Dean Del Mastro, the Reform-Conservative MP for Peterborough, suggested that during their two and half month Prorogue-Vacation, his government can't be expected to walk and chew gum at the time.
They were preparing for the Olympics, and despite the fact that in British Columbia, where the games were held, could still keep their legislature open; Dean just felt that his own government was not mentally equipped for multi-tasking.
Suspending Parliament until March 3 allows the government and the country to focus on the Vancouver Olympics and Parliament to refocus on priorities when it returns, says Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government announced yesterday that Parliament would be shut down until March 3, with a budget presented the following day. Parliament was originally scheduled to return on Jan. 25.
Proroguing Parliament allows the government to focus on the Olympic Games and associated issues such as security, foreign dignitaries and preparations, Del Mastro said.
This was quite odd, because Canada has hosted the Olympics before and Parliament remained open.
Poor Dean. He just doesn't get it.
IS THIS REALLY YOUR CANADA? IS DEAN DEL MASTRO REALLY THE BEST CHOICE FOR PETERBOROUGH?
Brad Trost is the Reform-Conservative MP for Saskatoon-Humboldt. During his two and a half month vacation at taxpayers expense, he took a few hours off to do a very important job for King Stephen.
Obviously accepting that a government has the right to operate in complete secrecy, Brad stormed past the Canadian people, where he could enjoy a lovely luncheon with the boys at the Delta Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon.
Keeping his government's secrets has been a nice pastime for Bradley, though many people believe that in his case, it's simply that he really has no clue what the inner circle are doing.
If he did, he might warn his constituents about the traitorous trade deal his boss cooked up, allowing them to pay their taxes directly to foreign corporations.
Or he might see the warning signs of a fascist regime, that is clearly taking over the Canadian Parliament.
As Muriel Wien reminds us: former public servants, academics, retired diplomats and other people of integrity have sounded the alarm; and are warning us that our democracy is in grave danger.
Rabble currently has a 'Not Rex Murphy' contest, where challengers can present videos of their own broadcasts, to replace this horrible news personality.
Voting has started and it is time for you to select the winner(s) of the Not Rex Murphy contest. Tens of thousands agree: We have had enough of Rex Murphy and his reactionary, mean-spirited attacks on all the things that make Canada a great place to live. Since CBC hasn't put any balancing voices to Rex on their flagship news show The National, rabble.ca will do our part.
The winner(s) of the Not Rex contest will be featured presenting a video commentary on rabble.ca on the same nights as Mr. Murphy presents commentary on CBC.
The voting is taking place now, so you can watch the five finalist's tapes and then choose your favourite.
It was tough for me, because they are all very good, and bring up important elements of the Harper government. However, I chose Muriel.
She makes some very compelling statements, not the least of which that all of our watch dogs, experts, diplomats, etc. are warning us of the DANGER of this government. This is not just about their corruption and incompetence, but the DANGER that they have put this country in.
Their unprecedented secrecy should be raising a lot of alarms. Sadly, the alarms are not nearly loud enough to awaken the media, though many Canadians are finally coming out of hibernation, and asking themselves how they let this happen.
I also liked her references to the Buy America/Sell Canada trade deal that Harper inked during his 2 1/2 month vacation. "Permanent and traitorous" and "we will now pay our taxes directly to foreign corporations."
The Reformer's not so much a budget as a regurgitation of old ideas, most from Mike Harris, (the former Ontario premier, whose name can still cause many of us to run for cover) was just enough to keep them in power. However, I hope the opposition parties can work together to take control of the agenda.
Tory insiders say the party is hatching a survival plan to keep the surging Liberals at bay and delay any potential election long enough to enjoy the international limelight at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. A major plank of the plan would see the Tories delay next year's budget and deliver it in late March -- two months later than when the budget was handed down in 2009.
That would deprive the Grits of an important confidence vote before the Olympic flame arrives in Vancouver next February, at which point the Conservatives hope the economy will have turned around.
Quite interesting. Prorogation gave them some breathing room from the Afghan Detainee issue and the brewing scandals, but the two and half month vacation was pre-mediated. Of course it meant a deal with separatists, so don't tell Rodney Weston. He might just get off the couch.
Peter Russell sees a silver lining in Parliament's prorogation – the public outrage. For the University of Toronto professor emeritus ... it's evidence that despite worries of public apathy, Canadians do care whether their democratic institutions are alive and working.
... Russell says Harper got "bad advice" that he could unilaterally prorogue Parliament, delaying its return from Jan. 25 to March 3, with no fallout. "That's where they went wrong and Canadians should get a gold medal because they did care," Russell said.
Stephen Harper's Olympic bounce so far cannot compete with his prorogation slide. Now the question is whether prorogation was a minor misstep from which he can quickly recover, or a too-clever tactic that exposed a flaw his opponents can exploit.
The Conservatives will no doubt enjoy a rise in the polls, but I don't take polls at this stage too seriously. However, this is not only something the opposition 'can exploit', but a much broader issue.
