For Stephen Harper, a good cabinet minister is like a well-behaved child from the fifties. They should be seen and not heard, minus the seen part. Which is why the first time most of us heard there was a woman named Gail Shea in cabinet was when another woman from New York decided to smack her in the face with a tofu pie.

You know being a member of Parliament is bad enough. It's not like the job comes with a lot of respect. Those days are long gone. Most people would rather see their kids go into a life of air conditioner repair than politics. But bottom line is we elect these people and when we do, we expect them to be accessible to the public. That's their job.

And if we don't like them there's plenty of ways to protest that are actually effective. Hell, so many people protested against Stephen Harper last week the man is in full-blown panic mode. He's out there as we speak running around saying all of a sudden his brand new legacy is going to be protecting women and children in the third world. Please, the man has been Prime Minister for four years, he's never uttered the words. All of a sudden he sounds like Bono.

But that's the way our system works. We can yell, we can scream, we can protest, we can throw the bums out – but no touching. Everyone in this country, with the exception of hockey players apparently, has the right to go to work and not get a smack in the face. Members of Parliament are no exception.

We elect them, they serve at our pleasure, and if someone assaults them it's an assault on all of us. So to the woman from New York, who decided to leave her country, come to our country to assault a member of our Parliament: Welcome to Canada. I hope you like prison food and you bought a one-way ticket.