Congratulations to New Senators
Honourable senators, it is my pleasure, on behalf of the Independent Senators Group, to extend a very warm welcome to our new colleagues, Senator William Brent Cotter representing Saskatchewan and Senator Judith Keating from New Brunswick.
With these appointments, the Senate is inching ever closer to gender parity. We now have 48 female senators and 52 male senators.
Senators Keating and Cotter have been leaders in advancing reconciliation in Canada. In New Brunswick, Senator Keating was the provincial Chair of the Working Group on Truth and Reconciliation. Senator Cotter, in turn, is a member of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada Advisory Committee on Implementation of Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. He is also a former Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs in Saskatchewan.
Senators Keating and Cotter have had distinguished careers in law. Each has served as their respective province’s Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General. Senator Keating is a pioneer in the legal field. She was the founder of New Brunswick’s Women in Law and the first woman to be New Brunswick’s Deputy Minister of Justice. In 2002, she was appointed Queen’s Counsel.
Senator Keating was also the 2015 recipient of the Muriel Corkery-Ryan Q.C. Award of the Canadian Bar Association’s New Brunswick branch, granted to recognize the outstanding contributions of an individual to the profession.
Senator Cotter is a leading scholar in the field of legal ethics in Canada. He was awarded the Canadian Bar Association of Saskatchewan’s distinguished service award, the Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan as well as the Saskatchewan Centennial Medal.
Senators Cotter and Keating, we welcome you to the Senate family, and we welcome your families to the broader Senate community. As you work long hours and deal with weighty and arduous matters, their support will be so important to you, as we know support is so important to all of us here. We look forward to working with you as colleagues and friends in the years ahead.