CALGARY - One of Alberta's senators-in-waiting is waiting no longer.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in Calgary on Tuesday that he has signed the order in council officially appointing Bert Brown to Canada's upper chamber.
Brown, a property development consultant, will take the place of Liberal Senator Dan Hays -- who has said he will retire by the end of June -- when Parliament resumes this fall.
Harper, a proponent of Senate reform, first made the announcement last April that he would give the Hays opening to an elected senator.
Brown took the most votes in Alberta's third Senate election in 2004. The farmer from Kathyrn, Alta., has spent 20 years working for Senate reform and once plowed the message "Triple E Senate or Else'' into his neighbour's barley field.
"I remember I called Bert the day that we learned Senator Hays was going to step down and I had never heard Bert speechless before,'' Harper said Tuesday night in a speech at Calgary's Heritage Park, where he was host of a Calgary Stampede barbecue.
"You've got a big job on your hands. I don't know what else to say to someone charged with fixing the Senate. But I know you've been at this a long time. You've got the support of the people, you deserve the position and we all wish you the best.''
The prime minister also took some shots at the current unelected Senate, referring to it as a "dysfunctional Liberal organization'' and complaining it was holding up a number of Conservative law and order bills, including raising the legal age of sexual consent from 14 to 16.
Harper said his government has also been unsuccessful in passing legislation shortening the terms of senators from a maximum of 45 years to a maximum of eight.
