Trudeau to fill Senate vacancies before retiring: source
Government preparing to fill all 10 vacant seats in coming weeks
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning a final wave of appointments to fill the 10 vacancies in the Senate before he retires in March, Radio-Canada has learned.
The move would allow him to leave a mark on Parliament for years to come, as these unelected legislators will be able to sit until the age of 75.
A source familiar with the matter says that the selection process for the future senators is already underway and should be completed before his departure. After proroguing Parliament earlier this month, Trudeau announced that he will leave power after the Liberal Party chooses a new leader on March 9.
In a written response, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed that the advisory board for Senate appointments is at work to propose candidates for all vacancies.
"Prorogation did not affect the ability of the Governor General to make appointments to the Senate based on the advice of the prime minister," said PMO spokesman Simon Lafortune. "The prime minister takes his responsibility to appoint senators seriously and will do so as long as he remains in office."
The prime minister likes to praise the independence of the senators he has appointed since 2016, but he has nonetheless picked several high-profile Liberals to sit in the Senate in recent years.
The Conservative Party of Pierre Poilievre, which is leading in national polls, has long been critical of Trudeau's choices of senators. The Conservatives now fear that Trudeau-appointed senators will try to block their agenda if the party wins the next election, which is expected in the spring.
There are currently 12 senators affiliated with the Conservative Party in the 105-seat chamber.
"For someone who advocated an independent Senate, [Trudeau] will have ended up filing the Senate with a large majority of Liberals or people who support his policies," said Conservative Senator Claude Carignan.
Carignan said that Trudeau "has the power to appoint senators, but after resigning, I don't think he has the legitimacy to do so."
There were 22 vacancies in the Senate when Trudeau took power in 2015. So far, he has appointed 90 senators in total. Due to retirements, there will be 10 positions to fill as of Feb. 2.
Increasingly partisan appointments
Historically, Canadian senators have been affiliated with a political party. However, Trudeau caught Liberal senators by surprise in 2014 when he expelled all of them from the Liberal caucus, which was in Opposition at the time.
After taking power the following year, he changed the nomination process, calling on an advisory committee to recommend candidates based on merit. These new senators were described as "independent" because they were not affiliated with any political party.
Still, a significant number of senators appointed in recent years had recent or significant partisan experience, most often within the Liberal Party of Canada or provincial Liberal parties.
Senator
Rodger Cuzner served in the House of Commons as a Liberal MP from 2000
to 2019. He's a recent Trudeau appointee to the Senate. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
In recent years, Trudeau appointed former federal Liberal MPs Rodger Cuzner and Nancy Karetak-Lindell to the Senate.
Former candidates from the Liberal Party of Canada were also nominated, namely Tracy Muggli in 2024, as well as Bernadette Clement and Michèle Audette in 2021.
In terms of provincial Liberals, Trudeau also appointed former members of legislative assemblies in Quebec (Clément Gignac and Pierre Moreau), New Brunswick (Victor Boudreau and Joan Kingston) and Nova Scotia (Allister Surette).
In addition, he appointed Liberal donors and organizers such as Alberta's Daryl Fridhandler (2024) and Ontario's Toni Varone (2023).
The prime minister has also chosen former donors and elected officials from other parties, but in smaller numbers than Liberal supporters.
Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau could leave a lasting impact on the legislature
through his Senate appointments over the last decade. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
Senator Mohammad Khair Al Zaibak, for example, donated to the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party over the years. However, according to Elections Canada, the businessman from Ontario made 171 donations to the Liberal Party of Canada or Liberal candidates since 2004, compared to nine donations in total to the Conservatives or New Democrats during the same period.
Who would form the Opposition?
Senators agree that as unelected legislators, they do not have the same democratic legitimacy as MPs and must act accordingly when it comes time to vote for or against government bills.
According to the Salisbury Convention, which dates back to the middle of the last century in the United Kingdom, the unelected chamber must not oppose government bills that have been the subject of clear election promises.
Nevertheless, many senators appointed by Trudeau say they will continue to act in the same way they did under the current government, saying they are ready to defend certain key principles such as the protection of minority rights and regional interests.
Several senators say they could oppose a government that would use the notwithstanding clause preemptively to prevent an eventual Charter challenge against one of its bills.
Poilievre has said he would be ready to use "whatever tools the Constitution allows" to pass criminal laws if his party forms the next government. The statement was widely seen as a promise to use the notwithstanding clause to toughen up the justice system.
For now, the 12 Conservative senators act as the Official Opposition in the Senate, which provides them with a specific budget as called for in the Parliament of Canada Act.
If the Conservatives take power in the next election, the Opposition could be formed by another group of senators.
However, it is not yet clear who would want to fill this role. Several senators said they will wait for the results of the next election to determine the future of the different groups of senators within the Upper House.
"How will non-partisan senators decide to organize? The question remains open," said Peter Harder, a former senior bureaucrat who was appointed to the Senate in 2016.
Sen.
