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== Proposed Senate reforms wouldn't have stopped expenses scand ==

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[http://wiki.mxtomalacalle.org/index.php?title=Usuario:Kwgtsnvj2#Articles_Category-_Energy_Efficient_Homes_.26_Tax_Credits Articles Category- Energy Efficient Homes & Tax Credits</ a>, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)The expenses scandal involving senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb has given many Canadians a rapacious appetite for Senate reform, but the reforms being suggested by the federal government wouldn't have changed anything, according to some Senate observers.
The four senators were found to have charged hundreds of thousands of dollars in inappropriate expense claims.
"There's no reason to believe an elected senator, or a senator who's subjected to term limits, wouldn't end up having an individual expense scandal of these sorts," said Emmett Macfarlane of Waterloo University in Ontario in a phone interview.
The reforms the government sent to the Supreme Court of Canada&nbsp;to see if they could be passed without violating the Constitution were about elections for senators and term limits. &nbsp;
There was nothing about changes to how housing or travel expenses are claimed in the government's bill on Senate reform.. Yet it was inappropriate claims, along with loose enforcement of Senate expense rules about those claims, that led to Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau being suspended from the Senate without pay more than&nbsp;a week ago.
Macfarlane, who specializes in Supreme Court issues, added, "It's very unfortunate that the Senate reform issue has been conflated with the expense scandals. The basis for Senate reform has nothing to do with Mike Duffy or the other senators."
'A channel-changing strategy'
Errol Mendes, a constitutional lawyer at the University of Ottawa, thinks going to the Supreme Court over Senate reform is a "fabulous channel-changing strategy" for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Harper asked the top court to rule on what kind of constitutional hurdles might be in the way of his government's proposals to elect senators for eight-&nbsp;to 10-year terms. He's also asked for a reference about how many provinces' consent is required in order to abolish the Senate.
Mendes, speaking by phone from Harvard University where he is teaching this term, thinks Harper is trying to divert public attention away from the fact that it was mostly his own hand-picked senators �� Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau �� who seem to have turned the public against the Senate with a fervour not seen before.
"I think nothing's going to come out [of the court] that's going to please Harper. I think Harper knew this," Mendes said.
"From the judges' questions, it looks highly unlikely they're going to rule in favour of any of the government's questions, except maybe for the property provision,<a href="http://zircast.com/profiles.html" title="cheap nfl jerseys for sale"><em>cheap nfl jerseys for sale</em>]," said Mendes, who watched the Supreme Court hearings online.
The Harper government wants to do away with an archaic Senate requirement that says each senator must own property worth at least $4,[http://zircast.com/profiles.html <em>cheap nfl jerseys free shipping</em>],000 in the province he or she is appointed to represent. &nbsp;
Most of the provincial officials who appeared before the top court didn't object to that change, but they objected to most of the other reforms proposed by the government.
'Blocked by the courts'
Macfarlane observed, "I suspect the prime minster has received legal advice from the Department of Justice that some of the arguments they were putting forward weren't going to fly very high."
Harper may have had that in mind when, at the Conservative Party's policy convention in Calgary in October, he said in his keynote speech, "Now we are being blocked in the courts" on Senate reform.
Although the Quebec Court of Appeals ruled in October the government's Senate reform&nbsp;proposals were unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has the final word, and its hearings hadn't even started at the time of Harper's speech.
Mendes believes Harper intends to use the court's ruling, if it goes against him, as an election issue.
"He'll say it's one of the reasons we absolutely have to keep a majority government and potentially even think about a referendum on abolition is because he knows that he could attract some of the NDP voters."
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair was on a "Roll up the red carpet" tour this summer as he championed what has been a long-time NDP policy �� Senate abolition.
Thumbs down
Mendes thinks the top court will turn thumbs down on most of&nbsp;the government's proposed reforms.<br>
&nbsp;<br>
He thinks the court will decide the government can't unilaterally mandate that senators must be successful electoral candidates whom the prime minister must consider for Senate selections. That kind of change he thinks would require the approval of at least seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the population.
As for abolition, both Mendes and Macfarlane think the court will decide all 10 provinces must approve such a profound change to Canada's federal system.
Macfarlane doesn't think Senate reform, or even Senate abolition, will be a "determinative" election issue, even if the two choices become planks in Conservative and NDP platforms.
"I think Canadians are going to care about things they've always cared about,[http://essaetec.com/Zebra-Cards-Printers.htm Authentic Denver Broncos Jerseys Sale], that is, the economy and the health-care system,[http://www.91happy.cn/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1316661 <em>Wayne Gretzky applauds Hockey Hall of Famers</em>]
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== Harry Benson's photos of the Beatles sparked career ==

<html>Photographer Harry Benson’s career spans six decades with work that includes some of the most influential figures in popular culture and politics, but it was a nearly missed chance to shoot the Beatles that launched his career.&nbsp;
The Glasgow-born journalist got his start shooting weddings in 1949,[http://zircast.com/profiles.html <em>cheap nfl jerseys free shipping</em>], but it wasn’t until 15 years later that his career skyrocketed.
“The Beatles were going to Paris and I was going to Africa to cover a news story,” Benson said in an interview with CBC News on Thursday. &nbsp;
“I took myself for a serious journalist and I didn’t want to cover a rock 'n'&nbsp;roll story,” he said.
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[http://bbs.hangzhou.09zh.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=194141 </ a>, however, take the Beatles assignment at the insistence of an editor at the London Daily Express newspaper, and the timing could not have been better.
'I was so close to not being there.'—&nbsp;Harry Benson
Shortly after he took a photo of the Fab Four mid-pillow fight in their Paris hotel room – the photograph he described as the defining image of his career – their hit song I Want To Hold Your Hand became the band’s first U.S. chart-topper and Benson was on the flight for their first trip to New York.
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[http://queqiu.com/plus/view.php?aid=68924 Climate change rallies staged across Canada</ a>, about to go to America with them, and I thought, God, I’m on the right story. They were terrific, and I was so close to not being there,<a href="http://essaetec.com/Zebra-Cards-Printers.htm">Authentic Denver Broncos Jerseys On Sale],” Benson said.
About 80 images spanning Benson's decades-long career are on display and for sale at Toronto's Liss Gallery until Dec. 16, 2013. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Along with capturing images of celebrities, Benson has photographed every U.S. president since Eisenhower and was with Robert Kennedy in his final minutes, photographing in the aftermath of his assassination in 1968.
When asked who was left on his “wish list” of people he would like to photograph, Benson named Russian President Vladimir Putin —&nbsp;and Toronto Mayor&nbsp;Rob Ford.
“Right now, there are no big guys left. No Charles DeGaulles. No Nixons or Kennedys. No big personalities, expect maybe the mayor of Toronto. He seems like a character,” Benson said.
The "look-back" of the century as The Beatles disembark at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York to begin their first American tour in 1964. (Harry Benson)
Benson’s photographs are found in the permanent collections of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian, but&nbsp;a retrospective featuring many of Benson’s iconic images has come to Toronto,[http://essaetec.com/Zebra-Cards-Printers.htm <em>Authentic Denver Broncos Jerseys Sale</em>], where photos from his book Harry Benson: The Beatles on the Road, 1964-1966 and of other subjects will be on display and for sale.
Limited-edition&nbsp;signed prints — ranging from $35,000 to a couple of hundred dollars — are hanging at Liss Gallery in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood from Nov. 16 to&nbsp;Dec. 16.</html>