Regrouping in the Senate of Canada
Scott Tannas was the person elected during Alberta’s 2012 Senate nominee elections. He was appointed to the Upper Chamber as a member of the Conservative Party of Canada by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2013. On November 4, 2019, he joined the Canadian Senators Group and has served as its interim leader since that time.
Following the introduction of a new application process for the Senate which introduced a large number of non-partisan appointees to the Red Chamber, a group of Independent Senators formed a caucus called the Independent Senators Group (ISG) in 2016. Later joined by Senators who had previously been a part of either the Liberal or Conservative caucuses, the ISG soon grew so large that other caucuses of independent Senators formed, including the Canadian Senators Group (CSG) and Progressive Senate Group (PSG). In this article, the author explains how this process unfolded and why he believes the new independent caucuses in the upper chamber are fundamental for the Senate to exercise unwhipped, unvarnished, and unimpeded sober second thought.