QUESTION PERIOD — Democratic Institutions
Senate Appointments
April 11, 2019
Senator Harder, five months ago I asked you two straightforward questions about the Trudeau government’s so-called independent Senate appointment process. You didn’t bother to answer them, so I asked you the same questions again in December. No response.
It’s now April, and you have still failed to provide me with an answer. So I will ask you again, because apparently you didn’t get it the first two times. Which individual and organizations nominated the last 12 senators appointed, and which provinces declined to name Senate advisory appointment panellists?
Again, I thank the honourable senator for her question. If she’ll be patient and if we get to the end of Question Period, under Delayed Answers I think she’ll find her answer.
The Easter bunny has come.
Senator Harder, you keep touting the Trudeau government’s supposedly independent arm’s-length Senate appointment process, but to date you haven’t given us any information so that we can evaluate how independent and arm’s length it really is. We don’t know who sponsored the now 16 most recently appointed senators. The Senate advisory appointment panel hasn’t filed an updated report since 2017. But what we do know is that Saskatchewan declined to participate in naming independent panellists, as did the previous Governments of Manitoba and British Columbia. So we know that those boards were 100 per cent filled by the PMO.
Senator Harder, is that what passes for Trudeau transparency and independence?
Again, I thank the honourable senator for her question. Let me simply draw attention to a recent public survey that was referenced yesterday by Senator Dasko, which speaks to the support that Canadians have expressed, which I think is 77 per cent on the independent Senate appointment process. I do think that support is widespread, even in the province of Saskatchewan, and is one that reflects the government’s commitment to an independent process. It does provide the opportunity for provinces to participate, quite unusually, and those provinces that have participated have spoken in the context of the nomination of consideration appropriately.
I do think it’s a bit rich to criticize an independent process that is working, in comparison to processes that were in place before.
