Well done, Brigette DePape. Your audacious interruption of the Throne Speech today has certainly caught the attention of Canadians. As you pointed out in a later interview, a clear majority of Canadian voters did NOT vote for Mr. Harper. In our system, of course, that's quite normal, but your actions have hilighted just how out of step the Harper government is with what most Canadians value.
It's typical of the current government to label this as a "security threat". An embarrassment, yes. It could even be disrespectful of parliament, as many have called it. But a security breach, as Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella describes it? What danger is there in a paper sign?
Once again, our government is using "security" as a bludgeon to suppress freedom of speech, simply because the actions of an employee did not conform to the party line. At least Ms. DePape isn't (yet) threatened with jail time, as protesters at the G20 summit were when their protests were deemed a "threat to security". (Some quite possibly were, but the vast majority of those arrested were quickly released and few were charged; most were no threat).
Can we expect strip searches of pages in the Senate now? Metal detectors don't work too well for paper. Or, will the senate office need to be (much) stricter in its selection process to weed out any possibility of dissent in the ranks?
It seemed a bit ironic to me that the CBC chose to interview Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment, for his comments on the debacle. He, also, was most concerned about the "security lapse". The lack of action on climate change was one of the failings of the Harper government that Ms. LePape was protesting, and of course Mr. Kent is now the point man for continuing the campaign to avoid actually taking action while communicating to their base that they are doing a good job of it. The CBC sound bite didn't catch any comments on climate change. (It was also not something considered important enough for the throne speech either).
This small protest was, no doubt, disrespectful to our parliamentary institutions. However, it wasn't simply some stunt to gain points with friends; it was an action designed to draw attention to a growing disconnect between our new Conservative government and the needs and desires of many Canadians. Rather than blame their "lax security", the current government should be asking itself what it is about its plans and policies that would so upset the citizenry that one of them would feel that such an audacious act was seen as necessary.
The late Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith was a very different sort of economist than those who wield influence today. This blog flows from Galbraith's ideas and examines monetary policy and political economy.
