Senate criteria angers potential Island candidate

The requirement that senators must own $4,000 worth of property has dissuaded one Island woman from applying for P.E.I.'s vacant seat, but it hasn't stopped another.

Stratford resident Kelly Robinson, who is well-known for her non-profit, community-level work, said she got "really angry" when she saw the criteria for becoming a senator.

• P.E.I. applications for senator being reviewed

"It felt like it was going back to when only landowners could vote, only landowners could be certain things," she said. "And I just thought that is not the Canada that I'm in or that I thought I was in. I think it's a very old rule that hasn't been properly confronted yet."

I just thought that is not the Canada that I'm in or that I thought I was in.- Kelly Robinson

Island Mi'kmaq filmmaker Eliza Knockwood doesn't own the $4,000 worth of property necessary to qualify either, but her supporters say they'll find a way around that if she's nominated.

Knockwood said the Senate needs the diversity of perspectives and experience she can bring, but that's just one reason she applied to become P.E.I.'s next senator.

She recalled the time she was nine-years-old and asked her mother, a survivor of the Shubenacadie residential schools, if any Aboriginal people were politicians.

"She looked at me and said 'If you're born an Indian in this country, you're born a politician,'" said Knockwood, who has run unsuccessfully in provincial and federal elections.

'Born a politician'

"I am born a politician. I need to know the Indian Act, I need to know my treaty rights, I need to know my human rights. The Constitution is so much more than just your average Canadian and I think those words have always resonated with me. And pushed me toward politics at a very young age."

Robinson agrees different voices are needed in the Senate, but said the property rule excludes many of them.

"We're coming into a time when many, especially young Canadians, do not have land and may never have land because of the state of the economy," she said.

Nunavut senator Dennis Patterson submitted a private member's bill earlier this year to change the law.

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