But pollster Frank Graves says he thinks prorogation planted the seed for a bigger problem for Mr. Harper: His personal approval ratings plummeted, and now most voters outside his base of Tory supporters disapprove of his performance.
Prorogation, he says, "was more of a trigger than the actual ammunition." ... "It lit the fuse that consolidated a whole series of anxieties and concerns that a certain portion of the electorate were having about Mr. Harper's management style."
If the Conservatives can keep their numbers up, it will hold off an election, but I don't think the Conservatives can win another election under his leadership. Too many of us now remember why we were afraid to vote for him in the first place. The secrecy, the shady deals, the mean and bitter side of his nature.
Mr. Graves, however, suspects the partisanship, symbolized by prorogation, has had a lasting impact on Mr. Harper's reputation: Outside of a Conservative base who love him, nearly all disapprove.
So while the single issue of prorogation may fizzle, the grassroots movement will continue.
Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament is regrouping and we've branched into a group committed to removing this government and taking our country back.
We are looking to alternative Media sources for more exposure of what this government has been up to, as well as compiling the best of the more than 30,000 links that flowed into the Facebook group. We have also set up our own CAPP Parliament.
We have another website that has branched off from this, called Catch 22 Harper Conservatives, where we will be targeting the most vulnerable Reform-Conservative ridings and hitting them hard. The Facebook Group is here and the website currently under construction is here.
It was developed and grew out of anger. But we are now channelling that anger into action and will be working between now and the next election, at taking our country back, one vote at a time.
So enjoy your little gold medal bounce Mr. Harper. Your next bounce will be out of office.
Most Canadians believe that Harper's move to become supreme ruler was to avoid possible war crimes, and investigations into his complicity in them; but Duff Conacher from Democracy Watch, suggests that there are several other reasons, all dealing with cover-up.
Beyond the investigation into how Canadian Forces oversaw the transfer and treatment of detainees in the Afghanistan war, there are three other important government accountability situations not mentioned in any media coverage so far that the federal Conservatives are avoiding through the arbitrary proroguing of Parliament by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, all of which would likely have been reported on in February.
First, the ethics commissioner is investigating and will rule on whether the handing out of Conservative party-labelled government spending cheques by several cabinet ministers and MPs was legal under federal ethics rules.
Second, the ethics commissioner, the commissioner of lobbying and Elections Canada are investigating and will rule on fundraising events by a Conservative cabinet minister and parliamentary secretary that involved lobbyists and that raise serious questions about violations of the ethics rules.
And third, the auditor general would likely release a report or two on government spending practices by various departments and agencies ....
Well the monster is being tamed in Quebec, as Stephen Harper and his Reformers are now the lowest in popularity, that they have ever been in that province.
So I guess he can say bye, bye, bye to his majority, while we say don't let the door hit you in the behind on the way out.
Could we see a mutiny in his own party soon? Will his potted plants find a voice? Who cares?
From behind its internet firewall, Le Devoir reports the results of the latest Leger poll, conducted just before the earthquake struck Haiti. 75 per cent of Quebeckers are dissatisfied with the Conservatives, an increase of 7 per cent since the last poll at the end of November.
43 per cent of Quebeckers are “very dissatisfied.” Only 18 per cent say they are satisfied, and 2 per cent say they are “very satisfied.” Pollster Christian Bourque attributes the results of the poll to Stephen Harper’s performance in Copenhagen and his decision to prorogue Parliament ....
It is fascinating to watch the Conservative spin doctors worry among themselves about the fallout from the Afghan prisoners' revelations and then go into full spin mode whenever a journalist or a camera comes into view.
"Nobody cares beyond the Queensway," they intone as one, referring to the expressway that marks the end of downtown Ottawa, about 25 blocks from Parliament Hill. These spin doctors are the party faithful who receive the emails with the talking points that the government puts out to try and shape the political argument of the day .... (Don Martin CBC News)
And of course, we all know what happened next. Harper prorogued Parliament believing that we'd be so mesmerized by the cute pictures of him in his red mittens at the Olympics, that we'd just forget the whole thing.
Unfortunately for him, he's not that cute and Canadians are not that stupid.
I'm trying to archive my posts, making them easier to access, so will use this page to link stories related to the Afghan Detainee issue in 2009. By laying everything out chronologically, we can see that this government has been spinning a yarn for several years. They lied to us then and they're lying to us now.
OK, so I've mentioned that there may be a scandal brewing at public works.
Reformer Jacques Gourde announced it in the House, then Reformer Christian Paradis, ran out the door, tripped over the guard and posted on his official website that there was no scandal.
Well, he now says that he got it wrong and there is indeed a scandal.
But then with Parliament prorogued they could have it all cleaned up by the time they decide to get back to work.
Whew! I'm exhausted. But there you have it folks. THERE IS A SCANDAL AT PUBLIC WORKS! What it is, I don't know, but if it involves the Reformers, it's probably a doozie.
OTTAWA — The secrecy shrouding an investigation at the federal department of Public Works and Government Services is waving red flags that must be examined, say the Opposition Liberals. Public Works and Government Services Minister Christian Paradis on Friday confirmed that an internal investigation is underway at the department, but would not say what it was about.
