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If you’re anything like the average National Post reader you’ve been diligently ignoring everything we write about the Senate.

And who can blame you?

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For decades, it has been pretty much irrelevant. And with Donald Trump exchanging nuclear threats with Kim Jong Un in North Korea, we’ve all had a lot on our plates. For even the most rabid news junkie, the Senate could happily and safely be ignored with little to no impact on our lives.

Well unfortunately, those days are over. The Senate is starting to matter. Here’s why.

Let me guess… This all comes back to Mike Duffy doesn’t it?

Good guess. The Senate expense scandal rocked Stephen Harper’s government and led to the resignation of his chief of staff, Nigel Wright. In the run-up to the 2015 election, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party devised a way to make political hay of the Senate without calling for structural changes that would cause a big constitutional mess. Trudeau expelled all the Liberal senators from his caucus and vowed to create an independent board to recommend new appointees. Trudeau argued it was the ironclad party loyalty caused by patronage appointments that was the source of these problems.