It is time to pause and send out birthday greetings to Canada’s most important referee. Today is the birthday of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota. Mr. Speaker turns 61.Born in North Bay, Ontario, Rota was first sent to the Commons by the voters of Nipissing—Timiskaming in 2004. He was victorious again in 2006 but was defeated when Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives earned a majority mandate in 2011.  In 2015, however, the future Speaker was re-elected to the House.Rota became Speaker in 2019 and was re-elected to the all-important parliamentary post after the 2021 election.caption id="attachment_567420" align="alignleft" width="438" Hon. Anthony Rota, Speaker of the House/captionArthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.