As the successor of the Western Canada-based Canadian Alliance (formerly the Reform Party of Canada), the party supported reform of the Senate to make it "elected, equal, and effective" (the "Triple-E Senate"). However, party leader Stephen Harper advised the Governor General to appoint the unelected Michael Fortier to both the Senate and to the Cabinet on 6 February 2006, the day his minority government took office. On 22 December 2008 Prime Minister Harper asked the Governor General to fill all eighteen Senate seats that had been vacant at the time. It was earlier reported in "The Toronto Star" that this action was "to kill any chance of a Liberal-NDP coalition government filling the vacancies next year".