He made a statement to “set the record straight” and confirm the investigation had nothing to do with the sale of real-estate properties.
“If it doesn’t have to do with the sale of federal properties then what is being investigated and why all the secrecy?” said Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay. “So much secrecy still raises flags.”
It started on Facebook. Now, it’s spilling out onto the streets.
While nearly 200,000 people are members of the Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, yesterday was the first-ever street protest and it happened in Mississauga. Nearly 50 concerned citizens of mixed ages and backgrounds gathered around Conservative Mississauga–Erindale MP Bob Dechert’s office to voice their anger.
“These are ordinary constituents here, and each one probably represents 10,000 other concerned citizens,” said Liberal Mississauga–South MP Paul Szabo, who attended the protest ....
"... no other English-speaking nation with a system of government like ours — not Britain, Australia or New Zealand — has ever had its parliament prorogued in modern times, so that its ruling party could avoid an investigation, or a vote of confidence, by other elected legislators.
Only three times has this happened, all in Canada — first in 1873, when Sir John A. Macdonald asked the governor general to prorogue Parliament, in order to halt a House of Commons probe into the Pacific Scandal. Lord Dufferin gave in to the demand, but when Parliament reconvened Macdonald was forced to resign.
No prime minister dared use prorogation to such effect again, until Stephen Harper convinced Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean to suspend Parliament in 2008, so the Conservatives could evade a confidence vote.
About 12 months later, he did it again. Harper claims he shut down Parliament to "recalibrate" his government, but his critics say he did so to escape the rising pressure of the Afghan-detainee affair and its investigation by a House of Commons committee. (By Richard Foot, Canwest News Service, January 16, 2010)
That's it in a nutshell. Parliament was prorogued because the parliamentary committee was getting too close to uncovering the truth abut what Harper knew and when on the torture of Afghan Detainees.
But there was actually another time when Steve shut down a committee that was investigating his party's wrong doing. This involved the "in and Out" election financing scheme, that is still under investigation.
Dr. Joan Russow has suggested that Stephen Harper has no legal right to govern, with an ongoing criminal investigation against his party.
There should never have been an election in Canada. The Governor General should have refused to accept the Right Honourable Steven Harper’s request for an election when there was an outstanding investigation into the fraudulent practices of the Conservative Party during the 2006 election. The investigation was underway by the Parliamentary Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. With the calling of the election, the Committee was disbanded. In addition, there was a similar investigation by Elections Canada.
CP Wire Tim Naumetz OTTAWA -- Three Conservative campaign agents ignored summonses they received more than a week ago to appear at a Commons inquiry into the Tory "in and out" advertising affair, MPs were told Wednesday. The chair of the Commons ethics committee also identified a fourth former Conservative campaign agent who informed a House official he and others who worked on the 2006 election campaign were instructed by the party not to testify.
Combined with earlier comments from yet another Conservative -- who said a party official informed him and other potential witnesses from Toronto they could ignore the summonses if they wished -- the news fuelled angry reactions from opposition MPs.
Wednesday marked the first time Liberal committee chair Paul Szabo has identified the specific agents whose comments have sparked accusations of a "conspiracy" in Conservative ranks to subvert the inquiry into $1.3 million in campaign advertising expenses.
Szabo quoted from a report he received from a bailiff firm the committee hired in an attempt to compel the former campaign agents and defeated candidates to appear.
It said a Conservative who was the official agent for Heritage Minister Josee Verner, another who was the campaign agent for Tory MP Sylvie Boucher, a parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and another who was official agent for Conservative MP Daniel Petit were all served summonses by Aug. 6.
Szabo also read from a report prepared by the committee's chief clerk that quoted another official agent, Marc Duval, saying he and others had been told to stay away. "He informed me that the party has told them to decline all invitations," the report quoted Duval as saying. Duval, who was the campaign agent for Tory MP Luc Harvey, could not be reached by summons-bearing bailiffs after that because he left for vacation, said Szabo.
The latest disclosures, which came on top of similar statements the previous day from the official campaign agent for a Toronto riding, prompted calls from opposition MPs for sanctions against those who failed to turn out for the hearings.
"It sets a terrible precedent for the committee, that people can just thumb their noses at us," said NDP MP Pat Martin. "Somebody co-ordinated this, it was a boycott of our committee." More than a dozen witnesses who were scheduled to appear Wednesday afternoon also failed to show, including Patrick Muttart, a close aide to Harper, and other senior party officials or former party officials.
The committee was into its third day of intermittent testimony over a Conservative advertising scheme that allegedly allowed the party to exceed its 2006 election spending limit by $1.1 million.
The party transferred thousands of dollars into the campaign bank accounts of 67 selected candidates and quickly transferred the money back out, ostensibly in payment for radio and television advertising on behalf of the candidates. But executives with the advertising firm that placed the ads testified Wednesday they dealt only with the national party.
They also said that at one point during the campaign they were so concerned about the legality of the transactions they held two conference calls with party officials and their lawyer.
One of the Conservative candidates who did show up for the hearing told MPs he and his official agent withheld their participation in the program until they were convinced it was legal.