Claude Carignan said there are legitimate concerns over
Liberal-appointed senators forming an Official Opposition while not
formally having a party caucus. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
For Carignan, however, it would be inappropriate for senators appointed by Trudeau to form an Opposition group without joining a political party.
"If you claim to be independent at the same time that you want to play the role of the Official Opposition, that would be a major problem," said the Conservative senator.
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LeBlanc working on federal budget that could keep Liberals in power
It's a spending plan that may never see the light of day as the three major opposition parties have vowed to topple the government
Dominic LeBlanc is quietly preparing a federal budget.
It’s a spending plan that ultimately may never see the light of day, but the New Brunswick MP, who is now the country’s finance minister, isn’t entertaining that possibility.
Onlookers are suggesting it could end up being the federal Liberal government’s very last chance to hold onto power for a little longer – potentially the final shot at surviving a confidence vote that would push back a federal election for at least another few months.
“We have started the process of preparing budgetary options,” LeBlanc said in an interview with Brunswick News. “Obviously, there will be a new leader elected in early March.
“It would not be responsible to have done none of the preparation for a potential budget.”
LeBlanc said he has asked his cabinet colleagues for their submissions and letters soliciting proposals from each department for funding in a 2025-26 budget have gone out.
But that’s amid everything else that’s going on.
It won’t be a Trudeau government budget, the current prime minister having promised to resign when his Liberal leadership successor is picked on March 9.
Parliament must then return by March 24 when prorogation ends.
All three major opposition parties have said they will defeat the minority Liberals as soon as possible.
All of that puts the chance of a budget in doubt.
“I’m not going to speculate on that,” LeBlanc said. “Who knows what the new prime minister will decide.
“There are a whole bunch of options.”
There is no constitutional requirement to pass a budget, or even have one.
It didn’t happen recently in the midst of the pandemic.
And if a new prime minister wants to completely avoid the prospect of losing a non-confidence vote after being just weeks on the job, they might just dissolve Parliament and trigger an election themselves.
But Donald Savoie, the Canada research chair in public administration and governance at the Université de Moncton, suggests that a newly picked Liberal leader, anointed as the country’s prime minister, could also call for a throne speech and then a budget in quick succession.
It’s a conversation LeBlanc will need to have immediately with the party’s next leader, he said.
A quick budget after a prorogation of Parliament has happened in the not-too-distant past.
In 2008, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament to avoid a vote of confidence.
The request was granted by Jean, and the prorogation lasted just under two months.
An opposition coalition fell apart shortly after, Parliament reconvened, and a Conservative budget passed with the support of the Liberals.
Savoie says the opportunity and responsibility in front of LeBlanc was likely a key factor in his decision to stay as finance minister and not seek a run at the party leadership.
“It’s not something you do easily, it requires an awful lot of planning,” Savoie said of a federal budget. “It requires an awful lot of decisions, it requires an awful lot of meetings with departmental officials, and the prime minister.
“To leave that with only two or three months to go, and appoint a new minister of finance, I think he looked at that and said ‘for the good of the country, for the good of our government, I have a responsibility to stay.’”
Savoie said that no matter what happens when Parliament returns, LeBlanc has the responsibility to begin putting together a spending plan.
“It’s not something that he can say ‘oh, no, we’re not going to do it,’” he said.
LeBlanc became in December the first federal finance minister representing a riding from New Brunswick in 136 years, since Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley in 1878, who was one of the fathers of Confederation.
He’s also the first Acadian ever to be appointed to the job.
If LeBlanc doesn’t get the opportunity to table a budget, it wouldn’t be a first.
Quebec MP Gilles Loiselle didn’t deliver one in his brief stint as finance minister under the short-lived Kim Campbell government.
Like former Prime Ministers Charles Tupper and John Turner, Campbell never faced a Parliament during her brief tenure, as her term was filled by the summer break and the election campaign.
But usually in February or March, the minister of finance presents the government’s budget, which outlines the government’s taxation and spending priorities for the coming fiscal year.
To spend funds, the government must request Parliament’s authorization through the review and approval of appropriation bills.
That typically happens through budget implementation bills that the government introduces following the budget.
One way or another, the government will need new authority to spend.
LeBlanc, who is also playing a lead government role in persuading U.S. President Donald Trump not to level crippling tariffs on Canada, could present a budget that promises needed supports for Canadian businesses and consumers trapped in a trade war.
The government would then put that to a vote.
Jamie Gillies, a political scientist at St. Thomas University, said that presents an opportunity for the government to stay in place.
“I think it all depends on who the Liberals select as their next leader,” Gillies said. “(Conservative Leader Pierre) Poilievre wants to trigger an election as soon as possible.
“But the looming threat of tariffs and negotiations with the Trump administration might mean that unifying behind a Team Canada approach is more important than an election to both voters and political parties.
“Perhaps it depends on how well (Liberal leadership candidates Mark) Carney or (Chrystia) Freeland can lead in terms of cutting deals with the NDP and or Bloc to hold on to government until a fall election.”
