PM’s picks push goal of non-partisan Senate

Trudeau appoints 9 senators, poised to announce 12 more, in move to clean up chamber

OTTAWA— Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has named nine new nonpartisan senators, bringing him within reach of his goal to transform the discredited Senate into a more reputable, independent chamber of sober second thought.

The five women and four men hail from a wide variety of backgrounds, from an art historian to a renowned human rights lawyer to a conservationist. They are the first senators to be chosen under an arm’s-length process that saw more than 2,700 people apply to fill the 21vacancies in the 105-seat upper house.

Trudeau is poised to announce two more batches of appointments within days, filling the remaining 12 empty seats — six from Quebec, six from Ontario — and, for the first time, putting senators with no partisan affiliation in the driver’s seat. When he’s done, independent senators will hold a plurality of 44 seats, outnumbering the Conservatives’ 40 and the independent Liberals’ 21. The prime minister said the new appointment process is merit-based and open.

“It is part of our ongoing efforts to make the Senate more modern and independent and ensure that its members have the depth of knowl- edge and experience to best serve Canadians,” he said in a statement.

Thursday’s appointees include Malaysian-born Yuen Pau Woo, currently a senior fellow in public policy at the Asian Institute of Research at the University of British Columbia, Manitoba art historian Patricia Bovey and New Brunswick women’s issues expert Nancy Hartling.

Trudeau took the first step toward transforming the Senate in January 2014, when he kicked senators out of the Liberal caucus in a bid to diminish the hyperpartisanship he maintained had destroyed the Senate’s intended role as an independent chamber of sober second thought. The much-maligned chamber was engulfed in the notorious expenses scandal at the time, which exposed the degree to which Stephen Harper’s Prime Minister’s Office attempted to manipulate the Senate’s Conservative majority.

In the initial phase of its work, the board accepted nominations of potential senators from organizations across the country. It recommended 25 of them to Trudeau, from which he named seven independent senators in March. Today’s nine are the first to be appointed under the second, permanent phase, under which individuals can apply directly to the board to become senators.

Nancy Hartling, a New Brunswick women’s issues expert, is the founder of Support to Single Parents Inc.

Yuen Pau Woo is a senior fellow at the Asian Institute of Research at the University of British Columbia.

Wanda Thomas Bernard is current chair of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

Lawyer and human rights activist Marilou McPhedran is among the nine people named to the Senate.

Art historian Patricia Bovey, former director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, was also appointed to the Senate.

Winnipeg psychiatrist Harvey Chochinov is an internationally known expert in palliative care.