Steve Halicki, the defeated Conservative candidate in the Toronto riding of York South Weston, nonetheless admitted it was presented as a way for his campaign to fill its coffers with money it could not raise in the riding.
I've posted on the two Kent brothers recently, focusing in part on how different they are.
Arthur Kent is a seasoned journalist who has broken ties with the corporate media, so can report on issues more honestly and openly.
Peter Kent, on the other hand is a true, blue Reformer, and his actions against Lesley Hughes revealed that he had shed any credibility he might have once had as a journalist.
Arthur Kent has also been openly critical of the Harper government for supporting the corrupt Karzai regime, among other things. And he has warned our ambassadors in the past about the drug trade in Afghanistan.
They just refused to listen and Harper forbid them from speaking of anything nasty
But Arif Lalani and his superiors in Canada’s Conservative government were staunch in their support for Karzai - and busy staunching unflattering facts about his ministries and security services, as has now been confirmed by a Foreign Affairs whistleblower.
Richard Colvin, a senior field investigator who went on to serve as Lalani’s number two at the Canadian Embassy, has accused officials including Lalani and David Mulroney, the former head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Afghan task force, of censoring his reports about the abuse of prisoners transferred by Canadian troops to the Karzai regime’s security services ....
Jane Taber now discusses this family squabble in the Globe. Well worth a read.
Peter Kent isn’t feeling the love from his little brother these days. Arthur is the brother in question – an award-winning foreign correspondent, whose reporting (and good looks) during the first Iraq war earned him the nickname the “Scud Stud.”
Arthur Kent is based in Calgary. Besides making documentaries, he has of late been writing thoughtful but extremely pointed pieces critical of Stephen Harper and his government’s decision to shut down Parliament. He says the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament to try to contain the damage from the fghan detainee inquiry ....
I've posted on this several times in the past; Harper's disdain for higher learning.
Insider Ian Brodie, when discussing Harper's new draconian crime bills, was asked why they didn't consult with the experts. His response was telling. He suggested that his party always does better when the 'university types' oppose them.
'University types'. This is what education and experience gets you?
Tony Clement calls them 'elites' and the 'chattering classes'.
We are now seeing what author and political science professor Brooke Jeffreys, feared the most. That Ignorant Gladiators would assume control the government.
Even Chantel Hebert has noticed this change in our governance, where butt scratching is prized, and higher learning is the enemy.
MONTREAL—Over their four years in power, Stephen Harper's Conservatives have won more public opinion battles by dismissing their critics as elite members of a disconnected chattering class than they have lost. Where past governments have routinely sought to enhance the credibility of their policies by seeking backing for them from academic, editorial or professional circles, Stephen Harper and his government have most often successfully gone the other way.
Rather than pit the sometimes thin substance of their arguments against those of more authoritative critics, they have made a virtue of talking over expert heads, and, if need be, of shooting any contradictory messenger.
Harper spelled out his distinctive approach to future policy debates early on, in a state-of-the-government speech delivered six months after his government's initial swearing-in.
"Rather than funding academics, researchers and special interest groups, we decided to direct our child-care money to the real child-care experts. And their names are Mom and Dad," the Prime Minister reported to a partisan crowd in August 2006.
Since then, anti-intellectualism has evolved into a mantra of the current government, a trend that was likely exacerbated by the selection by the Liberal party of successive leaders with strong roots in academia.
But while the track record of the Conservative government includes more hits than misses on the rhetoric front, some of those misses have tended to be spectacular. On that score, the miscalculation over the arts cuts that sent the party fortunes into a tailspin in Quebec in the last general election stands out.
In that campaign, the Prime Minister compounded his Quebec predicament by portraying the cultural community as a spoiled elite living off the labour of ordinary Canadian. In Quebec, Harper's attempts to drive a wedge between the voters and the artists ended up reflecting more poorly on his party than on the vocal constituency he was trying to marginalize.
The same dynamics are being replicated in the debate over prorogation.
The latest twist in the Conservative narrative on the decision to keep Parliament closed for most of the winter is that it is a tempest in an elite teapot. In the words of Industry Minister Tony Clement, the whole affair is a "blip on the Richter scale of upset."
But this week, three separate polls put significantly negative numbers for the government on that blip. On the heels of the prorogation announcement, the decisive Conservative lead in voting intentions has evaporated. So far, the controversy has had the most impact on Conservative fortunes in Ontario, ground zero of the media backlash over the move.
Short of reversing course, the Conservatives' best hope now lies in a swift change in channels rather than in more increasingly clumsy attempts to justify what a majority of Canadians perceive as unjustifiable.
Looking at the polls, it would be tempting to conclude that the so-called chattering class has scored a rare point against Conservative spin doctors. But the more likely explanation is that, as in the case of the arts cuts in Quebec, the Conservatives are losing the prorogation debate on their preferred field of populism.
The anecdotal evidence suggests that for better or for worse most Canadians believe a government day's work involves interacting with the minority Parliament.
