Our chamber of sober second thought and wise reflection FINALLY lived up to its promise yesterday.

Unfortunately, its not due to anything our senators did.

The Senate is supposed to represent the provinces equally and act as a safeguard to the House of Commons, providing a second chance to do the right thing, as it were.  The sad reality is that many (most?) Senate seats are patronage appointments handed out by the government of the day to reward loyal supporters.  Our current Prime Minister (yes, the one who was going to make the Senate an elected as opposed to appointed body) just appointed three new senators … two of them had just resigned their Senate seats to run in the recent federal election as conservatives.  I guess if you can’t have an elected Senate you can at least re-appoint people who ran for Parliament for you … and lost?

I cannot claim to have heard anything of interest from our federal Senate (except possible charges of corruption) … until yesterday.  Yesterday, thanks to the civil disobedience of one Senate Page the mainstream Canadian media actually reported (albeit briefly) on a Canadian story dealing with global issues.

In the world news recently;

• The British Government is examining the real concern that global oil supplies will fail to meet demand in the coming decade and its possible impact on the country,
• Greek protesters against economic austerity briefly seized a government building during a protest,
• Japan continues both economic and environmental attempts to deal with 3 failed nuclear reactors and in light of this disaster Germany announces its plans to scrap aging nuclear plants,
• Over an eighth of the US population now receives food stamps (our largest trading partner), and a number of Middle Eastern governments have been toppled by protesters who were initially protesting the high cost of food,
• China recently surpassed the United States as the largest consumer of energy products (not per capita) and is also being identified as the largest producer of greenhouse gases (A claim the Chinese government disputes).

All of these stories point to growing concerns over the economy, the environment, energy scarcity and food security; concerns that have largely gone undebated in Canada. Is Canada immune to these issues?  After all, we have abundant energy supplies, are one of the world’s bread baskets, we escaped the latest global recession with only a few bruises and scrapes and everybody wants to visit us due to the beauty of our pristine environment.  We are also a tiny country (by population), our economy is heavily dependant on global trade in commodities and we produce some of the environmentally dirtiest energy products in the world.  Canada does not shape world events, but rather is influenced by them.

I applaud the actions of this Senate page.  Yes, she should lose her job for breach of contract as she obviously violated it.  No, I do not think she is an anarchist as some have already suggested.  Nor do I believe that her actions hurt democracy.  Quite the opposite!

These things are unfortunate because every time there’s some kind of event like this it means security gets tightened.  And we want this to be the people’s place, where people can come and talk to politicians and make their point, and so now who knows what the end result will be, but it will not be more relaxed security. It will mean tighter security.

Mike Duffy, Conservative Senator

This event will cause security to be tightened?  I do not think this person represented a physical threat, nor did she manage to bring a weapon in with her.  Those are reasons to tighten security, this is not.  To quote Wikipedia and paraphrase Henry David Thoreau,

… people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and … people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice.

Mike, I think you have forgotten who actually governs this country and what your role is in it.  This person was simply performing her civic duty, and raising issues of concern to all of us.  Don’t you think its time you got off your ass and did the same thing?