60 votes in order to pass a cloture motion has been a godsend for conservatives who feared that the election of Barack Obama would yield another round of sweeping liberal legislation.  Considering the challenges, it's a bit of a miracle that the Obama Administration was able at all to pass any sort of health care reform that didn't act as a buck-naked give away to the private health care industry.