Pierre Dalphond

Pierre Dalphond was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2018, representing Quebec. He came from a distinguished judicial career — he served as a judge of the Quebec Court of Appeal for many years and brought to the Senate a level of legal expertise that is genuinely valuable in a chamber whose primary function is to provide legislative review and sober second thought. Dalphond's Senate work has reflected his judicial background in productive ways. He has been active on bills involving criminal procedure, access to justice, judicial appointments, and constitutional questions — areas where his expertise allows him to engage with legislative text at a level of technical precision that most senators cannot match. He has been willing to propose amendments to legislation that he found legally problematic and to explain those amendments in substantive terms rather than simply political ones. His perspective as a Quebec francophone jurist also brings a civil law background to a Senate that is often dominated by common law assumptions — an important corrective given that one of Canada's two major legal traditions has its home in Quebec. The structural limitation — appointed by a prime minister, accountable to no electorate — applies here as elsewhere. But within the limits of an appointed chamber, having former senior judges who approach legislation with legal rigour rather than political instinct is one of the genuine arguments for the Senate's continued existence.