The fight for a Triple-E Senate absorbed a surprise punch over the weekend after a congress of political conservatives in Calgary voted against a resolution supporting an equal, elected and effective Senate.

"I didn't see this coming," said Keith Brownsey, a political science professor at Mount Royal College in Calgary of the vote at a conference called Renewing the Federation.

"It's odd. It's been the foundation of much of what we've heard about Western alienation for generations."

In 1989, Albertans began electing senators-in-waiting on their provincial ballots, in the hopes the winners would be appointed to vacant Senate seats by the federal government.

But since senatorial candidates were added to the ballot, only one elected senator, Stan Waters in 1990, has been named to the chamber. That was done by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Even in those elections, Brownsey says, most voters weren't interested in voting for a senator, leaving that part of the ballot blank or spoiling it. "Everybody wants it," Brownsey said, "but it's not why you vote for a political party."

He said the group at the Calgary congress probably realized that a Triple-E Senate will be difficult to fit within Canada's Constitution and that there are other more pressing issues for conservatives today.

He added that he doesn't expect talk of Senate reform to disappear entirely. "This group may have put it on the back burner, that's all."

Bert Brown insists the idea is alive and well. He's one of those senators-in-waiting, and a member of the Triple E committee. He told delegates at the weekend convention about plans for what he calls "slow-motion Senate reform." 

And Brown says there are other reforms in the works, such as those that offer regional rather than provincial representation.