Path To Prorogation

Let's just say I would not be surprised if the Harperites announced the new "security perimeter" over Christmas and then prorogued (or, more likely, the other way round) until the budget in the spring.

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Idle Thought Of The Day

I am thinking of starting a "When is the next prorogation?" pool.

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Well Let's Not Even Try Then

Robopundit, with his finger on the pulse of Official Opposition thinking, pens this bizarre paragraph today:

Iacobucci's document review serves the useful purpose of putting on hold a test of wills between Parliament and the Prime Minister that could provoke an election the Opposition doesn't want now and would be foolish to ever fight on the abuse issue. But the ultimate result will be more foot-dragging if Iacobucci is kept too far from the truth to explain why ministers let generals play loose and fast with Afghan prisoners. (emphasis mine)

This logic is, not to put too fine a point on it, insane. It is the logic that will keep Harper in power forever. The thinking goes, "We can't defeat Harper on X, because he has a solid, if small block behind him, while we have a larger, but divided block with us. Best wait until we can find an issue over which everyone coalesces around us." The opposition parties and in particular the Liberals, have been waiting for that magic issue for four plus years. That is not how it works. As Warren Kinsella is fond of saying, campaigns matter. It seems to me that Canadians would see the worth of having an election over whether or not our government is comprised of war criminals. And even if that is not so, some hills are worth dying over. Holding a government to account over torture, is one of those hills.

Also, does anyone believe Harper would like to dissolve the Parliament and hold an election to avoid being held in contempt by Parliament? How would that look to the average voter two weeks after the end of prorogation? The opposition would have a field day with that. So, even from a crass political viewpoint, the opposition has little to lose by bringing forward its motion of privilege.

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Greg's Crystal Ball

Prorogation has not worked out very well for the government. They are going to face a possible vote on censure, in the next week or so, on the Afghanistan torture files. To avoid this fate, if I was Harper (which thank God, I am not, ekkk), I would have one of my minions announce a Royal Commission some time this weekend. Then I would take about seven months setting the terms and getting that puppy up and running. Then I would go to court to stop the Royal Commission from seeing anything I didn't want it to see. By the time it cleared the courts, the next election will have come and gone, in which case, I would either still be king of Canada, or collecting a fat paycheck from an American think tank.

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Panic Grips The PMO

Realizing that prorogation was the worst political mistake since Pierre Trudeau handed John Turner a list of his friends to find jobs for, the PMO is starting to throw furniture out the windows, in a vain attempt to get the Langevin Block to levitate. You can almost hear them screaming "Hey Canadians, you don't like prorogation? What if we never take a break again? Would you like us better? Huh? Huh?" And still, the long, sad, decline in their fortunes continue.

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QOTD

Don't you wish the Minister had to answer questions in the House about why he is fudging his own weak as piss targets? Too bad the place is closed down.

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The Issue

To friends and foes alike. Proroguing is just a symptom. Arrogance and contempt for democracy is its cause and the issue here.

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Saturday

I have to say, I am more than a bit ambivalent about Iggy, or any of the opposition party leaders, taking part in the protests on Saturday. This is a moment of pure, unadulterated, citizen action. I hope Iggy and the rest understand that. I hope that if they try to turn this into a unpaid political platform for their party, they are roundly booed. Saturday is about democracy and the primacy of Parliament, not an opposition political event. If the opposition leaders must take part in the protest and if they insist on speaking, they should come to the table with concrete proposals for restoring the power of the parliament. They should do so with an attitude of humility toward their employers and a spirit of cooperation with all parties, to get the job done. To approach the people, at this moment, with any other message, is an insult to those of us who believe this is a bigger issue than who is up or down in the polls this week.

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Be There Or Kindly Be Square

I have to work, but I will nip up on my lunch break. I am going to try to take some snaps if I can get my camera thingee to work properly.

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Conservative Apologia

I have no clue who Paul Benoit is. He works for Hill and Knowlton, so I assume he is a lobbyist and/or a PR flack. Today in the Citizen, Mr. Benoit writes a long defense of prorogation. It is written in Ottawaese, so I will help by including by translating into English.

He begins by casting doubt about the intelligence of those who would argue that prorogation is an insult to democracy and then moves to eight specific points of disagreement.

1) “Our parliamentary and constitutional institutions are grounded not just in explicit rules but also in the spirit of those rules.”: Although the advent of the Charter has obscured the fact, our institutions still run primarily on conventions which have not been made explicit, but that are allowed to evolve gradually while retaining an unchanging core of normative meaning. The philosophers among our professors should recognize that there is a huge ethical difference between complying with written rules and the spirit of those rules, and conforming to unwritten conventions which are much more flexible than that.

Translation: The prime minister can do whatever the hell he feels like doing, you propeller-headed poindexters!

2) “We expect that the prime minister will do his part to ensure that this system works, and that MPs can fulfill the role we elect them to do.”: In fact, MPs are not being prevented from carrying out their duties during prorogation: they can spend more time with their constituents and learn more precisely how their riding is faring, as we pull out of a severe recession; they can also meet with caucus colleagues to exchange notes, to plot strategy for the next session, and to offer alternative policy directions — just as the Liberals are planning to do next week.

Translation: I can't talk about the Afghan committee, so let me ignore it completely. If there is an unpleasant truth on the table, ignore it and move to a new table.

