Details of the pay-off: Senate seats for the Bloc and Elizabeth May

I was just watching Mike Duffy Live on CTV, and learned that Pauline Marois, the leader of the provincial Parti Quebecois -- the sister party to the separatist Bloc Quebecois -- announced that part of Gilles Duceppe's price for supporting the coalition is an immediate $1 billion transfer to Quebec.

No doubt that news wasn't supposed to leak out until after the dirty deal was done -- Marois needed a boost in her provincial election and so she stole Duceppe's thunder. But surely the only surprising thing about this is that the dollar amount is so low. Surely the Bloc wouldn't agree, in advance, to support two budgets they haven't even seen yet, and to support the coalition in any non-confidence vote.

But on the same show, we learned of other coming pay-offs: separatist appointments to the Senate. There are 18 vacancies in the Senate, including four in Quebec. Not only are the Bloc in for patronage pay-offs, but Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader, was on Parliament Hill today, and she wouldn't deny that she, too, was offered a Senate seat.

It's a fire sale in Ottawa! Senate seats, billions of dollars, whatever you want -- just make Stephane Dion the prime minister!

Fire sale -- or looting, I'm not sure.

I was debating with some friends in Ottawa whether or not Stephen Harper should fill those Senate seats in the next week; our resolution was that it would be a crass, Liberal thing to do.

But now that I hear what is actually being contemplated for the Senate, I've changed my mind. Giving Stephane Dion 18 seats to hand out to separatists and to May -- to her, as clear quid pro quo for her endorsement of him in the recent election -- ought to be stopped, even if it means a flurry of Senate appointments in the next week by Harper.