FIRST READING: Here's why three Senators crossed the floor to the Conservatives

National Post

13-06-2025

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post's own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.
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The Senate, not normally a hub of political intrigue, has recently witnessed a sudden tide of defections to the Conservative caucus. So far this month, three Senators — two of whom were appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — have announced that they will henceforth be sitting as Conservatives.
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It's been an unexpected reprieve for a caucus that was increasingly lurching towards extinction. As of this writing, 85 of 105 Canadian Senators were appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Before the recent floor-crossings, one third of the 11 remaining Tories were set to reach mandatory retirement age within the next two years.
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As to why this is happening, the new Tory senators all cited different reasons, ranging from a generalized horror with regards to the state of the country, to a desire to 'build bridges' on Indigenous reconciliation.
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Mary Jane McCallum, a veteran dentist and member of the Barren Lands First Nation in Manitoba, is the only member of the Senate to have been sent to an Indian residential school. From age 5 to 16, she attended Guy Hill Residential School. In Senate testimony, she has described her main emotions during that period as 'overwhelming loneliness' and a 'bewildering feeling of abandonment.'
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Indigenous issues and reconciliation have come up often in her Senate work. In just the last couple of weeks, McCallum tabled legislation that would bind the RCMP to follow 'First Nations laws,' and another bill that would allow the prosecution of First Nations laws by Crown lawyers. On June 3, she said she would be asking for a Senate probe into whether Canada's treatment of Indigenous people constituted 'a crime against humanity and a genocide.'
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As to why McCallum decided to join the Conservative caucus, in a Tuesday statement she framed it as a way towards 'building bridges.'
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'Our communities have long sought opportunities for greater collaboration and mutual understanding,' she said. 'By joining the Senate Conservative Caucus I hope to help broaden the conversation and ensure Indigenous perspectives are reflected across the full political spectrum.'
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BREAKING 🚨 DERNIÈRE HEURE
Senator Mary Jane McCallum Joins Senate Conservative Caucus
La sénatrice Mary Jane McCallum rejoint le caucus conservateur au Sénat pic.twitter.com/N7VnKLixlg
— Senator Leo Housakos (@SenatorHousakos) June 10, 2025
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David Richards
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A novelist and playwright before he was appointed to the Senate by Trudeau in 2017, David Richards has been a vocal critic of the Liberal government for some time now.
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This was most notable in 2023, when Richards delivered a scathing critique of the Online Streaming Act, the bill that gave broad powers to the CRTC to impose content quotas on streaming platforms such as YouTube and Netflix.
'I think it's censorship passing as national inclusion,' he said in a Senate soliloquy that mentioned George Orwell, Cicero, the East German Stasi and the censorship regime of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
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'I think, overall, we have lately become a land of scapegoaters and finger pointers, offering accusations and shame while believing we are a woke society,' he said, concluding 'this law will be one of scapegoating all those who do not fit into what our bureaucrats think Canada should be.'
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Richards' first Senate statements since the reopening of Parliament have stuck to the same general themes. On June 5, he asked Marc Gold, the government's representative in the Senate, if he could 'admit that much of the policy that the former government promoted in this chamber has bled in many ways into the horrible calamities that this country finds itself in today?'