3) “Part of what that means is to exercise self-restraint, and not use the powers that he possesses to shut down the mechanisms of accountability to Parliament and the Canadian people.”: Yes, Canadians will be deprived of the “vigorous questioning” of Question Period for a few weeks; but ministers continue to remain accountable in other fora. I have not heard that ministers’ offices will not be taking calls from the media. Is our minister of national defence not giving Canadians timely accounts of what the government is doing to rescue Haitians?

Translation: I want to mention Question Period and pretend that is the only thing that goes on in Parliament. You will note, I didn't say that Peter MacKay would be available in his office to talk about torture.

4) “The normal way in which a government secures a break in a parliamentary session is through adjournment. ...”: While government’s work never ends, Parliament’s is at best half-time and when Parliament is not working it is either adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved. There is an inner connection among the three: If Canada is going to continue having minority governments, then there will be more dissolutions, which in turn will likely trigger more prorogations, as governments naturally seek to take advantage of whatever little additional flexibility they may have.

Translation: If you want us to stop running away from Parliament at the first sign of trouble, vote Conservative. Majority governments are much easier to control than minorities. In minority governments, MP's actually think they might have some power and so act up. If you give us a majority, that hope will be gone and everything will be great.

5) “... That permits the institutions of government to continue. Committees can do their work.”: In fact, it is very rare for committees to continue holding meetings and hearing witnesses during adjournment. The only ones normally continuing their work are the researchers assigned to committees from the Library of Parliament, who usually take advantage of these breaks to pull material together and to prepare draft texts for the committee members when they return. It should also be noted the testimony heard in the last session is not lost; it gets published. There is nothing to prevent the newly constituted committees of the next session to pick up where they left off.

Translation: I will ignore the fact that it might take four months for the committees to get going again and just pretend that if something is written down that is good enough.

6) “Any laws that are in process, with the exception of private members’ bills, have to be introduced again, at the very first step of the process.”: In fact, for some time now, governments, following the Speech from the Throne, have re-instated legislation that they really wanted at the stage at which it was at when the session was prorogued. Where were all our concerned professors when this precedent was set?

Translation: I have no idea if any of these professors have written anything about this issue over the years. But, asking a rhetorical question about their character is just too tempting for me to pass up.

7) “The government’s post-election legislative agenda is nowhere near having been fulfilled.”: The Speech from the Throne is not a contract between government and the people that has to be carried out in all of its provisions; it is a legislative agenda setting out the course and priorities that the government intends pursuing in the light of current circumstances. Given the dramatic changes to our economy and to our state finances that we have undergone in the last year, it is perfectly reasonable “to take the next few weeks to review everything,” as Stephen Harper has said. Canadians can judge in March whether everything announced in the Speech from the Throne could have been accommodated in a budget at the end of February.

Translation: A Speech from the Throne is not a contract of any kind. It is no more important than a fixed election date law.

8) “The prime minister has violated the trust of Parliament.”: If that is the case, why has the Speaker of the House of Commons or any of the parliamentary clerks not spoken out against this alleged violation? Given the seriousness of the accusation, why has the speaker, who is a Liberal, not resigned? Are these officers of Parliament not meant to be the referees who should be calling fouls?

Translation: If the cops look the other way, then it's not a crime, right? Oh and it's the Liberals' fault.

The Parliament of Canada has been in gradual decline for decades. The professors’ state of high dudgeon over prorogation would have more credibility if over the years we had seen some serious public engagement on their part on the systemic issues that transcend parties and prime ministers.

Translation: Again, I don't have a clue whether or not these professors have spent their lives studying and publishing on this topic. That won't stop me from hinting that this is just a partisan put up job, aimed solely at Conservatives. This is sure to go over big with the base, who just love to wallow in imaginary victimization.

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Hear, Hear

Murray Mandryk writes:

For example, Senate abolition seems to be one of the few sentiments in which virtually everyone agrees with the NDP. (Anyone remember Stephen Harper's commitment to elected senators?) But does anyone assume this unequivocally demonstrates a federal NDP government commitment to adhering to every democratic principle? Certainly, those of us from Saskatchewan have a working knowledge of NDP governments that increased sales taxes (after promising to repeal the harmonized sales tax increase), manipulated election days (after promising set elections) and abused patronage appointments (after criticizing the last Progressive Conservative government for the same thing).

That said, what we're witnessing from Stephen Harper takes contempt for democratic principles to a whole new level and it may be even worse than that. Harper is using public cynicism as a blunt hammer to pound in the detour sign that allows him to get around the last bastion of true accountability for his PM0.

And that truly does separate Harper from those who preceded him. (emphasis mine)

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Well Surprise, Surprise

The idea of prorogation is now out in the open. You wouldn't believe the reactions I got from friends when I said I thought it was going to happen again. It ranged from "Oh no, Harper wouldn't dare", to hysterical laughter. People have a way of thinking that there is a spark of decency in Harper somewhere. Once you lose that illusion, you have no trouble guessing his next outrage.

Prorogation makes perfect sense, if all you care about is short term survival. It starves the opposition of the forum of the House of Commons (it shuts down all committees)and it moves the calendar past the feel good event of the year, the Olympics. Then the government can come back, blame the Liberals for killing the anti-gun registry bill, raise a shit-load of cash from the wooly hats in its base and carry on as if nothing had happened.

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The Great Unraveling

The Conservatives' story is falling apart. The only question now is, for how long will Parliament be prorogued?

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