In the grand scheme of things, it ultimately produced a budget more in keeping with the desires of the House.

The ends do not justify the means, nor do they guarantee a benign result. I'll give you a scenario to demonstrate that.

Lets say the US invaded Iran and the Prime Minister decided to join the invasion without getting a vote in Parliament. If the opposition balked at that and declared they were going to bring forward a motion of non-confidence would the PM be justified in proroguing Parliament in order to avoid losing power until our country was involved in the war? How would that sit in the grand scheme of things?

If you don't believe that elections are a powerful voice in a democracy…

They're simply not able to stop the abuse from occurring. In the above scenario the people could indeed vote the PM's party out of power at the first available opportunity in order to reverse the situation. But by then we'd already be hip deep in the carnage.

One has to assume that deploying our military without House consent would entail a radically different context for the GG's consideration.

The GG doesn't appear to have any power whatsoever (in fact, many argued that was the case at the time) so why would you think the outcome would be any different.

If the prorogue was such a sin (and as I said already, I didn't like it one bit), then why aren't the opposition parties making it THE central issue for the next election?

Because nobody cares that it was done and far too many people–even many who don't vote Conservative–think it was acceptable. The reason for that is, as far as I can see, simply that nobody has really given any thought to what the incident meant or how it would alter our democracy. And now that it has happened with no repercussions and with public approval you can bet it will happen again.

How did it fundamentally alter our democracy?

The Prime Minister can now shut down Parliament whenever it interferes with his grip on power.

And if it has public approval, as you suggest, isn't that democratic?

The public once approved of denying women and minorities the right to vote so forgive me if I don't find solace in public approval. Besides, our democracy shouldn't be susceptible to the whims of public approval. That is simply mob rule.

On what do you base the claim that the GG appears to have no power?

I base it on the majority of people who argue that any power exercised by the GG is tantamount to giving the British monarchy a veto over our sovereignty and the majority of people who think we no longer need a GG. The GG might have once had actual power but due to a lack of using that power it's been allowed to atrophy.

"A delightful messy cacophony of opinions"? Goes to show how little disharmony it takes to make a cacophony, in Canadian ears. Sure, there are lobbyists and zealots for: the environment, lower taxes, higher spending, a larger army & more ships, legal pot, an independent Quebec, an independent Alberta, no abortions, higher corporate taxes, more research money . . . & maybe a couple other things, including fringe racists and fringe Trotskyists, to the tune of about 1000 members each.

These are the same issues that we've been debating my whole life. The landscape of opinion is absolutely unchanged since my birth, allowing for exterior shifts like the fall of Communism and the CRAP merger. If I could literally transport myself back in time — or forward in time — by ten years, I could engage in exactly the same debates without skipping a beat. That breeds malaise and alienation. If nothing ever changes, why should anything ever change? We're into the Brezhnev era of democracy. You might want to stock up on vodka.

It is indeed the very essence of democracy, and its twin sister is mass apathy and disinterest. Who said that democracy is supposed to be healthy and vibrant? Now that we've solved all of the main challenges of industrialisation and post-industrialism, as far as they affect people's real lives, and we are left to quibble about the details, it's no wonder people have ceased to care. It's like a reverse NHL season, with the playoffs at the beginning and the season, with its predetermined winner, clawing its way onward to the home openers.

I am indeed lamenting that we've got ourselves into a situation of such profound spiritual and civic malaise. There are downsides to having it so good and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. In particular, the sight of so many people wandering around slapping themselves on the back for being such good democrats is rather nauseating. But of course one does not want it otherwise, for patriotic if not for personal reasons. Still, it's relevant to the debate about why our civic life is so morose: I'm suggesting it's in the nature of things for it to be like that.

A pleasant one, but heavy on the thetes.

Sean, if I read you right here, you are wondering how much the "leave me alone" element is responsible for low turnout at the polls. I bet there is some element to that, but I am not so sure that it's overwhelming. I suspect the bigger elements are "I don't care" and "I'm too lazy" and "there's no point" and "I don't know enough."

I just don't see a large portion of non-voting losers philosophically struggling with their identity as rugged individualist hermits incongruously cohabitating in society with others.

"Perhaps you're just using the term in a literal sense."

Yes, that was precisely what I meant.

It is untrue that 60% of those who vote are not represented in the system. Political parties do not disappear the second the votes are counted. They still have influence. The NDP, for example, prides itself on the influence it has on the political process even though they have never had formal power federally. They still represent those who vote for them. The Greens also have influence even with no Members. Even PR systems have a threshold, so it's no argument to say that the FPTP system discriminates against the Greens unfairly.

If we want to raise public participation, give people a higher level of satisfaction with their government and raise the legitimacy of our system, we need to start getting ordinary people involved in governance – give them the power to make decisions, or at least share that power with them directly. Right now we hand over all of our sovereign decision making power to politicians between elections – effectively an elected dictatorship. That is the source of the problem. If ordinary people were involved both in formulating policy and implementing it, their efficacy would increase and so too would their confidence in the system. Tinkering with the way elections are held would not do this. In fact, based on our adversarial political institutions and culture combined with our regional fractionalization, any measure of proportional representation would make matters much, much worse. The study I am looking at right now shows that voter participation is around 60% for FPTP or mixed systems, while it's about 68% for straight PR systems. That's not the 75-80% we should be aiming for. Nevertheless, moving to a two vote run off like they have in France could help reduce disaffection due to 'wasted votes' without all the negatives of proportional representation.

The Greens have all kinds of influence on our political discourse and policy, just like the NDP does even though they have never been part of a federal Cabinet. Remember the "Green Shift" ? Why do you think the Liberal Party adopted it ? Why did the NDP in Ontario rebrand, using both orange and green in their signage ?

Ordinary Canadians also have no "voice in the halls of power" – that is why the solution is deliberative governance, not tinkering with the electoral system.