The New Brunswick MP has said he has the flexibility to act now in order to react with financial help in response to tariffs, but that the government would eventually need to go to Parliament.
“We have all the legal instruments under existing legislation to apply tariffs, to apply export controls, all of those instruments in place,” LeBlanc said. “There are ways that we can allocate money to existing programs that could support workers and businesses.
“There are legislative measures that would need to be enacted, but there is sufficient flexibility now in the short term to ensure that we’re in a position to support businesses and workers.”
He added: “We would put before Parliament in March any other measures that would be necessary.”
Former Liberal cabinet minister is next New Brunswick senator
Victor Boudreau of Shediac to join upper chamber after over a decade as New Brunswick MLA
Former Liberal MLA and cabinet minister Victor Boudreau was appointed to Canada's Senate on Friday after over a decade in provincial politics.
Boudreau, currently the chief administrative officer for the Town of Shediac, said on Saturday he was excited to receive the news.
"I'm very excited about the opportunity to get to work, to represent New Brunswick and New Brunswickers' interest in our federal parliamentary system," he told Radio-Canada in Shediac.
However, Boudreau said he has yet to commit to any particular Senate group, including Justin Trudeau's Independent Senators Group.
"I obviously want to take my time to get to understand the various groups that are represented in the Senate, and decide which one aligns more with my values, and what's important to me," he said.
"No doubt there will be some causes that I will be more passionate about. Social causes are always something throughout my career that have been very important to me."
Boudreau was elected to New Brunswick's legislature in 2004 and was re-elected for several terms after that. In that time, he held several cabinet portfolios, including health, finance, economic development and the Regional Development Corporation.
He was also appointed to the interim Liberal leader role in 2010, replacing former New Brunswick premier Shawn Graham.
Victor
Boudreau is pictured speaking to reporters in 2015 about the auditor
general's report on the previous Liberal government's Atcon fiasco. He
was finance minister when Atcon's bankruptcy cost taxpayers over $70
million. (CBC)
His time in the legislative assembly was also marked by some controversy for his role in the Atcon scandal — signing off on removing security on $64 million in loan guarantees — and for his now-dropped investment in a proposed Shediac campground.
The former was subject to an investigation by the auditor general, as over 70 million in taxpayer dollars were lost when Atcon went bankrupt.
The appointment comes after New Brunswick senator and longtime Progressive Conservative MLA Percy Mockler, from Saint-Léonard, retired in April.
Shediac Mayor Roger Caissie said he's known Boudreau for over 35 years after they met in university.
Mayor Roger Caissie says the Town of Shediac will miss Boudreau as he begins his new senator role. (Gary Moore/CBC)
"He believes in what he says, and I know that during his past life as a politician ... obviously the folks here wished to have him," Caissie said.
"He was well liked within his party, he was well liked by the opposition party because he treats everybody reasonably. He's as solid a person as they come."
While Boudreau has yet to declare an affiliation, political scientist J.P. Lewis said Trudeau's appointment of longtime Liberal politicians to the Senate may cast doubts on his earlier commitment to make the Senate less partisan.
J.P.
Lewis, a political scientist at the University of New Brunswick in
Saint John, said nominations of long-time politicians may undermine
Justin Trudeau's promise to end partisanship in the Senate. (CBC)
"If you want senators with political experience, obviously Boudreau has a record of public service in the province," Lewis said.
"But a longtime Liberal provincial minister is, it's difficult to make the case that they are independent ... I guess a tiger can change their stripes."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Alix Villeneuve
More than half of recent Senate appointments have ties to Liberal Party
Trudeau created a non-partisan advisory committee for Senate appointments, but critics question its value
Despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promise to rid the Senate of partisanship and patronage, most of the senators appointed to the upper house over the past year have ties to the Liberals.
Since July 2023, Trudeau has nominated 12 senators, eight of whom — 66 per cent of the total — have donated money to the federal Liberals or have worked with the federal party or a provincial Liberal party.
That's a significant jump in the number of Senate appointees with partisan Liberal ties — up from about 30 per cent of all senators appointed between January 2019 and July 2023.
"I think it is a disturbing trend," said Emmett Macfarlane, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo who wrote a draft document that became the basis for the advisory committee on Senate appointments.
"The appointment of the occasional partisan or person with a partisan history is completely, I think, valid," he said. "What is troubling is to see a slew of partisan appointments, particularly those that match the government stripes. This actually goes against the whole spirit of the reform."
In 2014, as the Senate was mired in an expenses scandal, Trudeau expelled senators from the Liberal caucus.
As prime minister, he created an independent and nonpartisan advisory board for Senate appointments in 2016. Since then, he's named only senators recommended by the board. Trudeau has named more than 80 senators since taking office.
His recent appointments include:
-
New Brunswick's Victor Boudreau, a longtime Liberal who served as a provincial cabinet minister and interim leader. He was also Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc's campaign manager in 2019.