Against that backdrop, the sight of Conservative MPs indulging in a multitude of photo opportunities at next month's Winter Olympics is more likely to drive home the opposition message than any amount of Liberal attack ads.
As many in the media are finally waking up to just how dangerous Harper really is, they are still falling back on the tired 'we have no opposition'. The Reformers have spent millions of dollars, much of it ours, trying to convince Canadians that the other side is weak and ineffective.
But it's up to us to remind Canadians that you can't rely on much that the Reformers say. They have an agenda. Poison Parliament then assume complete control. They're getting close but the media has got to start giving Canadians reason to believe that there is better out there, or we're going to believe there is a better media out there. Just not any in the mainstream.
Richard Gwyn's column in the Star this morning is very good, and should be an eye opener to our CORPORATE media. Unless they're all hoping to get one of those five senate spots.
At last, the cavalry is coming, if not at a gallop then at a quite decent trot.
These last couple of weeks have been deeply depressing for anyone interested in Canadian politics.
The initial source of depression was Prime Minister Stephen Harper's announcement he was going to prorogue Parliament. Since this would be the second time in just a year, he will have established a precedent for him to shut it down whenever he wants, for as long as he wants.
This time, he came as close to having no reason to close Parliament as it's possible to get. He wanted, he said, peace and quiet to "recalibrate" his government's policies.
That's bunkum. Governments are always altering policies to meet changing circumstances. To top this, Harper was rude enough not to go around to Rideau Hall to ask the Governor General's approval.
Her approval was, in fact, a formality because there's now no alliance of opposition parties that could constitute an alternative government. But his resort to a phone call was crass and arrogant.
To those interested in our political system, what really mattered was what then happened: nothing happened; no one out there seemed to care.
As well, many media commentators pronounced it a non-issue. Some argued that closing down Parliament was an issue, but only in the sense that it was a good thing to have done.
"Parliament: who needs it?" was the headline on a long essay in Maclean's by Andrew Coyne. "So Parliament will be dark the next two months. Can anyone say they will miss it? Will we even notice?" Coyne wrote. The notion that "Parliament matters" Coyne dismissed as a "pretense." Rather, it was time for "adults (to) grow out of their illusions."
Oops. Voters do indeed seem to have burst out of their illusions, but not at all in the way the media in general assumed.
According to the latest survey, by Strategic Counsel, the standing in the polls of Harper's Conservatives has dropped suddenly by a whopping 10 percentage points, from 41 per cent to 31 per cent.
The single event of political consequence since the firm's last poll in October has been Harper's prorogation of Parliament, on a whim and by diktat.
So the pundits were wrong. The newspapers, almost all of which squeezed into a single, throwaway paragraph a carefully worded protest by 175 political scientists about the demolition of democracy, were wrong equally.
If the media ought to be embarrassed, Harper ought to be worried.
Until a couple of weeks ago, the ebb and flow of politics made it seem highly likely he would win a majority as soon as he could get himself defeated in Parliament. (What his recalibration is really about was figuring out how to goad the opposition parties into precipitating an election by all voting against him.)
Suddenly, a lot of voters have lost confidence, not necessarily in Harper himself, but in him as a potential majority prime minister.
What Harper has done, though, is to revive the underlying fear that he has a secret agenda he's waiting to unfold as soon as he's gained majority power. It turns out that this secret agenda isn't about slashing and burning worthy government programs, but rather, to make it possible for Harper to do whatever he may want to do because no opposition to him exists.
What's really happened as a result of the public at last expressing itself is that Harper, neatly and adroitly, has just prorogued himself.
Tom Flanagan has been speaking out a lot lately about where Stephen Harper has been taking the party. He even recently praised Michael Ignatieff as a role model and revealed that he indeed knew about Harper's 2004 coalition, that included the full support of the Bloc.
But will this interview get him banned from the party? Apparently Brian Mulroney was given the heave ho. Stephen Harper does not allow any dissent.
It's interesting that Shelly Glover is claiming not to have ever heard of him. Where has she been? Flanagan has been by Harper's side for years and handled both the 2006 and 2008 election campaigns. But then Shelly Glover wanted to give water bottles with the Conservative logo to school children as a 'reward'. And she's not much into free speech either.
The Equivocator has an excellent article on Harper's flapping in the wind, that's worth a read. He brings up some of the same points as Flanagan. He just can't seem to get his act together.
Constant Inconstancy; Being the Lamentable Tragedy of Stephen, Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister believes that it is Canada’s system of democracy that causes uncertainty, which leads to negative effects on Canada’s economy. Unfortunately, PM Harper is not as constant as the northern star. His interview with BNN came a full thirteen days after his decision to prorogue parliament by phone and the PMO, as well as the Conservative Party of Canada, have provided many different justifications for locking parliament’s doors for a full three months instead of having all 308 MPs return on January 25th. ...
Calling our prime minister a smiling Buddha may have been wrong, because I see him more as a snapping, snarling one myself; but his idea for a new national holiday is brilliant.
Patrick J. Smith, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University, believes that in honour of the cherished one, we should have a National Prorogue Day. I love it.
