OTTAWA -
Broadcaster Mike Duffy, his former colleague Pamela Wallin and Olympic hero Nancy Greene are among 18 Conservatives headed to the Senate in Stephen Harper's biggest volley of patronage since he became prime minister.
A fixture on Parliament Hill for decades, Duffy hosted what proved to be the last instalment of his daily political talk-show on CTV last week.
Wallin was also a prominent figure at CTV and CBC before being named consul-general to New York by the former Liberal government.
Greene helped break the European stranglehold on downhill skiing by winning a gold medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics. She was named Canada's female athlete of the 20th century in a vote by Canadian Press members.
The B.C. athletic icon will take a seat in Parliament just before her province hosts the Olympics.
There is no more sought-after patronage pork than a Senate seat and Harper and his ministers were inundated by Conservatives clamouring for a favour.
Appointees will receive a $134,000 annual salary indexed to inflation until they retire or reach age 75, followed by a very comfortable pension - and both are indexed to inflation.
Many of the other appointments made Monday went to well-connected Conservative partisans.
Party stalwarts Irving Gerstein, Suzanne Duplessis and defeated Newfoundland MP Fabian Manning are among the other prominent Conservatives going into the upper House.
Harper has always believed senators should be elected and he refrained from filling most vacancies while trying to make the upper chamber more democratic. Those efforts ran into roadblocks erected in Parliament and by Ontario and Quebec.
Harper's timing, just before Christmas when most Canadians are preoccupied with holiday cheer rather than politics, suggests the government isn't anxious to showcase the appointments.
Opposition parties have questioned whether Harper has the political legitimacy for a patronage spree, having averted the almost-certain defeat of his minority government in the Commons only by suspending Parliament until the new year.
And the prime minister himself has admitted he takes no joy in having to stack the Senate, a move seen by some as tantamount to waving a white flag of surrender on his dream of reforming the chamber.
"I've waited for three years," he noted in a recent TV interview.
"We've invited the provinces to hold elections. We've put an electoral bill before the House of Commons. But for the most part, neither in Parliament nor in the provinces has there been any willingness to move forward on reform."
