Ask
me! Ask me! I’ll be glad to go to the Senate
by
Robert LaFrance
There was a rather amusing radio
show on Sunday evening, quite hilarious really. The gist of it was that ‘The
Senate Scandals’ have made several people turn down (or say they would turn
down) a Senate appointment.
Excuse me?
If Stephen Harper phoned me – even
if he interrupted a playoff game between the New York Yankees and Montreal
Canadiens – and asked if I would PLEASE take a seat in the Senate, before he
uttered the second ‘e’ in the word Senate, I would have my toothbrush and the
rest of my keister packed and have the Toyota pointing north and west toward
Ottawa.
I guess it shows that not only do
many Senators and others – of the non-hockey playing variety – live in a
different world than we do, but it also shows that so far most Senate
appointments have been reserved for rich people. Who among us could afford to
turn down a basic salary of $138,700 a year plus free haircuts? They get Via
Rail passes, comfortable red chairs, and
expenses for everything but toilet paper. Even without doing a Duffy-Pam I
would be able to live quite comfortably and would only falsify the bare minimum
of expense claims.
“But Bob, do they have lemonade in
Ottawa?” asked Flug, who had been reading over my shoulder as he sipped on one
of my lemonades. “Would you like to live in a place where they have only
champagne and caviar? Remember I was a barber on Parliament Hill, so I know
that lemonade is not easily available.”
“Flug,” I said, “If my income were
$175,000 a year including (mostly legitimate) expenses, don’t you think I could
find a way to get the odd two-four of lemonade from New Brunswick to Ottawa?”
My mention of our province’s name
brought to mind another minor hitch. “But what if my most admired and musically
talented friend Stephen Harper needed a Senator from Manitoba and not New
Brunswick?”
“Remember that time you and those
Victoria County vagrants drove out west looking for work?” asked Flug.
“Remember? You passed through Manitoba did you not? Bingo and eureka! You are
the new Senator from Manitoba. If Mike Duffy, who didn’t know where the
Confederation Bridge was located, can be a Senator from PEI, you can be one
from Manitoba.”
Who could argue with that kind of
logic? Well, everybody could, but still it might fly for a while, until I can
buy a trailer in Gimli or Brandon. It would be a lot easier though, if Prime
Minister Harper, my friend and possible benefactor whom I greatly admire,
needed a (non-separatist) Senator from Quebec province. If you have recently
looked in the Quebec City phone book, you would have seen nine pages of
LaFrances and three pages of either ‘R. LaFrance’ or ‘Robert LaFrance’. Who’s
to say I’m not one of those and therefore a resident of Quebec province?
But will the Prime Minister (my
friend, etc.) ever call me to take my place in the Red Chamber of Sober Second
Thought? I can assure you, the reader, and all those fine people who work in
the Prime Minster’s Office that, far from turning down the invitation, I would
embrace, cherish, treasure, relish and revere it as if the invitation were
coming from the Queen herself, which of course it technically would be.
I think he will call. As my family
can tell you, were you to call them, I am as optimistic a person as you are
ever likely to meet. Cheerful as can be 99% of the time, I walk around with a
confident smile on my face (where else?) as I look forward to the next page of
good news that will come my way. “Always look at the bright side of things,” I
tell people. “I know I do. That’s why I expect to check my email or answer my
phone one of these days and find a communication from my pal the Prime Minister
himself who is asking if I can clear my calendar for next week to take a trip
to Ottawa to be sworn in. Hmmm. Sworn in at Ottawa…sworn at in New Brunswick.
Which would you choose?
I just had a thought, yes another
one. What if the Prime Minister chose to offer the Senate’s next vacant red
chair to someone who really deserves it, like Mike Duffy’s wife or Rob Ford’s
wife?
No, it’s okay. Prime Minister
Harper’s record on giving Senate seats to those who deserve it is – shall we
say? – spotty at best. I still think I’m in the running. Who would deserve it
less than I?
-end-
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