#BTSpeakingOut – Much ado about 18-year-old

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Alex Currie, North Saanich BC

All the hullabaloo over whether an 18-year-old can be appointed to the Senate just strikes me as weird.

The current age in Barbados to sit in a body commonly referred to as the seat of serious second thought when it comes to legislation passed by the government is 21.

What is the point of changing that?

An 18-year-old lacks both life and political experience in the real world.

Book learning is fine but I am sure the vast majority of your readers would agree that taking that pure untested learning into a work place or the real world is going to teach lessons not ever contemplated in school.

I know some countries provide for it at 18 but many look for 30 as a minimum age but is the real issue not to reform age limits but to reform how the seats in the Senate are filled?

The not-so-great past Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised an elected, representative term limited Senate. We don’t have that today.

Trudeau Junior in 2019 remove the then sitting Liberal Senate members from his caucus and they sit as an alleged independent group but all Senators are appointed until age 75 unless they really behave badly or they cross the government or as Mike Duffy found out, when their party wants a Senator to be their fall guy for their misbehaving.

An elected Senate with a minimum age of 21 with term limits of six years with 1/2 having to run at each general election (US is 1/3 every mid term election) makes more sense, cuts down on the old boys holding sway and of course the opportunity for corruption.