The Canadian political scene is undergoing changes in party leaderships. In November the governing Liberal Party will elect a new leader. Within the past few months the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservative Party elected new leaders. The Alliance Party of Canada chose a new leader a little over a year ago.

Four new party leaders will face off in a General Election widely expected to be called shortly into next year, 2004. It should be an exciting time to be a Canadian, a time of new beginnings, an opportunity to cast off outmoded concepts of what Canada has been, a nation based on democracy, where the franchise is the instrument of change, where all are free to choose their representatives, and, if that is their wish, to change those representatives in General Elections.

Why then is there such lack of interest on the part of the public? The reasons are many, but there is one fundamental cause. Canada is not a true democracy. How can it be when Canadians are free to elect one House of Parliament but not free to elect the second House?

The Commons and the Senate are two components in the institution of Parliament. The third component is the Monarchy. Canadians are not free to elect their Senators, and not free to elect their Head of State. The Monarch is hereditary, the Senate is appointed.

Canadians have no say in deciding who will become Senators, who will become Monarch. Do they want to elect their Senators? Do they want to choose their Head of State?

Canadians have never been given the opportunity to say what they want. Is it too much to ask that they be given that opportunity in tandem with casting their votes in the next General Election? Is there any one of the four newly minted party leaders who will deny them that opportunity in 2004?

Canadians may be perfectly happy to have the power to appoint Senators reside in one man, but based on public opinion polls that is not so. Canadians want true democracy, not the sham, not the veneer that they have seen ever since 1867.

Is there any one of the four new party leaders who will demand that a referendum on the question of electing or appointing Senators be held in conjunction with the 2004 General Election? Are the new leaders capable of new leadership? Can they at minimum agree on a Senate referendum? Armed with the expressed will of the people they can then proceed to take the necessary legislative action to change the appointed Senate to an elected Senate.

Four new leaders have a chance to make history, Canadian history. Will they agree to hold a referendum, or are Canadians to be denied the right to express their wishes free from the constraint of party politics?

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