Senators say they have been threatened over carbon pricing bill for farmers

Two members of the Independent Senators Group say police and parliamentary security are investigating a threat that forced one of them to leave her home last weekend.

Two members of the Independent Senators Group say police and parliamentary security are investigating a threat that forced one of them to leave her home last weekend after a social media post blasted members of the upper chamber for their position on a carbon-pricing bill for farmers.

Quebec Sen. Raymonde Saint-Germain and Ontario Sen. Bernadette Clement also accused members of the Conservative Senate caucus of “physical and verbal intimidation” on the Senate floor on Nov. 9, and then later sharing a social media post they say prompted online harassment.

“I believe it’s a wake-up call for our democracy,” Saint-Germain, leader of the Independent Senators Group, said in an interview with The Canadian Press on Wednesday.

Clement said she fled her home in Cornwall, Ont., about 100 kilometres southeast of Ottawa, last weekend after her office received a phone call from “a very angry man (who) said that he would come to my house.”

Clement said she called the Parliamentary Protective Service first, who told her she needed to call the Cornwall police.

“Both bodies said to me, ‘No, we’re going to follow protocol. This is what you do,”’ she said.

They asked her to locate her Parliament-issued panic button, which she said she had left at her Ottawa apartment because she always feels safe in Cornwall. When she hesitated about being worried about the threat, they urged her to take it seriously, she said.

“I just feel generally like I’m home and I’m safe, but then they said, ‘Listen, you’re not,”’ Clement said.