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Canada deserves to know.
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Canadian senators are appointed, not elected. The Governor General formally appoints them on the advice of the Prime Minister, to serve until age 75. Since 2016, the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments has vetted candidates and recommended names on a non-partisan basis, and the majority of senators now sit in the Independent Senators Group or other non-caucus groupings rather than as members of a party caucus. The Senate has nearly identical legislative powers to the House of Commons — it must pass a bill in identical form for it to become law, and it can propose amendments — with two key limits: it cannot originate money (taxation or spending) bills, and by convention it defers to the elected House on matters of clear democratic mandate. The Senate rarely defeats government bills outright; its modern role is "sober second thought" — detailed study, amendment, and the occasional high-profile stand, as with the Bill C-9 amendment this site covered. Eligibility requirements (a $4,000 property qualification, residency in the province represented, age 30+) are constitutional holdovers from 1867.
After a bill passes the House of Commons, it goes to the Senate, where the same six-stage process plays out — first reading, second reading, committee, report stage, third reading. The Senate has the constitutional power to amend or reject most legislation. In practice, the modern convention is that the Senate rarely defeats government bills outright but routinely amends them at committee — and the success rate of Senate amendments at re-passing the House is materially below 50 percent. This article walks the procedural mechanics, the modern conventions, and the cases where Senate amendments have actually changed the law.
On June 2026 (date varies by source), the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights voted 4-3 (with one abstention) to amend Bill C-9 — the federal Combatting Hate Act — to add a new criminal offence of "residential school denialism." The amendment defines the offence as willfully promoting hatred against Indigenous peoples by "condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada" or by "misrepresenting facts relating to it." Maximum penalty: two years imprisonment. The amendment passed committee with one dissent from Senator Patti LaBoucane-Benson (a Métis senator who sought more consultation with Indigenous leaders) and an abstention. The amended bill now moves to Senate report stage and third reading, with the first possible third-reading date being June 3, 2026. If the Senate passes the amended bill, it returns to the House of Commons for consideration of the Senate amendments before any possibility of Royal Assent. This article quotes the amendment text verbatim, walks the existing Criminal Code section 319(2) "wilfully promoting hatred" framework into which the new language inserts, and analyzes the Charter section 2(b) "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression" concerns — anchored on the Supreme Court of Canada's 1992 ruling in *R v Zundel*, [1992] 2 SCR 731, which struck down the false-news provision (section 181 of the Criminal Code) on Charter grounds. The "misrepresenting facts" language in the new amendment maps closely to the language *Zundel* found unconstitutional. The article also notes the Catholic Civil Rights League's objection (the residential school system was operated in large part by Catholic religious orders, so "justifying" or "condoning" could implicate sermons and pastoral discussions), Senator LaBoucane-Benson's Indigenous-consultation concern, and the honest qualifiers — including the documented historical harm of the residential school system and the legitimate goal of preventing anti-Indigenous hate propaganda.