OTTAWA — Canada’s Senate should be reformed to impose 12-year term limits and curb the prime minister’s power to unilaterally choose senators, says Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper has talked about the reforming the senate, the only thing he has achieved is to pack it with his own Conservative supporters, Ignatieff added.

“Do we need to reform it? I think so,” Ignatieff told CTV’s Question Period Sunday, only two days after Harper announced five more appointments, which will give him control of the upper house.

“Do we need term limits? A 12-year term limit, I would support that.”

Currently, once named, senators can serve until they turn 75 years old, although many of those appointed by Harper have agreed to non-binding caps on their terms.

While he doesn’t question the Senate itself, pointing out that MPs aren’t perfect and the Senate often catches mistakes in legislation, Ignatieff called into question the system by which senators are currently chosen.

“I’d even go so far as to limit the prime minister’s prerogative to appoint senators ... I would pass it through a public service appointment commission so we scrub it and get the best possible appointees.”

At the same time, however, Ignatieff said job creation — not Senate reform — is the priority for “hard pressed middle-class Canadians.”

Ignatieff also called on the Harper government to abandon its policy of waiting for the U.S. to come up with a plan to fight climate change, saying if Canada waits for the Americans “nothing is going to happen.”

“Mr. Obama’s difficulties, the fact that he lost the seat in Massachussetts, I think make it much more unlikely that the American government is going to come up with a climate change plan of its own.”