What matters most to folks in Burnaby? The international—such as global warming or the war in Afghanistan? National matters—as in Parliamentary prorogation or the Canadian economy?
Provincial affairs—such as health care delivery or our homeless?
Regional issues—as with Translink and planning?
Or local services—from refuse collection to our streets, sidewalks and sewers, and our neighbourhood parks and green space?
My guess is that at the moment the choice comes down to one issue: Stephen Harper’s decision on “prorogation”—suspending Canada’s Parliament for almost three months—has left much parliamentary business now wasted in the trash bin, and other public business postponed, from the economy to the war in Afghanistan.
Our smiling Buddha PM says “not to worry, Canada, this is just to let the government ‘recalibrate’ itself.
My actor/writer brother, Peter, has a suggestion on how we in Burnaby, across B.C. and the rest of the country might respond to Mr. Harper’s action plan to produce inaction. Peter’s plan is wise in its simplicity: “Here is my response to the proroguing of Parliament. We, the people, create a National Prorogue Day on Feb. 2. Here’s how it works.
We take our lead from Stephen Harper. If you have a boss, simply call him or her on Feb. 1 and say you are proroguing the next day. Easy peasy.
As Feb. 2 is also Groundhog Day, we take our next cue from those famous Canadians, Wiarton Willie and Shubenacadie Sam. If these little groundhogs see their shadows—hallelujah—it means six more weeks of proroguing for us all. With pay. Just like the Harper Government on our Parliament.”
In a country with a rodent, the beaver, as its national symbol, it seems right and proper that, having simply started the “anti-rogue” process, we leave such matters in the hands of a couple of groundhogs.
Leaving matters in the hands of our “under-eager” prime minister produces no industry beyond the appointment of five new Harper senators—a move that will just cost us even more. Is there anything of merit in the PM’s inaction plan for Canada?
Certainly for Mr. Harper, who thinks about public issues more in strategic terms than what might be best for the country, there are short term advantages.
For example, it will give him control of the Senate, an institution long in need of democratic reform but which the PM seems not to understand will require re-opening Canada’s constitutional debates—do any of us want to go back there?
Beyond that, it looks more like a cynical effort to exploit prime ministerial prerogatives beyond what they were intended for. Canadians are pretty fair-minded. Even those who were skeptical a year ago when the PM sought prorogation to avoid defeat in the Commons, seemed prepared to cut Mr. Harper a little slack and allow such use once.
Reactions across Canada this time suggest the PM may have gone back to that well one too many times on this gambit.
Andy Heard, one of my colleagues, has taken to referring to “Stephen Mugabe” and “Harare-on-Rideau.” Hard to paint a clearer picture.
If you are interested, you can sign up and we might twitter ourselves to a February National Prorogue Day. We might also begin to take back our democratic process. A Year of the Tiger deserves no less!
Just go to anti-rogue.ca and twitter@pro-rogue nation.
After a Durham, Ontario region newspaper printed a ridiculous article suggesting that closing down Parliament for the Olympics was a good thing, MP Dan McTeague wrote a letter to the editor, contradicting such nonsense.
Reformer Blake Richards told his paper that they would be busy hosting the event. Well you know what Blake, and all other Reformers who believe that it is YOUR PARTY hosting the Olympics; Vancouver and Canadians are the ones doing the hosting. NOT YOUR PARTY!
You have nothing to get ready for. Just pack your bags and charge us for your travel. It's pretty simple.
To the editor: Re: PM's decision made sense given timing of Olympics, editorial, Jan. 6.
Your editorial suggests this prorogation is acceptable, normal and ultimately "makes sense." You are wrong on all three counts. There is no precedent to suggest Parliament be shut down during the Olympics. Of the two-week 1988 Calgary Olympics, the House sat for one week. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was able to attend the Games for the first week and attend the closing ceremonies -- all without skirting his obligation to remain accountable to the House of Commons. The rest of Canada will be expected to show up to work and do their job during the Olympics.
To suggest the work of Parliamentarians is meaningless, as your editorial has, is totally unfair. With Parliament operating, MPs could have continued to debate over 30 different government bills, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper's much-vaunted crime and consumer protection legislation. These bills have been at the centre of his agenda for the last year.
Prorogation stopped this agenda in its tracks.
Canadians elect and pay MPs to represent them in Ottawa. It is a job I respect and value. However, by March 3, Canadians will have spent over $50 million to operate a Parliament that is effectively padlocked shut.
Democracy can be messy and uncomfortable, but as Churchill said, it is better than the alternatives. The prime minister has a duty to attend the House and be accountable for the actions of the government. By shutting down Parliament just before New Year's Eve, Mr. Harper is gambling Canadians won't notice, but they have. Canadians demand any politician worth their salt won't take a break for the Olympics and will continue the important business of the people. Dan McTeague, MP Pickering-Scarborough East
I love this group because even if we don't change the way Stevie runs the country, we all share a common cause. Running Stevie out of the country, or at least running him and his party out of government.
