Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Prorogue nation

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 11:47am - 33 Comments

Glen Pearson leaves for Africa with much on his mind.

Like many reading this blog, I’ve done a lot of thinking over the present prorogation of Parliament and I presume I’m in the vanguard of those who are deeply troubled by the development. Yet in so many ways, Canada has been prorogued for years. Suspending or cancelling our international commitment to Africa is bad enough, but where also is our commitment to battling climate change, or how could we spend so abundantly with no plan in place for how we pay it off? While our Aboriginal communities still suffer from our prorogation of the human spirit, this country yet refuses to sign the UN’s Declaration of Aboriginal Rights. We went AWOL on medical isotopes and have done absolutely nothing to deal with the emerging healthcare crisis already at our doorstep. Child poverty is roughly what it was 20 years ago and we still haven’t figured out what our development plans look like as we leave Afghanistan.

Heck, this country has been in prorogation for a long time, enough that it might be time to worry that it’s becoming part of our collective DNA. In our inability and lack of maturity surrounding minority government, we take the kind of incremental steps that lead to … nothing. Parliamentarians sit fewer days in the House than ever before and these significant issues lie in wait for someone to use power for anything other than the desire to hold on to it.

Tags: aboriginals, Afghanistan, Africa, climate change, Darfur, economy, Glen Pearson, health care, house of commons, medical isotopes, Parliament, prorogation, Prorogue, recession, United Nations

More by Aaron Wherry

Wallace Cleaver

If your comments became any more superficial, they'd vanish.

Work on it.
Lord Kitchener's Own

I don't find your argument very persuasive

Well, good, because that wasn't my argument.

My argument was that there's a manifest difference between a PM with the support of the majority of the House of Commons proroguing Parliament because he can't stand to look his former Finance Minister in the eye, and a PM with less than 50% support in the House proroguing Parliament in order to shut down a Parliamentary investigation and avoid questions as to why his government is refusing to give over to the House documents that they have requested via a majority vote on the floor of the House of Commons.

Simply put, a situation in which a government composed of 47% of our elected representatives are ignoring the other 53% is much more troubling than a government of 55% of our elected representatives ignoring the other 45%, and I'd have thought that was patently obvious.

There are a myriad of reasons for which a majority PM could prorogue Parliament that I'd find perfectly acceptable, and a smaller myriad of reasons I'd find acceptable in the case of a minority PM. However, "I don't want to talk about the things Parliament wants to ask me about, or do the things they've asked me to do via open majority votes on the floor of the House" definitely doesn't make that second list. As Coyne has explained, prorogation itself isn't the big problem, the big problem (IMHO, not Coyne's) is proroguing Parliament immediately after deciding to ignore a demand made through a majority vote in the House, and while a Parliamentary Committee is engaged in an ongoing investigation into serious matters (which you continue to stonewall and attempt to impede). You could likely convince me that other PM's in history have prorogued Parliament in manners as dangerous as this latest example, but I think you'll have to go back much further than Chretien. I think the timing and context of Harper's prorogation brings the supremacy of Parliament into pretty serious question, and I'm not sure there's been a prorogation of such serious import in my lifetime.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Ricard_S_Argent Richard_S_Argent

Not so good with the maths are ya? See 65,000 out of 30 million is a much higher ratio than 160,000 out of 6.7 billion.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"Simply put, a situation in which a government composed of 47% of our elected representatives are ignoring the other 53% is much more troubling than a government of 55% of our elected representatives ignoring the other 45%, and I'd have thought that was patently obvious. "

Not to me it isn't. Tyranny of the majority is just as bad as tyranny of the minority.

It is interesting that you think Chretien proroguing Parliament twice in a little over a year because he and Martin are squabbling, and Chretien wanted to avoid answering questions about Libs and money laundering, is acceptable because they had majority.

As far as I am concerned, what Harper has done now is certainly no worse than what Chretien and Martin did during their 12 year reign. I have been moaning for at least a decade about MPs having little regard for Parliament and its rules so I am not bent out of shape by what Harper has done.

Lord Kitchener's Own

I have been whinging for more than a decade about MPs having little regard for Parliament and its rules/traditions so I am not bent out of shape by what Harper has done now.

Ha. It's kinda like that Facebook group the NP was promoting that was apathetic about the prorogation. The stated reason for their apathy? (almost certainly facetious, but still) Well, the reasoning was, basically, "we're already living under a dictatorship that ignores Parliament, and all Steven Harper has done is make our dictatorial situation more clear, so why get all bent out of shape that a PM and government who feel free to ignore Parliament and hold them in contempt anyway, decided to prorogue?"

http://intensedebate.com/people/TJCook TJCook

Funny – for a self-professed "pox on both their houses" kind of guy, your pox always seems directed at Chretien's house.

I have yet to hear a condemnation from you of Harper's actions. It's just Chretien, Chretien, Chretien.
http://intensedebate.com/people/LynnTO LynnTO

Ok, Dakota. You keep counting Facebook groups while the rest of us try to find solutions to our real problems.

@OP: Such postings give me pause. I may not entirely agree with it, but Pearson's got a point. Just what have we actually accomplished, as a country, in the past four years where it comes to national public policy?
http://intensedebate.com/people/PolJunkie PolJunkie

How old are you? 3?