Lower than two weeks after turning into a non-affiliated member of Canada’s Senate, New Brunswick Sen. David Adams Richards elected to hitch the Conservative Social gathering of Canada’s caucus in Parliament’s Higher Home this week.
The 74-year-old declined an interview with Nationwide Put up, however an emailed assertion illustrated an apparent frustration with each Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Social gathering of Canada.
“For years, so most of the issues I and others had about our nation have been dismissed by an insular, self-absorbed authorities, with an virtually blind indifference to unusual women and men,” wrote Richards, an award-winning and celebrated Canadian author.
“Now the Liberals are insisting on insurance policies that sure senators pleaded for and who have been so typically ridiculed and refused.”
Richards didn’t elaborate on particular insurance policies, however Conservative chief Pierre Poilievre mentioned throughout the latest federal election marketing campaign that Carney and the Liberals have been
“plagiarizing” concepts from the Tory platform.
In an announcement posted to X, Sen. Leo Housakos, newly acclaimed Chief of the Opposition within the Senate, welcomed Richards to a gaggle “that’s dwelling to various opinions and wholesome debate, consensus and cooperation, grounded in common sense rules and dedicated to the essential work of a sturdy and wholesome opposition.”
BREAKING 🚨
“The Honourable Leo Housakos, Chief of the Opposition within the Senate, is happy to welcome Senator David Adams Richards to the Conservative Senate Caucus.”
“The honorable Leo Housakos, chief of the opposition within the Senate, is completely satisfied to welcome Senator David Adams… pic.twitter.com/34HtgrN78A
— Senator Leo Housakos (@SenatorHousakos) June 3, 2025
Right here’s what to learn about Richards.
Richards the author
Born in 1950, Richards was raised in New Fortress, N.B., a suburb of Miramichi, the place his dad and mom operated an area film theatre.
He’s married to Peggy McIntyre, with whom he has two sons, John Thomas and Anton Richards.
Whereas his first revealed work after finding out literature and philosophy at St. Thomas College within the early Nineteen Seventies was a small ebook of poems, Richards turned an acclaimed Canadian novelist with 16 titles on his resume, together with six non-fiction books and two collections of brief tales.
His writings have been translated into 12 languages and are a part of the curriculum of Canadian and U.S. universities, in accordance with
In a mode mentioned to be influenced by the likes of Leo Tolstoy and in comparison with William Blake, his fiction work is usually set within the Miramichi Valley the place he grew up and the characters are impressed by the lives and experiences of its poor and working-class folks.
“By way of the characters of his fictionalized Miramichi, David Adams Richards explores conflicts between households with lengthy group histories, the long-term penalties of errors in judgment, the complexity of constructing ethical decisions, and humanity’s unlucky willingness to recollect faults prior to virtues,” per his
bio within the Canadian Encyclopedia.
Richards has been a writer-in-residence at a number of universities and schools throughout Canada, three of which have awarded him honorary doctorates — the College of New Brunswick (1995), Mount Allison College in Sackville (2008), and St. Thomas College in Fredericton (1990). He acquired the identical honour from the Atlantic Faculty of Theology in 2010.
In 1998, he turned one among simply three Canadian writers to win a Governor Basic’s Literary Award in each fiction and non-fiction for Nights Beneath Station Avenue (1988) and Strains on the Water: A Fisherman’s Life on the Miramichi (1998). Writers Laura G. Salverson and Hugh MacLennan are the others. In the meantime, his 1993 fiction novel For These Who Hunt the Wounded Down and 2007’s The Misplaced Freeway have been additionally nominated for the federal government honour.
In 2000, his Mercy Among the many Youngsters was a co-winner of the Giller Prize together with Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, the one time two recipients have shared the honour in its 31-year historical past. Misplaced Freeway and The Buddies of Meager Fortune (2006) have been each longlisted for the Giller.
Richards has additionally been awarded two Gemini Awards for scriptwriting (Small Items and For These Who Hunt the Wounded Down), the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence within the Arts, the Canadian Authors Affiliation Award for his novel Night Snow Will Deliver Such Peace, the 2011 Matt Cohen Award for a distinguished lifetime of contribution to Canadian literature and the Canada-Australia Literary Prize.
