Just before the world met in Cancun for climate talks, Conservatives in the Senate -- abetted by the prime minister -- deprived Canadians of legislation that would address the pressing problem of global climate change and also usher in a prosperous clean energy economy.

When pressed why the Conservative Senate called the premature vote on the Climate Change Accountability Act on Nov. 16th, Prime Minister Stephen Harper retorted that it would have thrown "hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people out of work."

The UN climate change negotiations wind to a close today in Cancun, but the hot air has long since gone out the room. This time around, nobody really expected a meaningful new climate treaty to be signed. And yet the urgent task of dealing with climate change remains.

The defeat of Bill C-311 by the Senate without any debate on Nov. 16, 2010, goes far beyond the loss of Canada's only climate change legislation. It undermines the role of the Senate, counters the very democracy that Canada has been built on, and is one more step towards the dictatorship that Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to be managing to build. Canadians should be out in the streets protesting, but complacency still rules here instead of alarm and indignation.

In solidarity with the international day of a "1,000 Cancuns", climate justice activists marched into Toronto's downtown core and shut down the intersection of King and Bay Street -- the seat of power for Canada's commerce engine and home to many of the corporations involved in what activists say is killing the planet.

Here, Canadians need look no further than the province of Alberta's infamous tar sands to see the naked face of destruction move upon Mother Earth.