When I first became aware of his plans to sidestep democracy and claim supreme power, I was angry, but also incredibly sad. So CAPP became like a support group, because I realized that I wasn't alone. I suspect others who have joined the group feel the same way.
And besides just calling people to action, it has also awakened their creative side, as they share photo shopped images and videos, channelling their frustrations. The above video might seem a bit over the top, but it's so funny, I had to share it.
One of my favourite progressive journalists is Linda McQuaig, and while I may not agree with everything she says, especially when it comes to Michael Ignatieff, she's fearless, and I like that.
Proroguing shuts down investigation Harper's decision cut off inquiry into possible complicity in torture. January 12, 2010 by Linda McQuaig
Stephen Harper has created a hornet's nest for himself with his decision to prorogue Parliament, arousing the wrath of even the social-networking crowd.
The Prime Minister isn't stupid. He likely realized his action would get him in trouble, but that it would be less trouble than he'd be in if Parliament kept sitting.
As most acknowledge, Harper was trying to take the steam out of the growing furor over Canada's role in handing over Afghan detainees to probable torture, hoping the public will lose interest.
It's important to keep that motive front and centre. Harper's decision to prorogue was not only arrogant and high-handed, but it cut off a parliamentary investigation that was zeroing in on possible complicity in torture at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Indeed, the increasingly panicky Conservatives were running out of manoeuvring room in their three-year battle to avoid responsibility for the detainee scandal.
Ever since human rights groups and the media first drew attention to detainee abuse, the Conservative government has been downplaying its significance, refusing to call a clearly needed public inquiry.
The government thwarted an investigation by the Military Police Complaints Commission by refusing to hand over documents on "national security" grounds — even though the commission has full national security clearance. When chair Peter Tinsley, a 28-year military veteran, kept pressuring for the documents, the government refused to renew his term, effectively shutting down his probe.
The government also tried to prevent diplomat Richard Colvin (and 21 others) from testifying before the commission. Subpoenaed by a parliamentary committee, Colvin provided explosive testimony that blew the story wide open, raising pointed questions about the failure of top government and military officials to respond to his repeated reports of detainee torture.
The Conservative response was to smear Colvin as a Taliban sympathizer, prompting 133 retired ambassadors, a usually sedate crowd, to rebuke the government.
The Conservatives seemed increasingly cornered and unhinged. Their stonewalling led the often-divided opposition to unite in passing a parliamentary motion demanding the documents, putting the government in a possible legal battle with Parliament.
Harper was starting to look like Richard Nixon refusing to hand over the Watergate tapes. (But perhaps that's an unfair comparison. After all, no one was tortured in the Watergate scandal.)
Conservative supporters are trying to divert attention, asking irrelevant questions like: didn't the Liberals also prorogue Parliament, how many days a year must Parliament sit, does it matter if it sits at all?
The issue isn't what prorogation was used for in the past, but what it was clearly used for here — shutting down our key democratic institution as it got closer and closer to establishing government involvement in possible war crimes.
It's fashionable to dismiss Parliament as dysfunctional. But, as we've seen, Parliament can not only be effective, at times it's so effective that those who want to avoid being accountable to it feel the need to shut it down.
Harper has developed a reputation for being a bully. But as with most bullies, there seems to be a coward lurking within. Or, in the words of reader Bob Ferguson, who sent me this quiz about a year ago — the last time Harper was afraid to face Parliament:
Why did the chicken cross the road? To ask the Governor General to prorogue Parliament.
Only vote-splitting and apathy gave them more seats, because his party received 170,000 fewer votes in 2008 than in 2006.
I have also on many occasions tried to wake people up to Harper's dictatorial and highly secretive style of governing.
But it would seem that maybe the person who will end voter apathy in Canada is the man himself.
This latest supreme power grab appears to be backfiring, as Canadians are finally wake up. They may have been snoozing while he was ruining our reputation abroad, but this is right here at home.
He's awakened our fighting spirit. The Facebook group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament now has 136,191 members and growing. Join it if you haven't already and be part of a movement to reclaim our country. We have to let Harper know that this is unacceptable.
Harper outsmarts himself Shutting down Parliament lights a fire under apathetic Canadians By: Mia Rabson January 9, 2010
OTTAWA -- The numbers aren't on the side of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is trying to sell his decision to shutter Parliament for the second time in 13 months to an increasingly concerned public.
No matter how Harper tries to defend his proroguing of Parliament, the math shows the Tory prime minister -- who came to power with accountability as one of his Top 5 priorities -- has been accountable to Parliament far fewer days than his predecessors. In fact, both the average length of the parliamentary sessions and the number of sitting days of the Harper Tories are far less than those of any other government going back to the days of Pierre Trudeau.
All of which might help explain the growing backlash Harper is now facing in the 10 days since he asked Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament until March 3.
More than 107,000 people have joined (now more than 135,000) a Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, which promotes a letter-writing campaign and has organizers planning rallies in dozens of cities across the country Jan. 23. As of Friday, the group was still growing by about 1,000 people an hour.
More than 130 political scientists from three dozen Canadian colleges and universities have signed a statement condemning the "inappropriate shutdown" and are calling on Parliament to seriously look at electoral reform in the next five years.