-
Mohammad Al Zaibak, an entrepreneur and businessman who has made over 150 donations to the Liberal Party of Canada totalling tens of thousands of dollars.
-
Rodger Cuzner, a former Cape Breton Liberal MP who was first elected in 2000 and went on to serve as a parliamentary secretary in the Trudeau government until 2019.
-
Joan Kingston, a registered nurse who was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly in New Brunswick from 1995 to 1999. She was also chief of staff in the Office of the Official Opposition when the provincial Liberals were in opposition in the early 2000s.
-
Toni Varone, a Toronto businessman and philanthropist who has donated to the Liberal Party regularly since at least 2004. In the five years leading up to his appointment, he donated more than $14,500 to the federal party.
-
John McNair, a New Brunswick lawyer who worked as a provincial Liberal chief of staff. He was also the executive director of the New Brunswick Liberal Association (provincial and federal). His grandfather, John B. McNair, was a Liberal premier of New Brunswick.
The other two recently appointed senators with ties to the Liberal Party are lawyer Réjean Aucoin and Olympian Marnie McBean, both of whom both made donations to the federal party.
Elections Canada records show that Aucoin made 11 donations to the Liberal Party of Canada over 18 years.
Marnie
McBean, shown here with her 1999 Pan Am Games gold medal, says she
supports causes championed by both Liberals and Conservatives. (John Gibson/AFP/Getty Images)
McBean made one donation to Liberal MP and fellow Olympian Adam van Koeverden. In a statement issued to CBC News, McBean said she has backed causes championed by Liberal and Conservative prime ministers and premiers and supports individuals and the work they do, rather than parties.
Conservative Sen. Denise Batters said the ties between the newly-appointed senators and the governing party prove that the appointment process is not truly independent.
"Frankly, this is much like a lot of things that have happened with the Trudeau government," Batters told CBC News.
"Justin Trudeau promised an independent Senate. But what has happened is actually the exact opposite of it. He's still trying to hide behind this veneer of independence."
Sen.
Denise Batters says she suspects Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is
stacking the Senate with Liberal partisans before the election. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)
Batters has long criticized Trudeau's Senate appointment process. She said the pro-Liberal tilt of Senate appointments has become more "blatant" in recent years — and accused the Liberals of trying to stack the Senate with like-minded people ahead of next year's federal election.
"And I think it's because they see the polls as we do, and they're worried they're going to be in the losing position in the next election. And so they want to make sure they have as many senators ... filling those seats as possible who are actually Liberals," she said.
No change to how nominations are made: PMO
A spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, Ann-Clara Vaillancourt, said there has been no change to the prime minister's approach to choosing senators.
Potential senators must still apply through an independent and non-partisan body established in 2016 to provide advice to the prime minister on candidates for Senate appointments. The prime minister considers the names on the list provided by the board and makes a decision.
"It has also been noted by the Ethics Commissioner, making a legal donation to a political party does not disqualify someone from an appointment. That would be inappropriate as it would exclude Canadians for legally participating in our democracy," Vaillancourt said in a media statement.
She did not offer any explanation for the increase in the number of Senate appointees with ties to the Liberal Party over the past year.
Sen. Rodger Cuzner says he's seen nothing to suggest a growing Liberal tilt in the Red Chamber. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Cuzner, who was appointed last October, described the application process as "fairly involved, fairly extensive." He said he received letters of support from three individuals, including one from a Conservative and one from someone in the NDP.
He said any increase in Liberal-aligned senators "hasn't really shown itself in the chamber" and he's been impressed by the calibre of his fellow senators.
"I thought it'd be a really neat experience and I could find a way to contribute," he said. "I'm there to try to help the folks back home in Nova Scotia, and the bigger picture too."
Cuzner suggested that if the Conservatives win the next election, leader Pierre Poilievre might revert back to the previous method of appointing senators and abolish the advisory board.
"I doubt very much that should Pierre Poilievre find some success in the next election, that he would feel obliged to follow any sort of advice put together by any committee," he said.
"He would go young and ardent in his selections. Young, ardent and conservative."
A spokesperson for Poilievre wouldn't say whether a Conservative government would keep the independent advisory committee. Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer had said he would abolish it if elected.
In a media statement, Scheer — now the Conservative House Leader — accused Trudeau of breaking a promise.
"For nine years, Trudeau has said one thing to Canadians while doing everything else in his power to ram through his radical agenda that has caused hurt and misery across our country," he said.
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81 senators later, Trudeau has changed the Senate. Is it ready to change again?
Almost three quarters of current senators were appointed as Independents under new process
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his 81st Senate appointment this week — another Independent senator in a transformed Senate that Trudeau vowed to make less partisan.
That effort began just over ten years ago, when Trudeau gathered his Liberal Senate colleagues together in Ottawa.
"Mr. Trudeau was sitting there with all of the Liberal senators but no MPs," said James Cowan, who in January 2014 was the leader of the Senate Liberal caucus. The former senator from Nova Scotia spoke with CBC Radio's The House for an interview airing Saturday.
