The advisory board will consist of three federally appointed members and two ad-hoc members from the province in which each vacancy occurs.
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Trudeau told Canadians that he would have a “non-partisan, merit-based process” to recommend people for appointments. George Furey will be the new speaker, replacing Conservative Leo Housakos. He also needs to welcome back all the Liberal Senators he hoofed out of his caucus a year ago.
The Trudeau government is poised to unveil the process by which it hopes to restore the maligned, scandal-plagued Senate to its intended role as an independent chamber of sober second thought.
“I congratulate Senator Furey on this appointment and look forward to working with him and all Senators to build a more open and accountable government and an even stronger Canada”. He’s following the lead of Sen. The top court set an even higher bar of unanimous provincial consent for Harper’s fallback position – abolishing the Senate altogether. The last major reform was in 1965, when mandatory retirement at age 75 was imposed on senators, who had been given lifetime appointments until then. None have ever managed to achieve a consensus among the provinces. Changing those distribution of seats would require constitutional amendments, which are simply not in the cards.
In a terse statement, Premier Christy Clark says B.C. will not participate in the newly announced process to appoint members to the upper chamber. “Senate has never represented BC’s interests at the national level”, she said in her tweet.
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She calls for the Senate to be “fixed or folded”, but says B.C. should not be distracted by it.
