Senator Simons: When will that be?

Hon. Paula Simons: Honourable senators, my question is for the Government Representative in the Senate.

Today’s events have me feeling nostalgic. Our colleague Richard Neufeld retired from the Senate in November 2019. British Columbia has been short one senator ever since, leaving the province of 5.25 million people with only five senators in the chamber for two and a half years now.

Alberta, my province, currently has only four senators to represent 4.75 million people. Indeed, we haven’t had a full complement of six senators from my province since April 2020, which was two years ago.

In all, we have 15 Senate vacancies right across the country. With the retirement this week of Senator Mercer, that’s about to be 16.

But because Alberta and British Columbia have such large populations relative to their allotted Senate seats, vacancies there hit that much harder, leaving our two most western provinces uniquely and peculiarly disadvantaged by long-standing Senate vacancies.

I ask a question that I am sure many of us have: Can you give us any sense of when we might welcome new colleagues, particularly new western colleagues, to our chamber and can you tell us what we are waiting for?