Serge Joyal

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Hon. Serge Joyal

Serge Joyal, PC, OC, OQ, BA, LL.B, LL.M, LL.L (born in Montreal, February 1, 1945) is a Canadian Senator.

A lawyer by profession, Joyal served as vice-president of the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1974 general election and remained a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for ten years.

Following the 1980 general election, he served as co-chair of the Joint Committee on the Patriation of the Canadian Constitution. In 1982, he joined the Cabinet of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as a Minister of State. He was appointed Secretary of State for Canada in 1982.

He remained Secretary of State in the Cabinet of Prime Minister John Turner who succeeded Trudeau as Liberal leader and Prime Minister in June 1984, but lost his seat in the 1984 election that defeated the Turner government.

On November 26, 1997, Joyal was appointed to the Canadian Senate on the recommendation ot Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and serves on a number of committees specialising in legal and constitutional affairs.

Joyal is an Officer of the Order of Canada, Officer of the National Order of Quebec and is also a Chevalier in France's Légion d’Honneur. He is an expert art collector and appraiser. In recent years, he has used his knowledge of the art world and his influence on the Senate and the government to get Parliament to assemble a collection of original portraits of the kings of France for the period during which Canada was first explored and colonized by France. As of 2004, they were placed on the walls of the central block of the Parliament Buildings, as companions to the portraits of the British and then Canadian monarchs who have been the heads of the Canadian state since 1763.