Article content As Sen. Bernadette Clement discusses the nuances of the relationship between the House of Commons and the Senate of Canada, a man enters the committee room at 2 Rideau St., the current home of the Red Chamber. Sen.
Colin Deacon is immediately congenial with Clement. Joking, he asks if she is joining the Canadian Senators Group, who have the committee room booked for an upcoming meeting. Clement sits with the Independent Senators Group (ISG) while Deacon is a member of the Canadian Senators Group (CSG).
Recommended Videos Clement smiles, laughs and returns the banter, saying she’s happy with the ISG but respects the work the CSG does. The atmosphere is collegial and it’s easy to forget these are national lawmakers. There’s minimal partisan tension.
The only heated rivalry discussed in these halls involves binging a popular Crave TV series. To the reporters working in small towns and big cities across this country, writing in newspapers and online, on radio and TV, podcasting and livestreaming to make sure Canadians know what’s up. We all know that journalists are essential to a healthy democracy Sen.
Bernadette Clement The visual scene is not unlike her time at Cornwall’s city hall, though on a grander scale. Desks wrap around the room, flanked by dozens of chairs. Seating for staffers line opposing walls, and Clement explains how she communicates with her team during committee sessions.
While Cornwall’s council chambers accommodate fewer people, these committee rooms inside the Senate’s temporary home at the Government Conference Centre, Ottawa’s Old Union Station, are built for a deliberative body of 105 members. These chambers are where Clement thrives. It’s the culmination of a political landscape she has navigated for two decades, starting with her election to Cornwall city council in 2006 before her historic win as the city’s mayor in 2018.
Just shy of the fifth anniversary of her appointment to the Senate, the Standard-Freeholder spent a day shadowing Clement and her team as the Senate was wrapping up its spring session. Parliamentary work To capture the senator’s work over the last five years is impossible to do in a day. Clement has not wasted her time on Parliament Hill with cake and partisan gimmicks.
Partially because of how the senate has operated since 2015, but also because of who she says she is at her core, and what she believes in. Known nationally as an advocate for incarcerated Canadians, she has used her time to advocate for the rights of marginalized populations in Canada’s prison system, where Black Canadians and Indigenous Canadians are overrepresented. According to Statistics Canada, one third of Canada’s prison population is made of Indigenous people, and Black Canadians are incarcerated at a rate three times higher than their proportion of the population.
Alberta and Ontario have the highest levels of overrepresentation of marginalized people. From Kingston to British Columbia, she and her team have travelled the country visiting Canada’s jails. “[Sen.
Clement] mentally prepared me before going in,” says administrative support assistant Amina Abderemane. Abderemane explains that without Clement’s guidance, she may not have been emotionally ready to directly confront the demographic imbalance in Canada’s prison system. “I am a proud daughter of a Trinidadian father and a Franco-Manitoban mother, so I am a Black Canadian, and I am the only Black lawyer in the Senate,” says Clement.
“The Black Justice Strategy is a document that speaks to overrepresentation of Black folks in our criminal justice system, and it is a document that was created by Black Canadians, Black experts, Black lawyers, and Black communities. “It has 114 pretty well-researched recommendations, ... [it’s] a practical document with guidance, so that our federal government can address the issue of over representation of Black people in our criminal justice system.” Clement explains the document is still relatively new, and Black communities are still becoming familiar with it.
Clement expects that as people become familiar with it, more accountability on lawmakers will follow. More recently, Clement drew on her legal background and co-sponsored Bill S-6, which passed third reading in the Senate on June 17, and will now go to the House of Commons when it resumes sitting this fall. “I was asked by the Minister of Justice to sponsor this bill because I have a degree in civil law and common law,” says Clement, noting her pride in being a University of Ottawa alumnus.
“The Minister of Justice said, ‘well, you’re the one to do this, because it is about coordinating those two legal systems,’ and making sure that all federal legislation respects those two legal traditions in both English and French.” “Once you have these two legal systems, you get comfortable with complexity, and in this world, comfort with complexity is a real superpower,” says Clement. Clement also acknowledges civil and common law aren’t the only legal systems used throughout Canada’s history, and noted the importance of the role of traditional Indigenous legal systems. The above is only a cursory overview of some items the senator and her team have focused on.
