Hon. Sharon Carstairs:

Honourable senators, there is a cartoon in my office depicting me in full teacher mode with a caption reading, "Class dismissed." It was published the day after I resigned as leader of the Liberal Party in Manitoba.

Well, the time has come for me once again to say, "Class dismissed," but I cannot do it without giving one more lecture. When I leave this place today, colleagues, it will be to mail a letter to the Governor General indicating my decision to retire from the Senate, effective at 11:59, Monday, October 17. This means that this will be my last day in this chamber and my last speech. I have never particularly liked our system of tributes, so I have chosen this way, and I ask you to respect that request. Do not do tributes now or at any time in the future.

However, before I get into some aspects of the Speech from the Throne, I do want to thank some people who have gathered here today.

My husband, John, and I celebrated 45 years of marriage this summer.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Senator Carstairs: He has always been the wind beneath my wings, urging me to soar higher and higher. It was John who said, when we were looking for a leader of the Liberal Party in Manitoba and I was doing the usual political thing and looking for leaders, "Just do it yourself," so he is to blame for my political career.

Having then put me in that position, he proceeded to become my fundraiser, both within my own particular constituency and for the entire provincial party. He held very tight controls, so that at the end of each campaign, not only did I have money in my constituency account but the party had money in its account as well.

However, my very favourite picture of my husband, John, is one showing him on a very high ladder, hanging signs at the convention in 1984. What others did not know, but I did, was that he is afraid of heights. In addition, I knew that he had hired every single ladder of a certain height and above in the entire city of Winnipeg, so that my signs would hang higher than those of my three opponents. Honourable senators, I would suggest to you that this is not just love or dedication; it is also political sagacity.

John and I met on a quiz program, both of us representing the Young Liberals of Alberta, and were married six months later. I think it is fair to say it was a marriage made in politics. I attended my very first political meeting at the age of 6, and John worked his first campaign at the age of 16, so both of us have had 63 years in politics, or a total of 126 years.

It was John who encouraged me to come to this place. My father had been here, as many of you know, for 25 years, and I had noticed my parents drifting apart, with one mainly in Halifax and the other mainly in Ottawa. I was not prepared to live that way, so, as many of you know, when I am in Ottawa, so too is John. With my husband today are our daughters Catherine, a professor at the University of Guelph, and Jennifer, a high school teacher in Toronto. They are accompanied by their husbands, our sons by marriage, Greg and Paul. All four of them are doers and givers, and we are very proud of them. We also love them very much.

Sylvie Lalande has been my assistant for my entire time here in this chamber. Competent, capable and always willing to go the extra mile, Sylvie and her family have become part of my extended family, and I cherish them all. None of us accomplishes anything on our own, and it is through the active participation of wonderful staff that we are able to do what we do, and I thank her from the bottom of my heart. I have known her daughters, Natassia and Alexandra, since they were 7 and 4, respectively, and both have worked in my office as summer students. Both fluently bilingual, they are the future of this country, and with them, our country is in good hands.

Michelle Macdonald, another essential member of my staff, first worked with the Liberal caucus in Manitoba, and upon the recommendation of the late Senator Gildas Molgat, I hired her. Michelle had been chief page here in the Senate, and when her service was completed, she came to Manitoba with her husband, who had accepted a position with the Department of National Defence. Upon my appointment, I invited her to come with me to Ottawa. I knew that her husband wanted to complete his Ph.D. at Carleton University, and it was a perfect fit for both of us. She started as a researcher but became my Chief of Staff both while I was Deputy Leader of the Government and later as Leader. When she decided to move to her beloved P.E.I. after I left cabinet, she continued to work for me as a consultant. Michelle thinks and writes like me, and although she would quickly point out that I never give a speech exactly as she writes it, she has been the spirit of much that I have done. I would like to clone her, actually, to replace me here, but I do not think I would get her to leave her boat or her beloved island. She knows how deeply I care for both her and her husband, Jay.

Vince MacNeil is also in the gallery. Vince was my senior legislative assistant when I was minister and now serves in the other place in the whip's office. He and Michelle were a mighty procedural team, and I remain grateful for his encyclopedic knowledge of the rules of this and the other place.

