Senator Yuen Pau Woo

Honourable senators, when Brent Cotter was named to the Senate in 2020, the late senator Murray Sinclair said to me:

Cotter is the pre-eminent authority on legal ethics in Canada. We should do everything we can to recruit him as a member of the ISG.

Such is the esteem with which Senator Cotter is held by his peers that he landed in our chamber with an aura and great expectations. He did not disappoint. In less than five years, Senator Cotter has chalked up a record on statements, bills, motions and inquiries, as well as service to the Senate.

He did the best that he could, which is better than most of us can hope for. That he accomplished so much during a time when the work of the Senate was reduced to a crawl because of COVID is even more impressive.

Senator Cotter plunged headlong into the work of the Senate and did not let a pandemic get in the way of that. In fact, he drove to Ottawa to attend several of our hybrid sittings. I was especially grateful for his presence because it was a bit lonely in the chamber with our reduced numbers. He participated actively in discussions on how to manage the uncharted territory that the Senate found itself in — from extraordinary budget measures to the rules around hybrid sittings and the use of the Emergencies Act.

He made learned, thoughtful and principled contributions on these bills and made a deep impression on his colleagues, starting with me.

Brent was a team player and a highly valued member of the Independent Senators Group, or ISG. He worked closely with the late senator Judith Keating to pilot an approach to the non‑partisan, horizontal analysis of legislation, starting with Bill C-3 on the Judges Act and Bill C-7 on medical assistance in dying. They did such a good job that the ISG has institutionalized the practice of “legislative leads” on all bills, where ISG senators take responsibility for research and share their findings with other members.

Senator Cotter had been a senator for barely nine months when he took on this task, and he hit a home run on his first inning. Now, I say “home run,” but I could have used any number of other sports metaphors that Brent is fond of — whether it is curling, football or hockey. You may recall a story about how he was under the impression that he had had a very good score on a game of golf he played many years before. That score got better and better as his memory of the game became more distant, until he was reunited with the scorecard for that game, which showed a number that was rather less flattering.

I suspect Brent was being modest in his retelling of this story and that he is a better golfer than he is letting on, but that is the self-deprecating Brent Cotter that we have come to know and admire. He starts many of his speeches with a caveat about offering just a few “observations.” He then proceeds to dazzle us with his deep knowledge of the law, extensive experience in the administration of justice and his commitment to human decency.

Brent, your Senate scorecard is at the master’s level, and no amount of modesty can diminish the genuine, substantial and wide-ranging contribution that you have made to our institution.

You are a cotter pin. Those of you who know cotter pins understand that this is a humble a piece of hardware that holds together important pieces of machinery. Our cotter pin has moral clarity, intelligence, wit and wisdom — not to puff himself up but to join people and ideas so that they work well together. We need cotter pins not only in machines but also in the machinery of life. We even need them in the Senate of Canada, which is why we will miss our friend and colleague Senator Cotter so dearly.

Brent, thank you for your outsized contribution to the Senate. I wish you a happy and healthy retirement.