Senator
Turner, the new party leader and prime minister, recommended him for appointment to the Senate where he became Leader of the Government in the Senate. Although he was only in this position briefly, as Turner lost the 1984 election, he started the practice of allowing opposition senators to chair a number of committees, a practice that continues today.
From 1984 to 1991 he served as leader of the opposition in the Senate, where he was regarded as the primary opposition to Brian Mulroney's first term due to Mulroney's substantial majority in the Commons, with an opposition that was spread nearly equally between Turner's Liberals and Ed Broadbent's New Democratic Party. In 1988, after a request by Turner, MacEachen blocked the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in the Senate to force an election before the issue was settled. The agreement would be the main issue of the 1988 election. After Mulroney's victory, MacEachen and the Senate passed the agreement.
After the election, MacEachen again used the Senate to block the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax. Brian Mulroney recommended for appointment several new senators, and used an emergency power in the Constitution Act, 1867 that allowed him to recommend for appointment eight new Senators. MacEachen then led a filibuster against the bill, with Liberal members defying speaker Guy Charbonneau. Charbonneau voted for Tory motions. The Liberal senators used other tactics to delay Senate business. Soon, the motion was passed, and the Progressive Conservative majority passed new rules for the Senate forbidding such actions.
MacEachen retired from the Senate in 1996 upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75, and became a one-dollar-per-year adviser to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Further controversy ensued in 1998 when it was discovered he was still using a full Senate office.
Read more about this topic: Allan MacEachen
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