The (sigh) Senate of Canada

Ah, the Senate.  Let's hear it for the Chamber of Sober Second Thought.  There are a good many individuals in the Senate who work hard, take their positions seriously and have the very best interests of the country at heart.  There are as well Senate members who sit also on the boards of large corporations and who lobby on behalf of those corporations; conflict of interest? heaven forbid.

Canadians can be proud that there is a member of the Senate whose groundbreaking medical work on heart transplants was highly celebrated.  When he retired from active work in the medical profession he was made a sitting member of the Senate of Canada.  Before that happened, however, he was spotted by police during their rounds, trying to solicit sex from a street worker. And sent to John School. Oops.

More latterly, a Senator whose committee work has been outstanding and whose commitment to the public weal beyond criticism, was discovered to be in the unfortunate late stages of Alzheimer's Disease.  Despite which, though her geriatric neurologist formally advised that she was now mentally incapacitated as a result of her illness, she has remained in the Senate and voted in roughly 12 instances while impaired.

And then there was that little piccadillo occurring on an Air Canada flight from Ottawa to Saskatchewan when a 69-year-old senator (another six years to go before retiring...), married to a 23-year-old felt ill and it isn't yet quite clear and may never be whether his wife pledged to slit his throat or to bring the entire plane down in her panic over his failing health.

And now, another wing-dinger of a worthy in the Senate, Conservative Senator Don Meredith, whose sense of appropriate official behaviour appears to be rather absurdly compromised.  So much so that he has raised the voice of condemnation of the Iranian Canadian Congress which does not fully appreciate the politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

This Pentecostal pastor who just happens to sit on the Senate's Standing Committee on Human Rights, and should know an awful lot better, was proud to accept an invitation as guest speaker at an event organized by the Iranian embassy and the Iranian Cultural Association at Carleton University, a creature group of the Iranian embassy.

Senator Meredith surely cannot be entirely ignorant of the well-earned reputation of the Republic as a prime human-rights-abusing theocracy.  "We are deeply worried that by attending an event of this nature, Senator Meredith ... has ignored the plight of Iranian people, in particular Iranian-Canadians languishing in Iranian prisons without trial", said Kaveh Shahrooz, vice president of the ICC.

Two Iranian Canadians are currently imprisoned in Tehran.  As well as another Iranian with permanent Canadian resident status.  Two of them face the death penalty for trumped-up charges said to have offended the morals and values of the Islamist regime.  Senator Meredith is more concerned over his "great friend" Sheikh Hassani, a supporter of the Iranian Embassy, than he is for the welfare of these Canadian Iranians.

Nor is the Government of Canada amused at this situation.  "Our government's position with respect to the Iranian regime is well known.  Senator Meredith was not representing the government at this event", responded Carl Vallee press secretary for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  The man is a senator, and it is as a senator that he was invited to speak, offering validation to that despicable regime.

And here's another little puzzle, that the good folks at Ottawa City Hall whose salaries are paid by the taxpayers of Ottawa, saw fit to give permission to the Iranian embassy and the Iranian Cultural Association at Carleton University to hold their Persian cultural exhibition at Ottawa City Hall.  Cultural sensitivity balancing off against political/moral opprobrium?

Historical culture and heritage cannot, does not and will not excuse or aid in overlooking the inconvenient facts about modern-day Iran; that in the Western world its policies make it a pariah, a war-mongering, terrorist-supporting, oppressive regime that should not be treated with diplomatic niceties beyond sufferance.