On August 14, the Ukrainian Canadian community will lose one of its most effective parliamentarians when Sen. Raynell Andreychuk reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75.
Michelle Valberg
Raynell Andreychuk
To understand the idea of a mandatory retirement age for senators, one must also understand that the Canadian Senate is substantially different from the American one. In fact, it is modelled after the British House of Lords and is not elected, but appointed by the governor general (representing the queen of England in Canada) on the advice of the prime minister.
Labelled by Canada’s first Prime Minister John A. MacDonald as the chamber of “sober second thought,” the Senate was not meant to be more than a revising body or a brake on the House of Commons. Therefore, it was deliberately made an appointed house, since an elected Senate might prove too popular and too powerful and be able to block the will of the House of Commons, which is elected by popular vote with representation by population like the U.S. House of Representatives.
It is somewhat similar to the U.S. Senate in that it is based on regional representation, but unlike the U.S. Senate, each province does not have an equal number of seats. Instead it is divided into four regions (Ontario, Quebec, the first three Atlantic provinces and western Canada, each with 24 seats. Nine more seats were added later: Newfoundland and Labrador getting six seats when that fourth Atlantic province joined the Confederation in 1949, Yukon and the Northwest Territories getting one each in 1975, and Nunavut getting a third when it was created as a separate territory from the Northwest in 1999. But even on a regional basis, it is greatly disproportionate. The four western provinces with 31.55 percent of the population have 24 seats, while the four Atlantic ones with 6.65 percent have 30. British Columbia with 13.22 percent has six Senate seats, while New Brunswick with 2.13 percent has 10.
Sen. Andreychuk represents Saskatchewan, one of the four western provinces. She was appointed in 1993, becoming the first woman to be appointed from that province.
Prior to her Senate appointment, Sen. Andreychuk served as a lawyer, judge and chancellor of the University of Regina. She was named Canada’s high commissioner to Kenya and Uganda as well as ambassador to Somalia, the Comoros and Portugal. During the course of her diplomatic appointments, she also served as Canada’s representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and to the United Nations Environment Program, Habitat.
Although the Canadian Senate has limited powers and rarely initiates its own legislation, Sen. Andreychuk has utilized those powers to the fullest and has sponsored a number of bills in the Senate – especially when it came to issues of importance to the Ukrainian community. She introduced the resolution on the Holodomor Ukrainian Famine-Genocide in the Senate, which was adopted on June 19, 2003. She also sponsored Bill C-459 in the Senate, which established a Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor) Memorial Day and recognized the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 as an act of genocide. Sen. Andreychuk sponsored Bill S-226, which enacted the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) in Canada on October 18, 2017. This act enables the Government of Canada to impose sanctions against perpetrators of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
Sen. Andreychuk was a member and chair of the Canada-Ukraine Legislative Project following Ukraine’s independence and held the position of vice-chair of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group. At the request of the government of Canada, she has led four election observer missions to Ukraine.
Sen. Andreychuk served as Honorary Chair of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress 75th Anniversary Commemoration of Holodomor activities in Canada, and as honorary patron of the Kobzar Literary Award established by the Shevchenko Foundation. She furthered her work with the community as a director of the Canada-Ukraine Center and as a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Business and Professional Club.
As a part of her international commitments, Sen. Andreychuk served as chair of the Ukraine-NATO Interparliamentary Council (UNIC) of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Sen. Andreychuk was awarded Ukraine’s Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise for her substantial contribution in the development of Ukrainian-Canadian relations. She is also a recipient of the Ukrainian World Congress St. Volodymyr the Great Medal, the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations’ Woman of Distinction Award, the Ukrainian Nation Builders Award, the Taras Shevchenko Medal and a Special Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association of Calgary.
All of the above awards bear testimony to the remarkable record of achievement Sen. Andreychuk has attained during her more than a quarter century of service in the Senate. It is a record for which the Ukrainian community is most grateful.
Marco Levytsky may be contacted at [email protected].