"He then proceeded to say that a decision had been taken that Liberal senators would no longer be members of the national caucus," Cowan said.
That announcement shocked those senators and the wider federal political scene. Senate reform was a hot topic at the time, spurred to prominence by an expenses scandal and competing proposals for change. The NDP was calling for the Senate's abolition, while the governing Conservatives sought an elected upper chamber.
"[The Liberals] were third-party status," said Jane Cordy, who was a Liberal senator for Nova Scotia at the time. She now heads up the Progressive Senators Group and is the longest-serving senator in the Red Chamber.
"And I guess from [Trudeau's] perspective, he was looking to make a dramatic change."
"Some [Liberal senators] were very angry, some were very happy and most of us, I think, were just in a state of shock," Cordy said of the January 2014 meeting.
Conservatives at the time — including Minister of Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre — dismissed the move as a meaningless rebranding. But it ended up being the first of two consequential steps in Senate reform.
A new majority Liberal government implemented an independent appointment process soon after their election victory in 2015. The aim, Trudeau said, was to bring about the end of the partisan Senate.
Now, 81 senators — and almost three-quarters of the current chamber — have been appointed under the reformed process, with a dwindling Conservative bloc the only explicitly partisan portion of the chamber remaining.
Conservative
Sen. Denise Batters of Saskatchewan says Trudeau's reforms to the
Senate mask the fact that appointed senators are usually friendly to the
Liberals. (Chris Rands/CBC)
"One of the things that has happened as a result of the [reforms] is that the culture of the institution has changed," said Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba who has studied the Senate. He said that while he disagreed with the initial motivations for reforming the Senate (he argued it worked better than most people thought), there have been some positive results from the new climate of non-partisanship.
"If you ask me, on balance, I think the new Senate is better than the old Senate in terms of being a constructive presence in the national governing process," he said.
The new Senate, made up more of individuals than parties, did make the legislative process more confusing and fractious, he said, but there was a benefit to that.
"It's not a bad thing in Canada to have to work harder to demonstrate that you have a consensus in favour of a major, contentious piece of legislation," he said.
The Conservative critique
The new Senate has had to deal with contentious and divisive issues, ranging from medical assistance in dying to carbon tax exemptions. Votes on amendments to C-234, which would have exempted some farming activity from the carbon tax, split several of the various new groupings in the Senate — another sign that the body has grown more independent.
Though they are now in the minority in the chamber, the Conservatives have kept up a consistent critique of the new system.
"I have frequently termed this Justin Trudeau's fake independent Senate because I really don't think that it has been in any way Senate reform. I think many Canadians, myself included, want to see real Senate reform. But this is not that," said Denise Batters, a Conservative senator from Saskatchewan.
Jane
Cordy and Raymond Squires, a former town councillor and mayor of St.
Anthony, Nfld., leave the Senate after being sworn in during a ceremony
on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 13, 2000. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)
She said the Senate reforms have not made for better policy and have led instead to a more expensive, chaotic process.
And she argued that the independent advisory boards which recommend Senate nominees are heavily influenced by the Prime Minister's Office. The boards are composed of federal and provincial appointments — many provincial seats are currently vacant. Batters said that Senate nominees tend to be friendly to the Liberals.
"Many of the other senators who have been appointed by Justin Trudeau, I wouldn't call them independent," she said.
Thomas said it's not accurate to say all the nominees have been "Liberal hacks" or patronage appointments.
"Where the Conservatives may be on stronger foundation is to say that the appointments are typically are more liberal — small 'L' liberal — in their thinking," he said.
"Do they represent the full spectrum of public opinion within Canada? That's not the case."
Will it last?
Trudeau's appointments have reshaped the Senate but polling indicating the Liberals are poised to lose the next election to the Conservatives now raises questions about whether the changes are durable.
"Liberals will tell you there's no going back, that we will never ever have another partisan Senate, that the public would be so upset that it would become a house of patronage again," said Thomas.
But there are some who think the Red Chamber worked better as a more standard Westminster body, with a clear government and opposition.
"I found then and I still feel today that it's difficult to see how you can have a properly functioning Westminster style parliamentary democracy if you have that model in one house and you have a totally different model in another where everybody's an individual," said Cowan.
Batters agreed, saying it's important to have a strong opposition in the Senate.
"Some of the Trudeau-appointed senators have talked about, oh, this should be more like a think-tank and you know, a council of elders or something. I don't think that that's appropriate," she said.
Cordy said it's hard to know if the current Senate system will last under a new government.
"I guess we'll have to wait and see what the next 10 years bring," she said. She said she's not sure if a future Senate would have its own opposition, or if some Independent senators might join the Conservative side.
"Those are all questions that I can't answer," she said. "They're all scenarios that some of us wonder about ... and we will only know when it happens."
