Yukoners who want a representative in the Senate could take an opportunity to elect one themselves, says the territory's former commissioner.

Ken McKinnon, who served as the Yukon's commissioner from 1986 to 1995, made the comment following Wednesday's appointment of Alberta farmer Bert Brown as Canada's first elected senator in nearly two decades.

McKinnon suggested that Prime Minister Stephen Harper would have to appoint the winner of a Yukon election or plebiscite for a senator if one were organized.

"I don't see how he could accept Alberta's choice and not Yukon's choice, or anybody else's for that matter," McKinnon said Wednesday.

"If, through whatever method, the people of the Yukon decided that this is the person that they wanted to be the next senator … I don't know how the prime minister could refuse."

But he added he has not heard anyone inside or outside the territorial government suggesting that a Senate election is a possibility.

Harper appointed Brown, a longtime champion of Senate reform, about three years after Brown took the most votes in Alberta's third Senate election in 2004. At the time, Brown's election win was not binding on then prime minister Paul Martin.

Brown will now fill the vacancy left by veteran Liberal Senator Dan Hays, who announced Tuesday that he intends to retire by the end of June.

The Yukon currently does not have a senator, after Liberal Senator Ione Christensen retired at the end of last year.

Christensen, who opposed Harper's proposal to have senators elected, said if Canadians want to vote for their senators, then they would first have to vote for a change to the Constitution.

"And if that's what Canadians want, then I think we should do it," she said Wednesday. "But to do it the way it's being done now I think creates far more problems than it will ever solve."

Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie said following Christensen's retirement that the territory's lone Senate seat should be filled quickly by appointment, not election, arguing that Senate elections are not practical for the Yukon at this time.