More recently, I have been well served by Brian Head, my eyes and ears in Manitoba at all times when I am here. Like me, he is a teacher by profession and sees the world through teacher's eyes with a constant look to the next and future generations. Like all the above mentioned, he is a good friend, and I am deeply grateful for all of their service.

Also here today is Shelly Cory. Shelly first served in the Liberal caucus in Manitoba as a legislative intern and later was in charge of my ministerial staff in Winnipeg. It was Shelly who found the money for the funding of the Canadian Virtual Hospice, an Internet site that receives over 1,000 hits a day and assists patients and their families as well as medical personnel to deal with death and dying issues. Today, she is their executive director, which, in my view, is entirely appropriate. She is here with her partner, Paul, and their son, Aidan Patrick Sean Cory McKinstry, who, despite all of the honours that I have been given over the years, has given me the highest honour of all because John and I do not have any biological grandchildren and Aidan calls me "Grandma Sharon." His adoption of us and us of him is very, very special.

I had only been in the Senate for two years when I became the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and broke the tradition that only a lawyer could serve in this position. I had the great fortune of having Dr. Heather Lank as my clerk. From her, I learned to respect and admire the professionalism of the staff who serve us so very well. There are many of them who give themselves to us in countless capacities, and they all deserve our respect, whether it is those who serve us in the cafeteria or dining room, hang our pictures, move our furniture — and for me, that has been six moves in 17 years — fix our computers, do our travel claims, deliver our mail, serve us here in the chamber as reporters and translators, those who serve as table officers and the clerks of our committees, and those who provide us with our security. I want to thank each and every one of them.

The pages have always been very special to me. They are my connection to my first career — my profession — and I have enjoyed all of my moments with them, either editing their journal "Pages of Reflection," conducting the yearly seminar on procedure, and the daily interactions here on the floor. I am delighted that the procedural seminar that I had done for many years has now been taken on by Senator Cordy and that Senator Martin has agreed to take over the editing of the pages' journal.

I do not intend to mention individual senators because there is always the danger of missing someone important, but I must make one exception. When I became Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien asked me whom I would like as a deputy leader. I told him Senator Fernand Robichaud.

When he called Senator Robichaud and asked if he would accept the position, thinking of course as prime ministers do that he would get an automatic acceptance, Senator Robichaud replied that he would have to check with me. The Prime Minister told him to do it quickly.

That is but one example of the remarkable support Senator Robichaud gave me each and every day I served in this role. Never did a leader have greater support than what I was afforded. I will not be here when he retires, so I want him to know that I treasure the years we have worked together. We were, in my view, a very special team.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Senator Carstairs: Honourable senators, in the Speech from the Throne, the government again made reference to Senate reform. I think we need to look seriously at Senate reform. It is inappropriate in today's day and age that we should sit in the Senate for potentially up to 35 years or more. I urge us to look seriously at term limits. I could, as you know, remain until 2017. I have chosen not to do that. At the same time, I urge us to proceed with caution.

I would be remiss not to speak in my closing remarks about how important this institution has been to me for the last 17 years and why I urge caution about any changes we make to it.

I first came to the Senate at the age of 13, obviously not as a senator but as the daughter of a senator, and I attended my first Speech from the Throne in a seat at the back of the chamber. I watched with wonder during the summer of 1959, when I was 17, because the Senate sat that summer. I would watch scaffolding going up in the outside corridors, only to find that it would be removed a couple of weeks later and a new sculpture would have emerged. Sometimes it was a rabbit, sometimes a Cupid, sometimes a beaver; but it was a wonderful experience to go through the corridors and watch the building still unfolding back in 1959.

I used to go and visit the library. In those days, by the way, they had all the best-sellers, so you could go in and get them to read.

Many things have changed, particularly security. I had a younger sister in tow at that time and I would chase her down the corridors, and no one ever intervened. No one ever intervened when I tried to enter or leave the building. In fact, no one even intervened when I took my father's car and managed to drive it between two black Cadillacs and smashed into both of them. Some things have remained the same, but others, of course, have clearly changed.