He’s a member of the Order of New Brunswick (2005) and the Order of Canada (2009).
Richards the Senator
When
first appointed to the Senate by Trudeau in 2017
, two years after the then-prime minister established the Unbiased Advisory Board for Senate Appointments to make the Higher Home much less partisan, Richards joined the comparatively new Unbiased Senators Group (ISG).
The cohort had come collectively the yr prior, not as a political get together, however to work collectively on procedural and administrative issues, and had shortly grown to be the most important group within the Senate at 43 members.
Its measurement is what led to his departure to sit down as a non-affiliated senator.
“There was definitely a leaning towards authorities payments which I believed at sure instances I didn’t fully help,” he advised Jason VandenBeukel in
an interview for his doctoral thesis in political science from the College of Toronto.
“And so I made a decision I will likely be an impartial and are available to my very own conclusions about issues.”
At this time I used to be happy to preside over the swearing-in of the Hon. David Adams Richards to the @SenateCA. Welcome to the Higher Chamber. #Senca pic.twitter.com/OGs3Z3i2fB
— George Furey (@GeorgeFureyNL) September 19, 2017
In November 2019, he was one of many founding members of the brand new Canadian Senators Group (CSG), which was established partially to handle centralization throughout the Senate, notably within the ISG, and to bolster senators’ roles as regional representatives.
He remained with the second-largest ensemble within the higher home till Might 21 this yr, when he left to once more sit as a non-affiliated member. He’s the one Liberal-appointed Senator to have joined the Conservative caucus, which now counts 12
s
enators.
As of Thursday, ISG leads the way in which with 45 members, CSG follows with 21, the Progressive Senator Group has 18, and there are eight non-affiliated. There’s one emptiness — the seat left behind upon Don Plet’s
necessary retirement on the age of 75 earlier final month.
He’ll quickly be joined in retirement by Richards, who turns 75 on Oct. 17.
Within the Senate, Richards has been vital of Trudeau’s Liberal authorities at instances, notably relating to Payments C-11, the On-line Streaming Act, and C-22, Ottawa’s controversial firearms laws.
On the latter, in June of 2023,
to lament Canadians being lectured “by a authorities that assumes and presupposes a superior ethical nature in opposition to sure members of its personal citizenry, and acts with uppity condescension towards so many who’ve completed no improper, suspecting them — with out proof — of issues they might not do, whereas being unable to cease those that will proceed to do improper regardless of the laws they constantly and tiresomely suggest.”
He voted in opposition to it, however C-21 would obtain royal assent in December.
As for the On-line Streaming Act, he referred to as it “censorship passing as nationwide inclusion” after which learn from an essay explaining the way it places freedom of speech and thought underneath menace.
“This isn’t opening the gate to greatness however solely to compliance,”
he mentioned.
“The writers I do know don’t must advance to suit an agenda, and neither do the songwriters or bloggers. When this invoice mentions how now we have developed, it’s merely a suggestion to conform.”
It, too, acquired Royal Assent.
Years earlier, it wasn’t laws that Richards fervently spoke out in opposition to; it was how the uninformed vernacular utilized by U.S. hockey play-by-play broadcasters was altering how their Canadian counterparts name a recreation.
Studying from an announcement, he mentioned gamers don’t put on jerseys, they put on sweaters, they usually put them on within the dressing room, not the locker room. There’s no such factor as a half wall, he insisted, it’s simply the boards. And don’t name it a slapper, it’s a slapshot.
“These odious phrases are all momentary innovations by American play-by-play announcers who’ve by no means performed or understood the sport, and worse, virtually sacrilegious, haven’t any respect for tens of millions of Canadians who do perceive and love the sport. Sayings now adopted by Canadians who haven’t any sense of custom,” Richards mentioned.
“The very first thing misplaced is the sport’s important genius.”
Rex Murphy: Trudeau-appointed senator will get it proper in condemning authorities censorship
https://nationalpost.com/information/politics/canadian-senator-takes-shots-at-odious-american-hockey-commentators
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