A year ago Wednesday, the Ottawa Citizen got a tip suggesting that Liberal Senator Joyce Fairbairn was not well enough to do her job.
Reporter Glen McGregor asked the Liberals in the Senate, who told him that she was fine.
Last week, he learned that she had been diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer's type. He informed the Liberals of that, after which they announced that she would go on sick leave for her final two years in the Senate.
It is likely that McGregor's questions prompted the Liberals to take action, months after her tragic condition had become apparent to people who met her casually.
After the story was published, Conservative Senator David Tkachuk went on an Alberta radio show and told listeners that in February the senator was declared mentally incompetent, and had been continuing to vote until June.
Tkachuk likely broke the rules when he said that, since he learned that private information as an officer of the Senate, but it is likely good that he spilled the beans, because Fairbairn is a servant of the people, and if she was voting in the Senate without the capacity to do her job, we should know that.
The Liberal whip, Senator Jim Munson, has said that Fairbairn knew what she was doing and continued to work hard.
I don't think the Liberals made the right call, but I don't think it would be right to judge them too harshly.
Fairbairn is an extraordinary woman and a longtime friend of senators on both sides of the aisle, and they can be forgiven for wanting to protect her.
It is a delicate matter. The Liberals appear to have been slow to act. The story will likely lend new urgency to calls for Senate reform.
Senators, who are appointed to age 75, do not face the discipline that MPs live with because they don't need to worry about getting thrown out of office.
A lot of important work gets done in the Senate. Many of the senators - even the old bagmen - are top notch, and their committee work is often better than the work by the hyper-partisan camera hogs in the House of Commons.
But the Senate is nonetheless an anachronism, an unrepresentative dumping ground for friends and servants of the party in power. Because senators are appointed, they lack the legitimacy to fulfil their proper functions, as a check on the government of the day, or as representatives of their regions. And there are no New Democrats or Bloc Québécois senators, which isn't democratic.
Electing senators to a single nineyear term - as the government has proposed - would give them democratic legitimacy and some degree of independence from the party machine.
And the prospect of elections might prevent embarrassments, in part because only professional politicians would get elected.
Conservative Patrick Brazeau, who called a reporter a bitch on Twitter, would never get elected.
Neither would Liberal Rod Zimmer, and his odd marriage would have remained a private matter.
This relic of the 19th century needs fixing, and Harper has long promised to do it, but so far he has not acted. He has repeatedly introduced bills to elect senators only to let them languish, and then disingenuously blamed the opposition.
This fall, with Fairbairn, Brazeau and Zimmer fresh in people's minds, and a relatively clear legislative agenda, Harper may finally move, and elected senators from other provinces might join their colleagues from Alberta.
Ontario and Quebec oppose holding elections, arguing that Harper should not act without their agreement, but once some provinces start holding elections, voters in other provinces will want them too.
This would give us a new problem. Quebec and Ontario each have 24 senators. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick each have 10, and the western provinces each have six. That imbalance would matter more if senators were elected.
Changing that would require a constitutional change, and Quebec won't agree to that unless its distinctiveness is enshrined in the constitution.
It's a Gordian knot, but Harper has promised to untangle it. If he succeeds, some of the impetus will have come from Fairbairn's tragic illness.
