Two more Conservative senators are leaving their caucus to sit as independents.
The office of the leader of the Conservatives in the Senate confirmed Tuesday afternoon that Sen. Michel Rivard would be leaving the caucus, just an hour after Sen. Diane Bellemare made her own announcement to that effect.
Bellemare said she respects the leadership of the Conservative Party and the work of her colleagues in the Senate Conservative caucus, but feels it is time to leave them behind. She and Rivard will join 12 other senators already sitting as independents.
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Bellemare and Rivard’s decisions on Tuesday come in the wake of similar moves by former Conservative Sen. Jacques Demers – who began sitting as an independent in December – and former Senate Liberal Pierrette Ringuette, who became an independent in February.
“I believe that I will be better able to accomplish my role of providing sober second thought and representing the interests of my province by sitting as an independent senator,” Bellemare wrote in her statement.
“I have been considering this decision for some time and I believe it will allow me [to] contribute to the much-needed modernization of the Senate.”
That modernization is expected to include a new Senate appointment process announced by the Liberal government late last year. Under the new system, a five-member advisory board will draw up a short-list of candidates for any vacant Senate seat, and then provide that list to the prime minister. The prime minister will still have final say, however.
There are currently 24 vacancies in the Senate, five of which are expected to be filled in the first half of this year.
Bellemare’s release said she “believes that the new Senate appointment process is a step in the right direction, but that it must be backed up by structural changes so that the Senate becomes the non-partisan institution that Canadians have long been expecting.”
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Bellemare, who was appointed to the Senate by Stephen Harper in 2012, also raised the possibility that some independent senators may organize in a third group that has the same recognition as the Liberal and Conservative caucuses in the Red Chamber. Senators who are not members of one of the two parties are not privy to research funds or Senate committee participation.
“I would like to participate in (sic) this third organized group come into being, and I hope to maintain the close relationships that I have developed with my colleagues over nearly four years,” Bellemare said.
It’s unclear if Rivard is also looking to join such a group.
Demers said his choice to leave the Tory caucus last December was the right one and he doesn’t regret it. There was never major conflict in the caucus, he noted.
“There’s just a few people who want to run their own show. Let them run it.”
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