Yuan Yi Zhu: There are still thousands of jobs Carney can offer Conservative MPs

Prime Minister Mark Carney at the 2026 NATO Leaders Summit on July 8, 2026. Photo by Serdar Ozsoy /Getty Images

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Mark Carney has appointed four senators, thus checking off another rite of passage for prime ministers. Two of them — a medical researcher and a chartered professional accountant — are perfectly respectable worthies about whom little is known and nothing interesting can be said. The two other new senators, Tom Pitfield and Richard Martel, tell us much more about Canadian politics in 2026.

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First, let’s take Sen. Pitfield, son of the late Sen. Pitfield, one of those famously apolitical civil servants who somehow end up with a Liberal appointment the moment they leave the public service. Young Thomas, meanwhile, grew up as the playmate of Justin Trudeau, whose father his father served as Clerk of the Privy Council.

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Pitfield junior ended up as Trudeau junior’s digital strategist, before making himself indispensable to Carney as his principal secretary, overcoming the handicap of having belonged to Trudeau’s wedding party. Now he is rewarded by being elevated to the Senate, while his wife Anna Gainey continues to be a junior minister in Carney’s government. Not for nothing do they say that Canada is the world’s biggest village.

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But his appointment is being overshadowed — if Senate appointments can ever shadow something — by that of Richard Martel, Conservative MP for Chicoutimi— Le Fjord. Once a successful junior hockey league coach, Martel was recruited in 2017 as a star candidate and stormed a seat normally inaccessible for the Conservatives. He even served a term as Erin O’Toole’s Quebec lieutenant.

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But one got the impression that he did not enjoy life in opposition. When I was an advisor responsible for his portfolio, I could never get my emails returned, and shadow minister for sport isn’t really a demanding position. And since the Conservatives are looking as far from power as they have ever been, why not use his remaining decade of eligibility (he is 65; senators retire at 75) to do whatever it is that senators do?

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Of course, the reason why so many Conservatives are crying foul at his appointment is that Carney clearly decided that if Martel would not defect, he would become a sinecurist. There is little chance Chicoutimi returns another Tory MP, and every chance that the Liberals pick up the seat they held until Martel came into the picture. Ryan Alford, a law professor (and friend) even went so far as to argue that Carney was abusing the Royal prerogative by appointing an opposition MP for partisan gain.

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I disagree. Though Canadian prime ministers rarely appoint senators from the Opposition, it is not unheard of, nor is it beyond the constitutional pale to appoint your opponent to something to get their seat. In the early days of Confederation, it was not unknown for opposition MPs to become postmaster or collector of customs in this fashion. As to the Senate, didn’t Pierre Trudeau pick up another Quebec seat by kicking the Progressive Conservative MP Claude Wagner to the Senate? (Claude is the father of Chief Justice Richard Wagner — remember, Canada is a village).