SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — The Honourable Stephen Greene
Tributes on Retirement
November 27, 2024
Honourable senators, I rise today to pay tribute to our colleague Senator Stephen Greene. Since you and I have not served long together, I’m sharing the thoughts of my Director of Parliamentary Affairs, Chris Reed, who was Senator Greene’s parliamentary affairs adviser and later his director from February 2016 to March 2023. I’m happy to share these words because we all know that staff is key to our lives and success as senators.
Now this is Chris speaking, so brace yourselves. These are his words:
Senator — Stephen — Steve.
What more can be said in tribute that has not already been said.
I know that your fellow senators will laud your many professional accomplishments, so with my thanks to Senator Patterson, I will focus on you: Steve.
Remember when I first started in your office, you told me to call you “Steve”? Now I think I finally can.
Did you know that one of your favourite musicians Duke Ellington was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom? You have always been a believer in freedom, so I am sure you did.
But did you know that Louis Armstrong did a cover of “The Bare Necessities”?
You know I had to make a Disney joke; it is me after all.
Seriously, though, you helped me more than I can ever truly thank you.
With all the personal and professional troubles I was facing in the fall of 2015, I am so grateful to you and Adelheid for taking a chance on me. Coming to work with you back here in the Senate was a huge relief.
Most importantly, you reminded me to:
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife . . . .
You’re going to owe me for that. Chris continues:
Oh man, did we have fun.
While we may not have solved all the world’s problems, but over a late-night Taiwanese single malt, we tried our best.
Okay, we probably added to them somewhat.
But the Senate that exists today is, in part, thanks to your work. For that, you should be acknowledged and celebrated.
Thank you, of course, to Shami and Shabram for letting us borrow you from time to time. Likewise, thank you to Lana, Rose and Reed for sharing their dad and grandad with Canadians.
One last piece of advice, or direction, if you will permit me —
— and I can hear his voice in my head right now —
— next time the Prime Minister invites you to dinner, just say “NO.”
Steve, you have always been a maverick — the “ever-Greene Reformer,” if you will. Do not change.
All the best as you move home and as you get to celebrate this next phase in your life.
Thank you.
Honourable senators, I rise today in tribute to our friend and colleague Stephen Greene. I’ve had the privilege of knowing him since my first day in this place six years ago when he shook my hand in welcome. Since then, we have worked together on the Senate Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee, first under the leadership of our former colleague Raynell Andreychuk.
In 2020, when I became the chair, Stephen was named to the steering committee, and I have greatly valued his collaborative spirit and expertise. His questions and comments at committee have always been thoughtful and sometimes challenging, as they should be, because it’s important to keep both witnesses and colleagues on their toes.
Stephen has always had a great interest in international topics, which has served him and his fellow committee members, including myself, very well.
Prior to the Senate, he worked out of Canada’s embassy in Washington on fisheries concerns and pursued Gulf of Maine maritime boundary issues with the U.S. while posted to our consulate general in Boston.
He blended this with significant private sector experience with Clearwater Fine Foods. These were the so-called intermestic issues with the U.S., and I suspect we’ll face many more over the next while.
His inquiring mind went much further, though, to NATO — I greatly valued our mission together in London in 2019 as part of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly — the future of Taiwan and Canada’s changing role in the world. All of these subjects and more ranked high in his thoughts and in his extensive reading on these important topics.
Then there is his political side. Winston Churchill once remarked:
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
Stephen is a survivor of those many times.
But wherever and however he served — as a federal candidate for the Reform Party of Canada, as a staffer in a long-ago Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative government, or as a senator for the Conservative Party or in the Canadian Senators Group — he made his mark convincingly and on principle, especially in the Senate as it has continued to evolve.
As I recall, he mentioned his affiliations in his moving and memorable — and not to mention humorous — speech on his Parkinson’s disease in 2021 and didn’t miss the opportunity to get a dig in for all of our groups, much like his speech today.
I, like others, will miss him here in the Senate. He will head back to his beloved Nova Scotia with his devoted spouse, Shami, to an extremely well-deserved retirement. Whether he is ready to slow down is another question.
Having had the opportunity to get to know Stephen’s excellent staff over the years, I would be remiss in not acknowledging how lucky he was to work with Adelheid Ruppenstein for 16 years and with Christopher Reed for many years.
