Article content

OTTAWA — The NDP has launched a “roll-up-the-red-carpet” campaign to abolish the Senate.

On Wednesday, leader Tom Mulcair announced a new website on the spending controversy that has prompted several senators to leave the Conservative caucus and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s top adviser to resign over a personal cheque he cut to bail one of them out.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or NDP kicks off ‘roll-up-the-red-carpet’ campaign to abolish Senate Back to video

Mulcair said he will also consult with the provinces, territories and average Canadians during his travels across the country, but stopped short of calling for a national referendum on the future of the Senate.

He argued an NDP government would do it, but that the legwork needs to begin now since changing government institutions will “require a lot of effort.

“The Senate cannot be reformed. You cannot reform something that contains people who have never been elected, who don’t understand the very principles of our democracy and are behaving as the ones we’ve just seen in the past week,” he said, adding years of research on the subject — which has been party policy for 50 years — suggests most Canadians agree the red chamber has got to go.

“The real question is in 2013, how can you possibly continue to argue to keep an institution of unelected people who have the power to reverse the decisions of duly elected members?”

The new website argues the Senate costs $92.5 million a year — the annual taxes of more than 8,000 average families — and that the average senator worked just 71 days last year.

It slams the Harper for failing to come through on promised Senate reforms and for going back on his word not to appoint senators.

It contains a petition to abolish the Senate.