Rogue page disrupts throne speech with Harper protest
OTTAWA—A young woman who spent the past year working as a Senate page was kicked out of the upper chamber for staging a protest during the Speech from the Throne on Friday.
Brigette Marcelle, 21, was removed from the Senate Chamber after she stood silently holding a red sign emblazoned with the message “Stop Harper” as Governor General David Johnston read the speech outlining the Conservative agenda for the upcoming parliamentary session.
Then she issued a press release.
“Harper’s agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation,” Marcelle said in the release emailed to the media while she was still in the care of parliamentary security. “We have to stop him from wasting billions on fighter jets, military bases, and corporate tax cuts while cutting social programs and destroying the climate. Most people in this country know what we need are green jobs, better medicare, and a healthy environment for future generations.”
The statement notes that Marcelle is a recent University of Ottawa graduate who had been a page in the senate for a year but then realized working in the system would not stop Prime Minister Stephen Harper from doing things she disagreed with.
“Contrary to Harper's rhetoric, Conservative values are not in fact Canadian values. How could they be when 3 out of 4 eligible voters didn’t even give their support to the Conservatives? But we will only be able to stop Harper's agenda if people of all ages and from all walks of life engage in creative actions and civil disobedience [sic],” she said in the release.
Then she called for a popular uprising in Canada like the ones seen across the Middle East this year.
“This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring, a flowering of popular movements that demonstrate that real power to change things lies not with Harper but in the hands of the people, when we act together in our streets, neighbourhoods and workplaces,” Marcelle said in the release.
Her profile on the Senate page website identifies her as Brigette DePape, which is the same name in the email address she used to distribute the press release.
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