"And, by the way, he'd face a majority of Independent senators that would not share that vision." Peter Harder, the Liberal government's representative in the Senate, says the Conservative plan to return overt partisanship to the Red Chamber should be an election issue. "I believe Canadians would rather have [an independent Senate] than a partisan echo chamber of the partisan chamber, the House of Commons." She said the Conservative caucus takes offence at the government's insistence that the new picks are "merit-based." If Trudeau is re-elected next fall, the Conservative Senate caucus will lose 10 members to mandatory retirement over the next four years, reducing their caucus to 21 of the chamber's 105 seats.

Source: CBC News December 23, 2018 09:00 UTC