The Internet generation learns to protest

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 8, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 19 Comments

At the prorogation protest on Parliament Hill a couple weeks back, someone held a sign that read “I Can Haz Democracy?” Now this.

The Saskatoon chapter of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament organized another protest Friday to greet a visiting Conservative Party politician. Prime Minister Stephen Harper stopped in Saskatoon and the group brought out about 75 people to protest Harper’s presence and policy…

Security paced the hotel’s entrance, and four Saskatoon police officers arrived to disperse the members of the crowd because they were blocking the doors of a business. “Accountability fail,” one protester yelled when the protesters got back to their corner across the street.

Mitchel Raphael on the defiant fisheries minister and Helena Guergis’s bull’s eye shot

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

The Liberals are working and have the buttons to prove it
Monday, Jan. 25, would have been the first day the House sat in 2010 had Stephen Harper not prorogued Parliament. Keen to make a point, Liberals decided to hold round-table discussions on the Hill this week on a variety of topics and wore bilingual buttons saying “Liberals are working.” Folks from all parties, though, came out in force on Monday night for the Hill Helps Haiti fundraiser organized by the government relations firm Summa Strategies. The event raised more than $32,000. Among the notable guests was Fisheries Minister Gail Shea, despite having had a cream pie thrown in her face that morning by an anti-seal-hunt protester. On her lapel, the tough Shea proudly sported a sealskin ribbon in support of the hunt. NDP attendees included B.C. MP Nathan Cullen, who found out over the break that he and his wife are expecting twins, and Winnipeg’s Judy Wasylycia-Leis, who is considering running for mayor in Winnipeg. For their part, underpaid Hill staffers were happy to finally have an event with food. Prorogation has meant many Hill receptions have been cancelled for February.

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'There is one consequence that will stand out'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 1, 2010 at 2:32 PM - 194 Comments

Those pesky kids at Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament are apparently starting to think rather serious thoughts.

While the Conservatives are feeling some heat from proroguing Parliament, including dips in public opinion, after March 3 it will likely be business as usual (with or without a spring election). There is one consequence that will stand out for them more than any other and that is votes in the ballot box. A targeted riding level campaign to defeat 22 of them (or more) has the best odds of scoring some victories while adding some turmoil, uncertainty and tension to the Conservatives’ election game plans. It also sends a message to all political parties.

It's all Andrew's fault

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM - 104 Comments

Christopher White, founder of that Facebook group, talks to the Tyee.

Q. How did this all begin?

“It was the day I got back to Edmonton from the Christmas holiday. I slept in a bit. I was still in my pajamas, reading the news online, when I learned that Stephen Harper had asked for another prorogation.

“My first reaction was outrage. Here it was, happening again. It was so irresponsible, so undemocratic. And the worst part was, I could already feel the apathy starting to creep in.

“I looked at a couple other articles, and found a blog post Andrew Coyne had written on Maclean’s. He brought up this idea of the Long Parliament of 1640 in England, when the Parliamentarians defied the King and kept the Parliament going when he was out of the country.

“And I started wondering, ‘What if our Parliamentarians sat anyway?’ It just seemed like a really great idea.”

Will the prorogation of Parliament set off a populist revolt?

By John Geddes - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:58 AM - 96 Comments

Of all the possible issues to trip him up—the deficit, stubbornly high unemployment, Afghan detainees—who would have predicted that a four-syllable term for a parliamentary procedure would send Stephen Harper’s poll numbers tumbling? Yet prorogation, the antique-sounding word for suspending Parliament, has done it. Harper’s Dec. 30 decision to send MPs on an unscheduled break until March 3 galvanized dismay over both his leadership style and the state of a democracy in which the Prime Minister feels free to wield such unchecked power. “It’s solidifying a very deep sense that there’s something wrong with the way we govern ourselves,” says Rick Anderson, a long-time advocate for democratic reform who, like Harper, worked for Preston Manning back when Manning’s Reform party embodied a grassroots desire for politics less dominated by prime ministerial power.

