QUESTION PERIOD — Privy Council Office
Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments
May 9, 2024
Senator Gold, the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments, chaired by Huguette Labelle, is supposed to publish a report three months after every round of Senate appointments. She hasn’t filed a report for 15 months, but there have been 15 new senators named. These reports have also shrunk dramatically in the last several years. There used to be 10 pages of detail about the diversity of applicants; that’s now one page. It has been six years since they included a list of nominating organizations; that stopped in 2018, right after I asked the government leader about it.
We have no idea who has sponsored 74 out of 81 independent Trudeau senators appointed to this chamber and who could be lobbying those senators on legislation. This government promised a transparent appointment system, but instead we get spotty reporting, limited information and potential major conflicts of interest for Trudeau-appointed senators.
Senator Gold, you’ve really enjoyed rewriting definitions in the chamber lately. Is this how you define Trudeau transparency?
Thank you for this question, which I believe you raised quite recently. It is the responsibility of the Senate appointment process to seek and vet the applications that are received. I cannot speak for anybody else in this chamber, but at least in my experience — which goes back seven and a half years — I applied and was not sponsored. Frankly, I have not followed the process since, so I can’t speak to that aspect of your question.
Looking around the chamber, the diversity of the successful applicants is so patent and obvious and welcome that I think nothing more needs to be said about the success which this process has had in changing the complexion of this chamber in all respects. The government will continue on the path of ensuring the best quality —
Former Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation mentor Huguette Labelle has been the one and only chair of the Advisory Board for Senate Appointments for the past eight years. She draws up to $650 a day for her per diem. Her reports are late and they have become less detailed and more opaque. I’ve frequently asked about this decline in the Trudeau government’s transparency regarding Senate appointments.
Senator Gold, can you at least tell me this: How much has the Trudeau government paid Huguette Labelle over the past eight years?
I do not know the answer to your question, nor do I know whether that information is or should be made public.
