Just about everyone on Parliament Hill — MPs, political aides, journalists, and so on — rely heavily on their Research In Motion BlackBerry to communicate. And you never realize how much you depend on the service until it’s taken away. That happened last night around 8 p.m. after an “infrastructure failure” at RIM’s headquarters disrupted service to BlackBerry users in the “Western Hemisphere”, RIM said in a statement.
Party whips use the BlackBerry to summon MPs to the House of Commons for important votes. Last night, MPs were debating whether or not to pass legislation to order striking CN workers back to work. The vote — when whips would require all their MPs to be in the House — would not come until about 10:30 pm and so, while the debate was taking place, many MPs were having dinner or were back in their offices waiting for the BlackBerry message summoning them to the House.
“Of course I didn't get any messages,” Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said this morning. “I finally got a phone call — you've got six minutes before the vote.”
“They're just a lifeline right now — to our offices, to constituent, to my blog — so it's extremely disconnecting to lose this little sucker,” said Liberal MP Garth Turner.
BlackBerry service was largely restored to many on the Hill this morning although some staffers and journalists continued to report hiccups with their service.