Harper, though, never really swam in that populist Reform current. Manning wanted to change the way Ottawa worked in order to give more clout to ordinary MPs, and in turn make them more responsive to voters; Harper was mostly interested in economic policy and conservative ideology. Later, after uniting the right to create a winning new Conservative brand, he proved himself an uncommonly disciplined top-down organizer, first of his party and then of his government. Harper’s underdeveloped populist instincts never seemed a serious liability—until lately. He clearly underestimated the backlash against proroguing for the second time in about a year. In late 2008, he suspended Parliament to avoid being defeated in the House by an opposition coalition. Last month, he resorted to it again, this time, his critics say, to cool the Afghan detainee controversy until after the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

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The tally

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 208 Comments

With 51 precincts reporting specific estimates—restricting the count to media-reported figures and, where available, police counts—it’s possible to account for approximately 21,000 anti-prorogation protestors at yesterday’s rallies. Continue…

Toronto Proroguing Protest: polar bears and Spartans

By Mitchel Raphael - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 3:54 PM - 145 Comments

The Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Toronto protest saw thousands gather in Dundas Square. Below, Toronto Liberal MP Rob Oliphant is with the Spartans.

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Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow.

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The Mendoza Line

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:31 PM - 14 Comments

For those looking to somehow quantify whatever happens on Saturday…

According to a quick and entirely unscientific survey of already unscientific media estimates, anti-coalition rallies last December in Edmonton, Moncton, Ottawa, Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, London, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Windsor, Halifax, Regina, Fredericton and Saskatoon combined to draw about 9,600 protesters.

Pro-coalition rallies in Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, London, Vancouver, Moncton, Halifax, Regina, St. John’s, Montreal, Toronto, Windsor and Saskatoon drew, according to media reports, about 9,300.

Popular sentiment and constitutional convention

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 2:24 PM - 79 Comments

While Michael Ignatieff sends an open letter to Canadian Against Proroguing Parliament, David Eaves reviews a loose survey of the group’s demographics, attitudes and intent. In an essay for The Mark, Michael Marin speculates on the group’s potential to impose unwritten order on Parliamentary democracy.

Canadians have helped spawn constitutional conventions before. The outcome of the 1926 federal election, which produced a Liberal majority in the wake of the King-Byng Affair, contributed to the modern principle of political non-interference by the Governor General. If the opponents of prorogation sustain their pressure, they may play a similar role in 2010.

The Facebook group was the catalyst of public opposition to prorogation, emerging in the days following the prime minister’s call to the Governor General and driving public interest in the story despite its holiday timing. The group fuelled criticism in the mainstream media by serving as a clearinghouse for stories on the issue and funnelling traffic to the websites of large newspapers and television networks. This allowed the story to spill into the offline world and significantly alter the voting intentions of Canadians.

While the Facebook group wasn’t a conscious exercise in constitution making, the nature of constitutional conventions may allow it to serve that very purpose. But the work of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament isn’t over. In order to ensure that a new convention is born, they are going to have to come out in huge numbers on January 23. Otherwise, the opposition we’ve witnessed over the last two weeks will be interpreted by future underhanded governments as temporary and will fail to restrain their abuse of power.

The Facebook Index (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 11, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 43 Comments

For those of you still keeping score at home…

Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament 151,061
Stephen Harper 29,449
Michael Ignatieff 28,817
Jack Layton 27,697
Elizabeth May 6,449
Gilles Duceppe 3,995

The Facebook Index

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 11:11 AM - 125 Comments

As of this writing, the group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament is more popular than all five federal political leaders in this country.

Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament 29,340 members
Stephen Harper 29,323 supporters
Michael Ignatieff 28,673 supporters
Jack Layton 27,690 supporters
Elizabeth May 6,400 supporters
Gilles Duceppe 3,989 supporters