Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning a final wave of appointments to fill the 10 vacancies in the Senate before he retires in March, Radio-Canada has learned.
The move would allow him to leave a mark on Parliament for years to come, as these unelected legislators will be able to sit until the age of 75.
A source familiar with the matter says that the selection process for the future senators is already underway and should be completed before his departure. After proroguing Parliament earlier this month, Trudeau announced that he will leave power after the Liberal Party chooses a new leader on March 9.
In a written response, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that the advisory board for Senate appointments is at work to propose candidates for all vacancies.
“Prorogation did not affect the ability of the Governor General to make appointments to the Senate based on the advice of the prime minister,” said PMO spokesman Simon Lafortune. “The prime minister takes his responsibility to appoint senators seriously and will do so as long as he remains in office.”
The prime minister likes to praise the independence of the senators he has appointed since 2016, but he has nonetheless picked several high-profile Liberals to sit in the senate in recent years.
The Conservative Party of Pierre Poilievre, which is leading in national polls, has long been critical of Trudeau’s choices of senators. The Conservatives now fear that Trudeau-appointed senators will try to block their agenda if the party wins the next election, which is expected in the spring.
There are currently 12 senators affiliated with the Conservative Party in the 105-seat chamber.
“For someone who advocated an independent Senate, [Trudeau] will have ended up filing the Senate with a large majority of Liberals or people who support his policies,” said Conservative Senator Claude Carignan.
Carignan said that Trudeau “has the power to appoint senators, but after resigning, I don’t think he has the legitimacy to do so.”
There were 22 vacancies in the Senate when Trudeau took power in 2015. So far, he has appointed 90 senators in total. Due to retirements, there will be 10 positions to fill as of Feb. 2.
Increasingly partisan appointments
Historically, Canadian senators have been affiliated with a political party. However, Trudeau caught Liberal senators by surprise in 2014 when he expelled all of them from the Liberal caucus, which was in Opposition at the time.
After taking power the following year, he changed the nomination process, calling on an advisory committee to recommend candidates based on merit. These new senators were described as “independent” because they were not affiliated with any political party.
Still, a significant number of senators appointed in recent years had recent or significant partisan experience, most often within the Liberal Party of Canada or provincial Liberal parties.
In recent years, Trudeau appointed former federal Liberal MPs Rodger Cuzner and Nancy Karetak-Lindell to the Senate.Â
Former candidates from the Liberal Party of Canada were also nominated, namely Tracy Muggli in 2024, as well as Bernadette Clement and Michèle Audette in 2021.
In terms of provincial Liberals, Trudeau also appointed former members of legislative assemblies in Quebec (Clément Gignac and Pierre Moreau), New Brunswick (Victor Boudreau and Joan Kingston) and Nova Scotia (Allister Surette).
In addition, he appointed Liberal donors and organizers such as Alberta’s Daryl Fridhandler (2024) and Ontario’s Toni Varone (2023).
The prime minister has also chosen former donors and elected officials from other parties, but in smaller numbers than Liberal supporters.
Senator Mohammad Khair Al Zaibak, for example, donated to the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party over the years. However, according to Elections Canada, the businessman from Ontario made 171 donations to the Liberal Party of Canada or Liberal candidates since 2004, compared to nine donations in total to the Conservatives or New Democrats during the same period.
Who would form the Opposition?
Senators agree that as unelected legislators, they do not have the same democratic legitimacy as MPs and must act accordingly when it comes time to vote for or against government bills.
According to the Salisbury Convention, which dates back to the middle of the last century in the United Kingdom, the unelected chamber must not oppose government bills that have been the subject of clear election promises.
Nevertheless, many senators appointed by Trudeau say they will continue to act in the same way they did under the current government, saying they are ready to defend certain key principles such as the protection of minority rights and regional interests.
Several senators say they could oppose a government that would use the notwithstanding clause preemptively to prevent an eventual Charter challenge against one of its bills.
Poilievre has said he would be ready to use “whatever tools the Constitution allows” to pass criminal laws if his party forms the next government. The statement was widely seen as a promise to use the notwithstanding clause to toughen up the justice system.
For now, the 12 Conservative senators act as the Official Opposition in the Senate, which provides them with a specific budget as called for in the Parliament of Canada Act.
If the Conservatives take power in the next election, the Opposition could be formed by another group of senators.
However, it is not yet clear who would want to fill this role. Several senators said they will wait for the results of the next election to determine the future of the different groups of senators within the Upper House.
“How will non-partisan senators decide to organize? The question remains open,” said Peter Harder, a former senior bureaucrat who was appointed to the Senate in 2016.
For Carignan, however, it would be inappropriate for senators appointed by Trudeau to form an Opposition group without joining a political party.
“If you claim to be independent at the same time that you want to play the role of the Official Opposition, that would be a major problem,” said the Conservative senator.
