Senator Noël A. Kinsella was appointed the Speaker of the Senate of Canada on February 8, 2006 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Duties of the Speaker are multifaceted. It is the Speaker’s function, according to Senate Rules, to preserve order and decorum and to decide points of order subject to an appeal to the Senate. He is also called upon to perform diplomatic duties at home and abroad consistent with the Speaker of the Senate’s fourth overall position in the Canadian Order of Precedence. Receiving visiting dignitaries and hosting official diplomatic events are all part of the Senate Speaker’s day. Additional responsibilities come with each visit to Canada by a head of state, and with invitations from abroad.

Parliamentary Service began with his appointment to the Senate by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on September 12, 1990 while serving as a senior public servant in the office of Associate Under-Secretary of State of Canada. He became the Senate Opposition Whip in 1994 and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in 1999. Senator Kinsella was elected the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate in October 2004.

Academic work commenced with elementary and secondary schooling in Saint John, New Brunswick, and has involved university studies in several European universities including: University College, Dublin, Ireland (B.A.); St. Thomas Aquinas University, Rome, Italy (L.Ph., and Ph.D.), Pontifical Lateran University, Rome, Italy (S.T.L., S.T.D.). He is a licensed member of the College of Psychologists of New Brunswick. Dr. Kinsella spent 41 years as a faculty member at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, N.B. where he has taught psychology, philosophy and human rights. A Knight of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, and a Commander of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, Speaker Kinsella has received an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Dominican University College, Ottawa, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Human rights is a field in which Senator Kinsella has been active. He served as the Chairperson of the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission for 22 years, beginning in 1967, as President of the Canadian Human Rights Foundation, and is well-known nationally and internationally as a human rights advocate and academic including such cases as Malcolm Ross, and Lovelace v. Canada at the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Born in Saint John, N.B. on November 28, 1939, he is married to Ann Conley Kinsella