The Senate of Canada building and Senate Chamber.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
You have to hand it to Mark Carney: he has completed the evolution of the Senate from chamber of sober second thought into an instrument of unaccountable prime ministerial power.
In one deft manoeuvre, he has appointed his principal secretary, Tom Pitfield, to the Senate with the obvious mandate of pushing the government’s agenda through the upper house. He has declared that non-partisanship will no longer be a criterion for appointment to the Senate. And he has said that future appointees should be experts on issues dear to his central banker’s heart: such gripping agenda items as “strategic industries, regulatory frameworks, and emerging social and economic affairs.”
If you thought the Senate was boring before, just wait until it is filled with technocrats. But that’s not the worst of it.
By making these changes in a Senate in which there is no Liberal caucus, and which is instead populated almost entirely by so-called “independents,” Mr. Carney has weakened responsible government in Canada.
Carney scraps Trudeau-era non-partisanship policy as he appoints aide, Tory MP to Senate
The senators that he appoints, and who will be marshalled by Mr. Pitfield, will have no direct accountability link to the Liberal Carney government. Whatever decisions they make, whatever bills they choose to rush through or stall, Mr. Carney will be able to wave those away as the actions of independent senators who just happen to see things as he does.
It is appalling that he has vowed to reward Liberal partisans with Senate seats on the one hand, while refusing to restore a Liberal caucus in the Senate on the other.
It is also the culmination of decades of political gamesmanship by modern-era prime ministers who in each case molded the Senate into a personal political plaything.
Canadians may remember that, in 1990, Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney invoked a little-known clause in the Constitution that allowed him to stack the Senate with eight additional members in order to end a deadlock and push through his bill implementing the goods and services tax (GST).
After Mr. Mulroney, Liberal PM Jean Chrétien continued to see the Senate as a useful tool made available to him by the Constitution. He unapologetically appointed Liberal partisans from various walks of life, including former MPs, party organizers, union leaders and businesspeople, and restored the Liberal majority in the Senate.
It was Conservative leader Stephen Harper who first tried to reshape the Senate in the modern era. He came to power in 2006 vowing to reform the upper house by making it an elected chamber and imposing eight-year terms limits. At the same time, he appointed like-minded partisans to the Senate and gave it its first Conservative majority in decades.
But when the Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that Parliament couldn’t make unilateral changes to the Senate, Mr. Harper simply stopped appointing senators. When Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, there were 20 vacancies waiting to be filled.
By then, Mr. Trudeau had already ejected Liberal senators from the party caucus, forcing them to sit as independents and leading to the formation of various unaligned groups, plus a rump Conservative caucus. Mr. Trudeau also set up an independent advisory board to recommend new appointees, declared that nominees should be non-partisan, and even opened the process to public applications.
But the final decision always remained with him. As the Liberals were elected to minority governments, Mr. Trudeau started making partisan appointments again.
Opinion: Carney opens the Senate doors wider to partisans
Now here we are in 2026, with a majority Liberal government and a Senate stacked with Liberal and Liberal-leaning senators, and Mr. Carney has made it clear that the good old days of unapologetic partisanship are back.
And yet there is still no Liberal caucus in the Senate to identify those past and future Liberal appointees as what they are: an extension of the government of the day, waiting for its marching orders.
The Senate may have finally reached its nadir – an unelected house stuffed with political appointees who can feign independence and thus shield the government from the consequences of their decisions.
If Liberal senators are going to function as Liberal senators, Canadians deserve the honesty of calling them that. Mr. Carney has cheapened democracy with his actions. He needs to restore the Liberal caucus in Senate to undo the damage.