Within days of my appointment in September of 1994, I was asked to join the Special Senate Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. I had not even been sworn into the Senate but was already attending the meetings of the committee. We were undertaking a study that I believe would not have been possible in the other place because of the sensitive nature of this work.

What an incredible experience it was for a newly appointed senator. What an incredible group of role models there were in the other members of that committee. Senator Joan Neiman, who was the chair, was assisted by Senator Thérèse Lavoie-Roux as deputy chair. Other members were Senators Beaudoin, Corbin, DeWare, Keon and finally me. It was the Senate at its finest — no partisanship, but fierce debate conducted with intellectual rigour.

Senator Neiman had lost her sister through a very painful death, but despite her strong feelings, she exemplified impartiality as the chair. Senator Beaudoin insisted on a lexicon, and the definitions were so clear — after, I must say, a great deal of hard work — that our report, entitled Of Life and Death, is still used in medical schools throughout the world.

Senator Keon was absolutely essential to the study because of his knowledge of medical issues, but this committee had its own pathos. We knew that Senator Lavoie-Roux was struggling, only later to learn of her battle with Alzheimer's, yet she gave this committee all of her energy and her hard work, and the report reflects her very fine mind.

Senator DeWare's husband had a massive heart attack during our study, and she took the time to go back to New Brunswick to look after him. In her own ethical way, she refused to list any of these days as anything other than private business. She paid a penalty as a result, a financial penalty, but it was a mark of her incredible integrity. I learned from her how a senator should behave.

She was replaced on the committee by Senator Noël Desmarais, who in the midst of our deliberations on assisted suicide and euthanasia was diagnosed with terminal cancer and who was a living example of the very importance of our report, particularly our recommendations with respect to palliative care.

We came only to unanimous conclusions about the fact that Canadians were not dying well. They were often in intractable pain, hooked up to machines they did not want to be attached to, receiving treatment they did not choose. This led me on a journey to support the growth of palliative care in Canada, a cause that remains my passion — work that I do not believe I could have done in any other legislative chamber.

Honourable senators, from the workload on euthanasia and assisted suicide, I came to the Senate and I requested that we do a special study on palliative care. That led to the report Quality End-of-Life Care: The Right of Every Canadian, which we tabled in 2000. I used Senate resources to table additional reports on palliative care in 2005 and 2010. This work also led to my urging the Senate to study aging, and we tabled a report in 2009, Embracing the Challenge of Aging.

Honourable senators, I would suggest that this work was uniquely suited to this place, and I would suggest that it is the very nature of this place that allowed me to dedicate many hours to these files. No member of Parliament has the time to do this kind of work, and therefore we must be cautious to not turn this place into a mirror image of the place down the way. We have different roles and, I believe, important ones.

I deeply regret, for example, that there are no special studies being undertaken at this time, and I would urge all of you to consider a special study on volunteerism, or a special study on the needs of our Aboriginal children.

It was the Senate that afforded me the opportunity to co-found, together with Margaret Newall, the Prairieaction Foundation. As a result of this foundation, $8 million has been raised to fund family violence research in the Prairie provinces at every university in the Prairie provinces and to fund pilot projects based on this research.

For seven years, I had the opportunity to represent parliamentarians throughout the world as a member, and for a time chair, of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians. At the last meeting in April of this year at which I was a member, we heard representations from or on behalf of over 300 parliamentarians from 37 countries. Some had been murdered; others had disappeared from the face of the earth; still others had been tortured or denied their right to free speech, within their parliament or outside.

This work took about three months of my time each year. Again, it would be extremely difficult for an MP to do, yet it is very important for Canadian parliamentarians to participate in this work. It is no accident that the two permanent members of this committee from Canada have both had seats in this chamber.

Honourable senators, we do good work, but it is frequently not the same kind of work that they do in the other place. I urge caution. I believe there will be unintended consequences of the changes this government proposes, and I believe they will not be in the best interests of our great country. To have two chambers with identical mandates chosen in identical ways would be unworthy of our nation.

Honourable senators, I bid you farewell. Keep healthy and happy and continue to put your country ahead of politics. You make this place a special place and a country to be admired around the world.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Recent Statements from Liberal Senators