Corrections
- This article has been updated to clarify that votes on C-234 amendments divided many, but not all groups in the Senate. The CPC and the Canadian Senators Group voted in a unified manner.Feb 17, 2024 1:38 PM AST
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Trudeau names 5 new senators, including long-time Liberal Rodger Cuzner
Trudeau's Senate picks now number 75, with 11 remaining vacancies
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named five new senators Tuesday, choosing long-time Liberal Rodger Cuzner and two other Liberals to the Red Chamber.
"I am confident that, with diverse leadership experience and impressive track records serving their communities, they will be strong voices for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the Upper House," Trudeau said in a statement.
The new faces in the Senate are:
- Joan Kingston, John McNair and Krista Ross, who will be representing New Brunswick.
- Réjean Aucoin and Rodger Cuzner, who will be representing Nova Scotia.
Tuesday's announcement brings the number of independent senators chosen by Trudeau to 75, in the 105-seat Senate, with 11 more vacancies yet to be filled.
Once appointed, senators choose to sit as a non-affiliated senator or to join one of the four groups in the chamber: the Independent Senators Group, which currently has 39 members; the Conservative or Canadian Senators groups, each with 15 members; or the Progressive Senate Group, which has 11 members.
Former Liberal MP Cuzner was first elected to the House of Commons in 2000 and represented two Cape Breton ridings in Nova Scotia during his 19 years.
While in Ottawa, Cuzner held a number of key roles, including chief opposition whip and parliamentary secretary to former prime minister Jean Chrétien.
Cuzner was well-known for his annual Christmas poem in the House of Commons in which he poked fun at all sides of the House with his sharp wit and sense of humour.
WATCH | MP Rodger Cuzner reads his annual Christmas poem:
MP Rodger Cuzner reads his annual Christmas poemFrom 1995 to 1999, Kingston served as a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly in New Brunswick, representing the provincial riding of New Maryland and holding a number of ministerial positions including Labour, Environment and Human Rights.
A registered nurse and health advocate, Kingston is the chair of her province's Community Action Group on Homelessness and past president of the Nurses Association of New Brunswick.
Another former Liberal being elevated to the Senate is McNair, a lawyer who served as the executive director of the New Brunswick Liberal Association (provincial and federal).
Ross, a business woman and former head of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce, also served as a commissioner with the Electoral Boundaries and Representation Commission for New Brunswick.
Réjean Aucoin, a lawyer and former journalist from Chéticamp, N.S., is an accomplished leader from the Acadian community and founder of the Association of French-speaking Jurists of Nova Scotia.
Joan Kingston, a registered nurse, is a former member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. (CBC)
Former Cape Breton Liberal MP appointed consul general to Boston
Rodger Cuzner served 6 terms as MP for Cape Breton-Canso.
Rodger Cuzner has been appointed Canada's consul general to Boston.
The announcement was made in a release from the Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which also listed five other diplomatic appointments.
Cuzner, 64, was born in Glace Bay and attended St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish.
He entered federal politics in 2000 when he was elected MP for Cape Breton-Canso. He went on to serve five more terms.
He garnered 74 per cent of the popular vote to earn re-election in 2015.
Cuzner served as parliamentary secretary to former prime minister Jean Chrétien in 2003. He has also served as chair of the Nova Scotia caucus and party whip.
In 2019, he announced that he would not seek re-election, telling reporters he was "tired and cranky."
Cuzner worked in the private sector as senior adviser at Rubicon Strategy in Ottawa prior to the new appointment.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-minister-named-consul-general-boston-1.7048754
Former Liberal fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan named consul general in Boston
Jordan lost her Nova Scotia seat in the 2021 election
Bernadette Jordan, a former Liberal member of Parliament who served in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet, has been named Canada's new consul general in Boston.
Jordan, who was first elected in 2015 to represent South Shore-St. Margarets, is replacing Rodger Cuzner, another former Nova Scotia Liberal MP who was appointed to the Senate in October.
Jordan became minister of rural economic development in early 2019 and Trudeau named her minister of fisheries, oceans and the Coast Guard after she was re-elected that fall.
Her tenure was marked by controversy when violent clashes broke out on Nova Scotia's south shore in the summer and fall of 2020 between commercial fishers and Indigenous fishers who were trying to exercise their treaty rights to harvest lobster.
The federal government was criticized by people on both sides of the conflict for failing to ensure Indigenous access to the fishery and failing to enforce government rules on harvest seasons.
Jordan lost the 2021 federal election to Conservative MP Rick Perkins.
The Honourable Bernadette Jordan, Consul General of Canada in Boston, United States
Biography
Bernadette Jordan (BA [Political Science], St. Francis Xavier University, 1984) was raised on the South Shore of Nova Scotia in a small fishing community. Her love of her community and desire to see it grow and thrive started at a young age when she became a community volunteer while in junior high school.
Bernadette started her working career in the field of economic development and built an extensive network. She then went on to a career in community news, spending almost 12 years as the special projects manager for the award-winning newspaper publisher Lighthouse Publishing. She received multiple awards in the areas of advertising, promotion, business campaigns and volunteerism. During this time, she also served as the president of the Atlantic Canadian Newspapers Association and as a member of the board of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association.
