Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first Senate appointments include one of his most senior advisers and a Conservative MP as he pushes to restore some partisan voices to an upper house that has been largely devoid of them for the last decade.

The move is already sending shockwaves through the Senate chamber as Carney signals he’s taking a step back from former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s decade-long experiment of stacking the Red Chamber with almost exclusively nonpartisan figures.

Tom Pitfield, who served on Carney’s 2025 campaign team and then became a principal secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, is one of the new appointees.