You've got to to 'way back in history to April 1868 to find an assassination that took the life of a Canadian politician when Thomas D'Arcy McGee, a 'father' of Canadian Confederation met his death. Canada doesn't have a dreadful tradition, like our next-door partner on the continent, of political assassinations.

But violence within nations and directed toward governments appears to be far more common now, although that could be partially the result of mass communications ease and the way that data travels. Both that we're more aware of those unfortunate episodes of psychotic political ideology leading to public murders, and that having them so frequently in the news inspires the disaffected and the violence-prone to take that avenue themselves.

With that knowledge, it makes common good sense, even in a generally peaceful country like Canada, to ensure that our government executives, the lawmakers that we elect to lead the political life of the country, and most particularly the chief executive, the Prime Minister of Canada, is well protected. That a security cordon discreetly stands in place to prevent the savage occurrence of an attempted assassination.

 A protester rushes the stage as Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks at the Vancouver, Board of Trade in downtown Vancouver, Monday, Jan. 6, 2014. Vancouver police say they won't be pursuing criminal charges against two climate-change protesters who came within touching distance of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on a stage at an event in Vancouver.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward


So, there is our prime minister, sitting on stage at an engagement on Monday to address the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, to speak about the future of Canada, of the critical issues of natural resource extraction and of protection of the environment; subjects that raise huge emotional protests in the minds of many who view oil extraction, refinement, transport and export to foreign trade destinations as evils to be avoided at all costs, confronted at very close range by protesters.

Protests are well and good; people have a right to express their opinion on weighty subjects that appeal to their sense of social justice and which commit them to activist causes. Their voices should be heard, and their protests should result in discussions and reasonable actions meant to defray concerns. The Prime Minister, in his talk to the Vancouver Board of Trade, addressed the very issues that the two protesters on stage alongside the Prime Minister, were concerned about.

They were not, however, meant to share the physical stage with the Prime Minister. Lax security, inexcusably made that possible, however. And although these two particular committed citizen-environmentalists were harmless in the sense that they meant no harm to come to the personage at whom their message was directed (as well as to the public at large), it could just as easily have been otherwise; that psychopathic opponents to the current government's political stance on the international scene might have chosen to do him, and Canada, irreversible harm.