In 2006, Bernadette left community news to take on a new role in fund development with the Health Services Foundation of the South Shore. Her work helped the foundation raise millions of dollars for health care in her community. She was an active member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, received their Rising Star Award and led a campaign that won their Ten Star Chapter Award.
In 2015, Bernadette ran for and won the federal riding of South Shore-St. Margarets by the largest margin ever in the riding and became the first woman to hold the seat. In her first years in government, she was the chair of the Atlantic Liberal Caucus, a member of the standing committees on the Status of Women and on the Scrutiny of Regulations, and the chair of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. During that time, she introduced a motion calling on the government to deal with abandoned and derelict vessels in Canada’s waterways, which led to legislation passed in 2018 to address this ongoing problem. She was then appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of democratic institutions. In 2019, she became the first minister of rural economic development. Later that same year she became minister of fisheries, oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. This made Bernadette the first woman elected in Nova Scotia to hold a seat at the Cabinet table.
After leaving politics in 2021, Bernadette went back to her fund development roots, accepting a position as the national director of philanthropy with Shelter Movers, a volunteer-powered charity providing free moving and storage services to people, primarily women and children, leaving abuse.
Bernadette and her husband, David, live on the beautiful South Shore. They have raised 3 children and enjoy the beach, kayaking and their dog Alfie. She continues to volunteer with organizations in her community. Bernadette was recently the recipient of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal (Nova Scotia) for service to Nova Scotia and Canada. In her spare time, Bernadette is a fabric artist and speaker at many events involving women in leadership.
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New Brunswick senator retires after eight years
Having an office near a senator embroiled in scandal over the alleged sexual assault of a staffer shaped Nancy Hartling's time in Senate
Nancy Hartling remembers struggling eight years ago with what her role could be as New Brunswick’s newest senator.
But that quickly changed after the office space she was given on the parliamentary precinct was nearby that of then Sen. Don Meredith, who was embroiled in a scandal over the alleged sexual assault of a staffer.
“I remember calling HR in the Senate and the fella saying ‘don’t worry, Senator, we’ll take care of you,’” Hartling recalled in an interview with Brunswick News last week.
“I said ‘I’m not worried about me, I’m worried about the staff that are here that are very vulnerable.’ Because their positions are not forever and ever, they’re working on contracts, this worried me.”
Now reflecting on the eve of her Feb. 1 mandatory retirement from the Senate on her 75th birthday, the Riverview senator says what happened next was arguably what she’s most proud of during her tenure.
Hartling quietly asked the staff of the country’s 105-member Senate to speak privately with her if they felt they had been harassed at work.
A total of 15 people stepped forward.
The anonymous conversations informed her work on a bill to change the reporting process of harassment across the federal civil service and on Parliament Hill.
The nine-member Senate advisory working group on human resources – where Hartling was a member – began examining the existing harassment policy as a response to the sexual and workplace harassment accusations levelled against Meredith.
That’s as the House of Commons passed anti-harassment bill C-65.
Hartling was then asked to sponsor the bill in the upper chamber.
“I was a bit intimidated at first, but I thought ‘no, I’m doing this.’ I feel grateful for that opportunity and it spun off many chances to speak out on the issue and talk in the community,” Hartling said.
“The Senate then began to change their policies. I’m proud of that.”
Reflecting on eight years
Several tributes to Hartling, delivered in the Senate in December as part of a goodbye, highlighted how that work continued on throughout her time in the upper chamber.
One of Hartling’s final speeches in the Senate was on a bill to protect victims of intimate partner violence.
“I was touched by her empathy for and dedication to the defence of people, mostly women, suffering from injustices and violence,” said Sen. Raymonde Saint-Germain, facilitator of the Independent Senators Group that Hartling joined, of that speech.
“I was also touched when she mentioned that it would be one of her last speeches in the Senate. I felt at that moment that her speech was a perfect representation of who Senator Hartling is and what she stood for all her life.”
Hartling’s work in seeing changes to workplace harassment policies came after a career as a registered social worker.
Before her time in the Senate, she created and then spent three decades as head of a non-profit organization to support single parents in the Moncton area.
Her organization was the first to include single-parent men as clients.
She also helped create St. James Court, an apartment complex for single parents in Moncton.
“Indeed, as a former social worker, she has always been a strong voice for disadvantaged people, especially families, as well as an ardent proponent of social justice and a fairer society,” Saint-Germain said.
It was a “full-circle moment,” the senator continued, noting Hartling’s first speech in the Senate paying tribute to the fallen women of the Montreal École Polytechnique tragedy.
Sen. Scott Tannas stood to say that, of her 62 speeches in the Senate over eight years, 41 of them were senators’ statements “dealing with topics affecting Canadians every day, such as diabetes awareness, intimate partner violence and racism.”
“I tried to bring forward the things that were important to our community,” Hartling said.
“And making people aware, and making people aware of New Brunswick.”
