OTTAWA – To hear his new colleagues tell it, swearing in Eugene Whelan two weeks ago as a senator was like letting the fox enter the chicken coop and then locking the gate behind him.
The former Liberal agriculture minister and longtime opponent of the Senate was sworn in as the newest senator at the end of September. Senator #Whelan took his front-row government seat to the sound of some good-natured ribbing.
“We know that our new colleague has had a few doubts about the Senate over the years but that will pass,” said Alberta Liberal senator and government Senate House Leader Joyce Fairbairn. “There is no one more zealous than a true convert and I sense that spirit is already moving him.”
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She praised him as “a symbol of encouragement and understanding throughout rural Canada” during his 12 years as agriculture minister.
Conservative Senator John Lynch-Staunton was not so kind.
He quoted extensively from Whelan’s autobiography in which the former Senate skeptic criticized former Liberal icons Paul Martin and Keith Davey for taking Senate appointments.
In 1984, prime minister Pierre Trudeau offered Whelan a Senate appointment. It was refused.
“I wasn’t going to behave like some broken-down horse that’s put out to pasture,” Whelan wrote in his book.
The Conservative senator read it into the record as a background to Whelan’s inevitable conversion to a Senate supporter, now that he is on the payroll.
Last week, as Whelan took his Senate seat for a two-and-a-half year appointment, he had to listen to those words being read.
Later, he was unrepentant. He said he will answer some of his critics when he gives his first speech in the Senate.
Considered an opportunity
“I’m surprised they can read,” Whelan laughed about his detractors. “It is a new venture, a three-year sentence that I hope I can make a contribution … it offers some good possibilities to inquire, to dig, to make presentations. You can do all kinds of things.”
Whelan clearly was thrilled by his return to Parliament Hill.
He left in 1984 after a 22-year career as an MP, a dozen of those as agriculture minister, when he was dropped as agriculture minister by transitional Liberal prime minister John Turner.
He was then appointed Canada’s first ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome but that was cancelled by the new Conservative government as an example of Liberal patronage.
Whelan still seethes about those two firings and found his return to Parliament Hill and the Liberal caucus last week as a vindication.
“I find it something of a reprieve, after being fired by John Turner and after being fired by Joe Clark,” he said in an interview. “I will mention that in there when the time comes.”
With his return to Parliament, Whelan becomes part of a unique family political combination.
With his daughter Susan as a rookie MP from his old Essex-Windsor riding, the Whelans become the first father-daughter combination in the 129-year history of the Canadian Parliament.
