Joyce Fairbairn: Upper Chamber

Fairbairn Dept: Liberal Senator Joyce Fairbairn, 72, has been receiving round-the-clock care for a year and a half due to her declining health from dementia and will not return to Ottawa for the time being, according to a letter her niece, Patricia McCullagh, sent to Senate officials earlier this month, according to The Star. Senate attendance records show that Fairbairn regularly attended sittings in the Upper Chamber after being declared incompetent, missing seven sitting days between February and the end of session in June and oTTAWA A Liberal senator was still at work casting her vote along party lines a dozen times four months after a geriatric psychiatrist declared her legally incompetent due to her worsening struggle with Alzheimer s disease. The letter, dated Aug. 13, says that a geriatric psychiatrist signed a declaration of incompetence for Fairbairn sometime in February and that in April, McCullagh and Leonard Kuchar, chief of staff to Liberal Senate Leader James Cowan, co-signed a power of care that made them agents acting on her behalf. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.