The outgoing New Brunswick senator counts events she co-hosted with Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard each year marking National Social Work Month as a highlight.
Hartling also said she was proud of being part of an all-party caucus on diabetes, noting her 12-year-old grandson has type 1 diabetes.
Her goodbye speech to the Senate focused on the lighter moments of becoming a senator, Hartling joking that even finding the washroom was difficult. She quickly discovered that a picture of New Brunswicker and the first woman Speaker of the Senate Muriel McQueen Fergusson was near the women’s lavatory.
“She was always my beacon in New Brunswick, so I would step back and say, ‘Okay, Muriel, help me here. This is so new and different,’” Hartling said.
The speech also highlighted the momentous pieces of legislation the Senate dealt with during her time, including a change to the lyrics of “O Canada,” from “in all of thy sons command” to “in all of us command.”
“That, to me, was one of the proudest, most exciting things that happened in the Senate,” she said. “I remember the evening when the vote took place vividly.
“When I hear that song now, I always remember that night. Those small changes make a difference. Sometimes we think that they don’t, but they do. It was very inclusive.”
Hartling’s time in the Senate also placed her at the leading edge of sweeping reform.
She was among the very first senators picked under a merit-based appointment process put in place by Justin Trudeau in attempts to clean up what was a scandal-plagued upper chamber.
“I think it’s working,” Hartling said. “I think what’s working is that there’s a chance for all Canadians to be in the Senate and represent Canada, and it wasn’t like that before.”
An application process gives any Canadian, with only a few minor stipulations, the chance to submit their resume.
An independent panel then puts a short list of names on the prime minister’s desk to pick from.
It has arguably made the Senate more diverse in terms of gender, visible minorities, and Indigenous representation, Hartling believing it’s now more representative of the people it serves.
“One of the things that I appreciate is that I got to see the Senate changing into a different Senate, the inclusivity, the diversity, you can learn so much,” she said.
But Hartling contended that it also hasn’t been an easy transition.
“I guess I was being naive, but I thought ‘oh, they’re going to welcome us,’” Hartling said of a Senate previously divided more clearly by party line.
“Well no, the Liberals didn’t want us and the Conservatives didn’t want us.
“There was this ‘oh, they’re just Trudeau’s sheep coming in here.’ We laughed a lot about that, but we’re here and we’re going to make this work for the future.”
Meanwhile, Hartling is unsure what’s next for the upper chamber.
Despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to rid the Senate of partisanship and patronage, a growing number of senators appointed to the upper house over the past year have had ties to the Liberals.
“We’ve noticed that there have been a little more partisan appointments than there were at first,” Hartling said. “(In the early days after the change) you couldn’t have been appointed if you had been in municipal, provincial, or federal politics.
“Well, now it seems to be shifting.”
Hartling said the next federal election could see further changes, depending on the government elected.
But her hope is that the Senate continues to be filled with subject experts.
“I hope we’ll still be able to have people apply on a merit basis,” she said, adding that includes choosing Canadians with different occupational expertise.
“When we were studying medical assistance in dying, we had at least five doctors in the Senate, so they had the medical experience to talk about those issues,” Hartling said. “That was important to have their view.
“They can be partisan if they want, but if they have the knowledge of the subject matter, that was really useful to us.”
Advice and what’s next
Hartling said she’s well aware of the criticisms of the Senate.
But she said its work highlights its importance noting, for instance, that the upper chamber held more than 100 hours of debate on medical assistance in dying.
“If we weren’t there, maybe things would slide through too easily,” Hartling said.
“We make sure it doesn’t.”
She suggested that the disconnect is that Canadians simply aren’t aware of what senators do.
To counteract that, Hartling published a monthly newsletter highlighting the work she was doing.
“Before becoming a senator I would say ‘where are the senators?’ Do they fall in a hole once they get to Ottawa?’” Hartling said. “So education is important.
“My advice to other future New Brunswick senators is to try and keep in touch with the community.”
Meanwhile, Hartling said she’s looking forward to what’s next.
“I’m satisfied,” she said. “For me, I’m going to be 75, so it’s time to be at home and be with my family.”
Hartling has a trip to France planned in March with her daughter and 14-year-old granddaughter.
“Her mom and I went on the same trip when she was 14, so it’s kind of neat,” she said.
That’s as Hartling said her community advocacy won’t stop.
“I think eight years is good, although as I’m crossing this threshold into the next part of my life I’m thinking there are still some things I would like to do, but maybe I don’t need to do them in the Senate, maybe I can do them in the community,” she said.
“Those issues that are important to me, like gender-based violence, poverty issues, housing, homelessness, those are going to carry forward in my life.
“I’ll be able to continue to have a voice on that.”
She added: “I’m waiting on opportunities, they’ll come, but I’ll just take the opportunity to reflect on this threshold of life.”
“What I hope people remember about me is that I was calm and compassionate and collaborative, those were three things I tried to be,” she said of her time in the Senate. “Whether I agreed with everything everyone was doing or not, I tried to look at things from that lens.”
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