Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his 81st Senate appointment this week — another Independent senator in a transformed Senate that Trudeau vowed to make less partisan. That effort began just over ten years ago, when Trudeau gathered his Liberal Senate colleagues together in Ottawa.
"Mr. Trudeau was sitting there with all of the Liberal senators but no MPs," said James Cowan, who in January 2014 was the leader of the Senate Liberal caucus. The former senator from Nova Scotia spoke with CBC Radio's The House for an interview airing Saturday. "He then proceeded to say that a decision had been taken that Liberal senators would no longer be members of the national caucus," Cowan said.
That announcement shocked those senators and the wider federal political scene. Senate reform was a hot topic at the time, spurred to prominence by an expenses scandal and competing proposals for change. The NDP was calling for the Senate's abolition, while the governing Conservatives sought an elected upper chamber . . . .
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