Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government hopes to make statutory changes that will help cement his transformation of the Senate into a more independent, non-partisan chamber.
The prime minister says his government will amend the Parliament of Canada Act -- the law that spells out the powers and privileges of MPs and senators -- to better reflect the new reality in the upper house, where most senators now sit as independents unaffiliated with any political party.
"We're going to try to make it fair," Trudeau said in a year-end roundtable interview with the Ottawa bureau of The Canadian Press. "We're going to try to do it before the election."
Doing it before next fall's election is critically important for independent senators, who fear Trudeau's reforms could be easily reversed should the Liberals fail to win re-election.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has said that if becomes prime minister, he would revert to the previous practice of making overtly partisan appointments, naming only Conservatives to the upper house.