One always feels a bit foolish doing something public in bad weather.

But there we were, three Alberta senators-elect, handing out our Senate report to passing reporters at the Banff station, waiting for the premiers to arrive by steam engine. The rain came down and the mountains were wrapped low in dark, drifting clouds.

Canada's first ministers must have thinking, as I was, "What the heck am I doing here?"
 

Well, they were there to discuss matters of national urgency, like extending Daylight Savings Time.
 

Bert Brown, Betty Unger and I were fullfilling our mandate to promote the idea that all provinces should elect senators.
 

Only when more provinces follow Alberta's lead will Liberal prime ministers feel obliged to appoint Senate candidates chosen by the people they represent.
 

Canada is the only federation in the world which allows its prime minister to choose its members of Parliament (along with the Supreme Court, the cabinet, and everything else that matters).

Some people say an elected Senate is a fantasy.

Maybe, maybe not. But if anyone is living in fantasyland, it's the premiers with their vaunted "Council of the Federation."

It's a Quebec notion, based on the alluring mirage that the provinces acting together will shape the national agenda in health, urban affairs, economic development, and social programs.
 

In theory they could. Under the Canadian constitution, these are all provincial, not federal, responsibilities.
 

But in practice they don't. The feds horn in using their unlimited power to tax and spend. They tax Canadians for programs that are none of Ottawa's constitutional business, and then transfer funds to the provinces with all kinds of federal political strings and conditions attached.

This has been going on for forty years, and the premiers can't stop it.
 

The only institution with both the mandate and the constitutional authority to protect provinces from the federal government is the Senate. But it never uses its power because its members are all appointed by the prime minister
 

If, however, senators were answerable to provincial voters in provincial elections, they would have the motive and democratic mandate to block bad political decisions by the national government.
 

Things like the gun registry. Most provinces opposed it, but the prime minister's rubber-stamp Senate let it through.
 

Things like Chretien's Sponsorship Program. Rumors swirled through Ottawa for years that it was crooked, but the Senate didn't stop it.
 

Things like the Canada Health Act, which has paralyzed provincial medicare development for twenty years.
 

Things like the Kyoto treaty. Most provinces have resource interests which will be gored by this useless environmental boondoggle. But the prime minister's rubber-stamp Senate (led by Alberta Senator Tommy Banks) is promoting it.
 

Things like the selection of Supreme Court judges. Liberal prime ministers pick liberal candidates to remake the Charter of Rights. An independent Senate would probably insist on more conservative candidates.
 

For the premiers to imagine that by meeting once a year for golf and steaks they will protect provincial interests better than the Senate could is too ridiculous to be taken seriously.
 

Premiers, stop kidding yourselves. Either force Senate reform, or continue losing jurisdiction to Ottawa until you have become completely irrelevant.

Link Byfield is chairman of the Edmonton-based Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, and an Alberta senator-elect.