Trudeau appoints acclaimed New Brunswick writer to fill Senate vacancy
OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau has named David Adams Richards, an acclaimed New Brunswick novelist, essayist, screenwriter and poet, to the Senate.
“His dedication to the arts, his love of place and of country will be an extraordinary asset to the independent thinkers in the Senate,” the prime minister said Wednesday during a news conference in Moncton.
Trudeau held up Richards as an example of the kind of “top-quality people” named to the Senate since he created last year an arm’s-length advisory board to recommend merit-based nominees — all part of a bid to turn the upper house into a less partisan, more independent chamber of sober second thought.
“The changes we’ve made to have a more independent appointment process in the Senate, to strengthen Canadians’ confidence in the institution, to demonstrate that it can be a house of sober second thought that improves the quality of work done by our parliamentary institutions is something that is extremely important to me,” he said.