Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent first round of Senate appointees marks a partial return to partisan appointments in the upper chamber. After 11 years of Justin Trudeau’s experiment with notionally non-partisan, independent, and merit-based Senate appointments, Carney has signalled a return to partisan senators.
This news won’t excite ardent Senate reformers or those who voted for abolition in Alberta’s referendum. It could be easily dismissed as inconsequential tinkering. However, placed alongside Carney’s other reversals of Trudeau-era policies and his pattern of adopting conservative ideas, his appointments reveal a larger pattern of how Carney governs Ottawa.
This change to appointments is significant for the Senate but also reinforces reporting on Carney’s impatience with the institutions and processes preventing his government from delivering on big commitments. Justin Ling reported in the Toronto Star that Carney prefers to create new agencies and decision-making structures to avoid the federal bureaucracy instead of reforming it. A return to partisan-affiliated senators fits with Carney’s approach.
Why should we care about the Senate? Trudeau’s reforms changed the appointment process and, without many people noticing, revamped the way the chamber operates. Nearly all current senators are independents, and as a result, the legislative culture of the institution has changed as well. Senators come from different professional backgrounds, are more willing to amend government legislation, demand greater access to ministers to explain government bills, and, because of their new clout, are more subject to lobbying than before.
Whether these reforms were as truly independent as they were sold has been an area of contention, particularly amongst Conservative partisans, with some independent analysis backing this complaint up.
Although critics have questioned how non-partisan Trudeau’s appointments really were, his reforms nonetheless fundamentally changed the composition and behaviour of the Senate. Carney’s shift is best understood as a return to the status quo ante: partisan appointments are back, but the appointees are not formally sitting as partisans, preserving elements of Trudeau’s model. A spokesperson for Carney says there is no plan to revive a Senate Liberal caucus after it was dissolved in 2014 during Trudeau’s push for a wholly independent Senate.
The new appointments nonetheless represent a cautious recalibration, blending party-aligned veterans with independent figures. They have already reignited questions about whether the Senate will slowly drift back to its original role.
The profiles and political ties of Carney’s senators
Four new senators have been sworn in, two with explicit partisan ties. Most notable is Tom Pitfield, Carney’s chief strategist and a former senior policy advisor to the leader of the government in the Senate. Pitfield’s ties to the Liberal Party run deep. He was a childhood friend and longtime campaign strategist for Trudeau and is married to Liberal MP Anna Gainey. His father, Michael Pitfield, served as Clerk of the Privy Council under Pierre Trudeau before being appointed to the Senate.
Despite the return of partisan appointments, a Carney spokesperson told CBC News that Pitfield will not sit with the national Liberal Caucus alongside MPs, meaning he remains independent in name.
Carney’s second overtly partisan pick this spring was sitting Quebec Conservative MP Richard Martel, a rare move to elevate a sitting MP to the Senate. This prompted a by-election in Martel’s former riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord at the end of the summer. The by-election added another seat to Carney’s steadily growing Liberal caucus in the House of Commons. Martel’s appointment comes after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called on Carney to appoint more Tories to the Upper Chamber.
Also named to the Senate were New Brunswick cancer researcher Dr. Rodeny Oullette, a friend of Minister Dominic Leblanc, and Manitoba chartered professional accountant Geeta Tucker.
There is a partisan irony here. The Conservatives have long criticized Trudeau’s Senate reforms and indicated that they would return to partisan appointments. Yet Carney, as with so many other files, has moved to discard Trudeau-era policies and adopt items associated with the Conservatives. Other commentators can decide whether Carney is a conservative. But this does make the Senate another venue where there is less space between the Conservative Party and the Carney Liberals.
A Senate for governing?
The choice of Pitfield and Martel signals a willingness to use partisan appointments as tactical levers; at the same time, the inclusion of a cancer researcher and a chartered accountant underscores an explicit claim that subject-matter expertise will remain central to the Senate’s composition. This hybrid approach changes incentives in the Senate: partisan appointees serve as dependable channels for government priorities, while independent and policy-expert senators help counter claims that the chamber has reverted to patronage.
The appointments also feed a broader narrative that Carney is governing from a more centrist position than Trudeau. As mentioned, Conservatives long criticized Trudeau’s independent appointment process as obscuring rather than eliminating partisanship. Carney’s return to partisan appointments therefore raises the question of whether he is correcting a flawed reform or embracing a position Conservatives have advocated for years.
This balance, however, is fragile, as it depends on how the PMO manages caucus relationships, whether a formal Senate Liberal caucus is ever reconstituted, and how the new advisory process for appointments is implemented. These institutional choices will determine whether the chamber becomes a more efficient partner for the government or drifts back towards adversarial party politics.
However, much depends on individual choices. Recently, Martel joined the Conservative Senate caucus. His decision underscores a key reality: the Senate’s non-partisan structure is only as durable as senators’ willingness to maintain it.
With another vacancy now awaiting appointment following the recent departure of Senator Pamela Wallin, the next nomination will provide an early indication of whether Carney views these appointments as exceptional cases or the beginning of a more durable return to partisan-influenced Senate selection.
Carney’s Senate appointments matter, then, less because they will immediately transform the Red Chamber than because of what they reveal about the prime minister. Trudeau was often keenly concerned with the appearance of institutions and matters of identity, whereas Carney seems more focused on making institutions deliver and will circumvent or discard Trudeau-era policies when they do not. The Senate is simply the latest example. It is unlikely to be the last.
Emily Wheaton is an MA student researching the Canadian Senate in the department of political science at the University of Guelph.
Mark Harding is an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Guelph and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