Stephen, I know you will miss the Senate and we’ll miss you, but the grass will certainly be, dare I say, “Greener” on the retirement side.
Thank you for everything, my friend.
Honourable senators, by way of tribute to my friend and colleague, let me cite his own words:
Some people . . . think that being a maverick is a bad thing, that “maverickism” should be stamped out in all its forms. I am not one of those people. For me, maverickism equates with fresh thinking, rigorously developed and communicated. It is a willingness to stake out independent ground without worrying about . . . consequences . . . . It is about following your own conscience and convictions. In other words, maverickism equates with hope and freedom.
Stephen Greene is — and always was — a maverick, and this place is better for it.
If you look at Stephen’s CV, well, it looks a little bit like he can’t keep a job. From our embassy in Washington to a premier’s office in Nova Scotia, worried by spiralling deficits, he joined the Reform Party, ran as a candidate, served as a chief of staff. Through it all, Stephen is a doer, albeit one with a short attention span.
But with Stephen, there’s no tilting at windmills; there’s always focus and purpose.
We came to this place at the same time, and even then, reforming the Senate was already firmly on his mind. He worried that partisanship would undermine the experience we all bring to the table, along with our political beliefs, because we are here to serve Canadians, not political parties or social circles.
It’s not about whether we are appointed or elected. We don’t need to run for office to be relevant. We can and should question government policy. How would an amendment proposed by the Senate with the intention of getting a better bill possibly endanger democracy? In fact, Stephen believes if the Senate were abolished, Canadians would need to invent it.
Stephen is witty, charming, direct, thoughtful and funny. When he decided to tell us about his Parkinson’s diagnosis, he worried more about how we would take it, so he employed a little humour. Let me remind you of his words that day:
. . . Parkinson’s can also lead to incontinence. This is not the kind of verbal diarrhea that some senators . . . like to inflict on this house from time to time. I’m talking about the natural kind . . . . But I promise I will give my beloved seatmate plenty of warning. . . .
It made us think about the power of hope and humour.
So, to the lifelong maverick: Keep the humour; keep the hope; keep up the fight; keep making the change. We will miss your wisdom and that wry smile, and we will keep you always in our hearts.
Honourable senators, I rise today to pay tribute to the Honourable Stephen Greene, a fellow Nova Scotian by choice, a man with a brilliant political and business mind and pedigree, a staunch fiscal conservative, a self-described patriot, a huge fan of the United States of America, an independent-minded reformer, a very funny character and a faithful servant to this chamber and to the people of Nova Scotia and Canada — even while, in recent years, contending with the unpredictable and debilitating impacts of Parkinson’s disease.
After a career in politics, running twice for the Reform Party, serving as Chief of Staff to Preston Manning and later Principal Secretary to Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald; in business with H.B. Nickerson & Sons and Clearwater Fine Foods, helping to build that company into Canada’s largest and most important seafood company; and in government, first with the Canadian Embassy in Washington and then the Canadian Consulate in Boston, Senator Greene was appointed to this chamber in December 2008.
While here, Senator Greene, together with our colleague Senator Massicotte, made significant contributions to Senate modernization. He criticized the institutionalized partisan decision-making process he saw in the bipolar Senate he inherited as a new Conservative senator where senators were whipped on votes by their parties, as were their counterparts in the House of Commons, causing, as he said, the public to see the Senate as irrelevant and a waste of money. He has seen improvement in the Senate’s relevance in its current multipolar incarnation where opposition can and should come from any individual senator in any group. While he sees institutionalized partisanship as an obstacle to true sober second thought, Senator Greene also cautions against the dangers of groupthink.
He advocated for rules that reflect the Senate’s multipolar reality, and some of those are in place today.
In his first speech, on the 2009 budget, Senator Greene underscored what he stands for:
I believe that this budget, together with the other policies . . . which claim and defend our North, which protect our environment and invest in the green economy, which enhance the skills of our workers and improve the efficiencies of our businesses and which project Canadian power, prestige and ideals abroad, whether through our musicians, artists and sports heroes or our men and women in uniform, all of these things give Canada and Canadians an opportunity to claim our place in the 21st century.
Senator Greene, I join all Senate colleagues today in thanking you for your important contributions to this chamber and to the reform of the Senate of Canada, and I wish you and your beloved family health and fulfillment for many years ahead.
