Pamela Wallin says it was just time to resign.
After 17 years sitting as a Saskatchewan senator in the chamber of sober second thought, she wanted to move on to other opportunities.
She said that, contrary to public perception, a senator’s duties are “24-7” and she needed time to figure out what comes next.
“You know when a job has come to an end and it’s time to move on in your own head and that’s just where I was,” Wallin, 73, told Blue Sky’s Leisha Grebinski.
“I have other things to do that I want to try.”
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Wallin has spent her adult life in the public eye.
Born in Moose Jaw, she was raised in Wadena, 222 kilometres northeast of Regina, before moving to Ontario where she spent 40 years in broadcast journalism, including hosting CTV’s Canada AM, working as that network’s first female bureau chief in Ottawa and co-anchoring CBC’s nightly national newscast Prime Time News.
She served as Consul General of Canada to New York after 9/11, appointed to the position by then-prime minister Jean Chrétien.
Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper appointed her to the Senate in 2008. Unlike her high-profile career in journalism, her time as a senator has been quieter, according to Greg Poelzer, a political scientist and professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
“I think she was one of the more quiet senators and not really known for making a big impact, say on advancing or supporting new legislation that came into law,” Poelzer told CBC’s Peter Mills on The 306.
Wallin’s time in the Senate was marred by her involvement in the 2013 Senate expense scandal.
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An audit determined Wallin improperly charged to the Senate about $140,000 in travel expenses related to her work on corporate boards.
Wallin repaid the money, plus interest, and said she had made a mistake in filing the paperwork.
Poelzer said Wallin was a vocal advocate in recent years for expanding access to Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) program.
Wallin’s mother had Alzheimer’s, and the former journalist wanted the program to expand and allow people in the early stages of the disease, and others like it, to be able to pre-authorize their medically assisted death.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser announced earlier this month that Ottawa will introduce legislation that would “open the door” for advance consent for MAID in situations where their disease will eventually impair a person’s capacity for consent.
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Wallin said the proposed expansion of MAID, something she’d spent 11 years fighting for, seemed like a good time to wrap up her time in the Senate.
“I’d given my final speech on that topic on the Wednesday evening,” Wallin said. “Some little tiny part of my brain said ‘take the win and move on.’”
Wallin’s resignation caught many, including Poelzer, by surprise. She still had nearly two years left before hitting the Senate’s mandatory retirement age of 75.
“Normally you would expect a person to complete the term,” Poelzer said.
“That’s the part that caught a lot of people by surprise, because she’s about 18 months, two years away from her term completing.”
Saskatchewan now has two vacant Senate seats: Wallin’s and the seat belonging to Todd Lewis, who died in July.
