Once again Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have demonstrated that their espoused principles are subject to change when ever the principles become inconvenient to adhere to; that promises made by Harper and the Conservatives are worthless in the face of political expediency or advantage.

$2,347.200.00 per year is the minimum cost of Mr. Harper’s patronage senate appointments to party faithful. $2,347.200.00 is merely the direct salary costs and does not reflect any of additional costs or the cost of perks for the 18 new senators.

Watching Mr. Harper and the Conservatives tap dance and try to spin this policy reversal of convenience serves to make it ever clearer that Mr. Harper and the Conservatives are business-as-usual politicians worried only about their own power and re-election.

Watching the bizarrely grotesque behaviours of all the politicians sent to Ottawa in the recent election makes one thing obvious.

That if we want real change in the way parliament behaves it is up to Canadian citizens to find and elect MPs who are not representatives of any political party; MPs who answer to the people they represent and not to an autocrat or political party; MPs who will have to answer or explain their decisions directly to the people they represent.

This may well make for “messier” governance in parliament and take more effort on the part of voters, but our current politicians have made it clear that this is the only way we will get rid of business-as-usual politics and get MPs focused on doing a good job and addressing the real issues facing Canada instead of worrying about their personal ideological agendas, power and re-election.