On Thursday, Clement rose in the Senate and gave a nod to the Seaway City. This isn’t unusual for the senator who is affectionately referred to as the Senator from Cornwall. I am a Black Canadian, and I am the only Black lawyer in the Senate Sen.
Bernadette Clement While Canada’s Senate is meant to be regionally balanced, it’s not meant to be regionally representative. That’s the House of Commons’ job. But Clement carries Cornwall in her heart and her colleagues all seem to know that.
“I will kick off by paying tribute to local journalists: To the reporters working in small towns and big cities across this country, writing in newspapers and online, on radio and TV, podcasting and livestreaming to make sure Canadians know what’s up. We all know that journalists are essential to a healthy democracy,” said Clement, on the Senate floor. “You all know that Cornwall is my centre.
So, of course, this statement is also about Cornwall and how fortunate it is to have the Standard-Freeholder, the Seaway News, The Cornwall Seeker, Cornwall Newswatch, and On a Le Choix. Clement then highlighted the work of the Senate’s Black Justice Strategy before sharing her speaking with Sen. Margo Greenwood to acknowledge National Indigenous people’s Day, which falls just after the Canadian Parliament rises for the summer.
The team approach Clement admits readily she is only as strong as the team supporting her. Joined by her longtime colleagues senior parliamentary affairs adviser Katie Verhoeven; parliamentary affairs adviser Emma Meldrum, and Abderemane, Clement’s office is a collaborative affair. The team has travelled across Canada alongside the senator.
They support her work on the senate floor. They make sure her office runs smoothly. They even have a hand in selecting the stunning local and Canadian art that adorns the walls of their East Block office.
“It was a great privilege to see and meet with incarcerated Canadians,” says Meldrum. Meldrum highlighted how those trips were some of the hardest but most rewarding days in their time on the hill. It’s an ongoing effort.
During this summer’s recess the team will visit three prisons. “There is rage in this office some days,” says Meldrum. “But we rage together ...
it comes from caring.” Meldrum also explained that because their team never has to worry about re-election or partisan optics it’s able to give the issues of the day the focus and deliberation they deserve. Meldrum acknowledged the Senate of Canada is an old institution and it can be “riddled with obstacles.” Understanding the Senate Very few Canadians wake up every day and turn on the news, or check their phones and wonder, “what is happening in the Senate of Canada today?” Despite being hard coded into Canada’s political DNA, the Red Chamber, the body of sober second thought tends to exist in the background. Typically, when it’s on the minds of Canadians, it usually isn’t for the right reasons.
In 2014, Liberal Party of Canada Leader Justin Trudeau shocked the political class, and much of the country, when he declared, “there are no more Liberal senators.” This decision upended nearly a century and a half of precedent. Canada’s upper chamber began its shift away from a partisan legislative body. The ISG formed following the 2015 election.
As the ISG became the dominant force in the Senate, 11 senators split from the parliamentary group in 2019, forming the CSG as a coalition of former Conservative Party of Canada and independent senators. The Progressive Senate Group formed the same year. A small Conservative group still exists as a relic of the pre-independent era.
Just outside the Senate building, a bronze (?) statue of five women attracts tourists. It ultimately serves as the biggest reminder of the importance of advocacy in the Senate. There is rage in this office some days ...
But we rage together ... it comes from caring Emma Meldrum It was here that a group of women made Canadian and Commonwealth history through the Person’s Case. Prior to Oct.
18, 1929, women had remarkably fewer rights than men and couldn’t sit in the Senate or the House of Commons. Today, over half of the Senate is made up of women. The Senate doesn’t publish or track racialized data for its members (although they can choose to associate with various groups that highlight marginalized Canadian’s concerns).
Today’s Senate is far more representative of Canadian multiculturalism than it was the day Cairine Wilson, who also had connections to eastern Ontario, was first seated in the Red Chamber. This is the Senate that Clement is a part of. It isn’t your grandparent’s upper chamber.