The influential British news magazine The Economist printed both a news story and a scathing editorial which called the prorogue "naked self-interest" on Harper's part.
Even Harper's poll numbers are taking a hit.
An EKOS poll taken Jan. 5-6 shows half of Canadians -- 52 per cent -- are "clearly aware" of Harper's proroguing of Parliament, and 15 per cent are vaguely aware. Nearly two-thirds of those said it was an undemocratic move.
While opposition to the move was strongest among voters currently supporting other parties (78 per cent of Liberal voters said they were strongly or somewhat opposed), even 31 per cent of voters who currently back the Conservatives don't like it.
That finding was backed by an Angus Reid poll that found 35 per cent of Canadians who voted Conservative in the last election disagreed with the decision to prorogue.
Some of those voters have clearly changed their minds about supporting Harper. According to EKOS, the Conservatives are still the most popular party, with 33.1 per cent support. But that is down 2.8 points from December.
The Liberals, whose poll numbers have been in the toilet for the last four months, rose just over a point to 27.8 per cent, narrowing the gap between the two leading parties to slightly more than five points.
In October, the Conservatives had nearly a 12-point lead over the Liberals (38.4 per cent to 26.8 per cent) and were verging on the magic 40 per cent some think the Conservatives need for a majority government.
University of Toronto professor emeritus Peter Russell said Harper's move to prorogue is a thumb of the nose at Parliament and democracy. "It may be the straw that breaks the camel's back," said Russell, who edited a book on Harper's decision to prorogue in 2008 called Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis. "The public have every reason to be shocked and surprised."
Last week, Harper told CBC The National that proroguing Parliament was the prerogative of government.
"The decision to have a new session of Parliament after a year is not unusual," Harper said. He said it was time to "recalibrate" his government's economic agenda, looking towards a more positive economic picture in 2010.
The government rose Dec. 10 and was to have returned to the House of Commons Jan. 25. Instead, it will return March 3. The prorogation eliminates 22 planned sitting days. One of the weeks between Jan. 25 and March 3 was a planned break week.
Critics have charged the proroguing comes so the government can shut down a foreign affairs committee investigation of the handling of Afghan detainees, and prevent any embarrassing questions arising while the world is focused on Canada during the Vancouver Olympics.
It also allows Harper the chance for his party to take control of Senate committees. There are five vacancies in the Senate to be filled, and if Conservatives are named to the spots, it will give Harper's party a plurality of seats in the Senate for the first time in more than a decade.
But the makeup of Senate committees wouldn't change until a new session began. That meant the Liberals would still hold the majority of seats and chair most committees until the next prorogation.
Harper has long criticized Liberal senators for holding up his party's agenda, particularly on crime and Senate reform, and said he needs control in the Senate.
James Babb, a University of Winnipeg student of history and physics, signed up for the Facebook group because he was annoyed by Harper's decision and he got no response from letters he wrote to Harper and Jean. "I felt this was a positive means of protesting," Babb said.
He said Harper has created a precedent whereby any prime minister who is facing criticism or opposition can simply shut down Parliament.
Babb said he knows there is a stronger feeling against this prorogue than most political moves because normally he is the only one of his friends to get really angry about politics. Often they don't even know what he's talking about. This time, said Babb, the people around him are aware, and they are outraged. "This time feels very different," he said. (I'm getting the same vibe)
Russell is pleased about the burgeoning protest movement, mainly because it's a sign of life in Canadians. "It's extremely good news for those of us who value parliamentary democracy," Russell said. "It shows there are a whole lot of people who aren't prepared to just roll over." When Parliament prorogues, it means all government bills still on the order paper die.
Harper's move killed 36 of his own government's bills in the House and Senate, including two that had passed all stages of debate and were only awaiting royal assent. Both of them -- a crime bill and a consumer protection bill -- are ones the Harper government complained were taking the Senate too long to pass. Now they have to go back and be debated all over again.
Proroguing is a procedural move allowed in Parliament that gives governments a chance to set out a new agenda. It has been executed 105 times in Canada's history. But political experts say it's rare that a government prorogues when so much legislation it deems important gets killed. James McAllister, a sessional political instructor at Brandon University, said it speaks loudly to Harper's indifference to governing. "He scuttled his own agenda," McAllister said. "What does that say about his own agenda?"
When Harper killed the session of Parliament, it cut off the government's agenda after 338 days. In December 2008, when he prorogued to stop an attempted opposition coalition takeover, the government was in session for just 16 days.
McAllister said the prorogue represents "the Harper government's approach to Parliament and politics in general."
That is to be secretive and dismissive of MPs and Parliament and concentrate the work of government in the Prime Minister's Office rather than in Parliament. "It reflects a general attitude that he doesn't have to be accountable," McAllister said. mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
Parliaments -- shorter and shorter
Average length of parliamentary sessions, by prime minister
Pierre Trudeau 511 days Brian Mulroney 618 days Jean Chrétien 484 days Paul Martin* 421 days Stephen Harper 303 days
Average number of sitting days per session, by prime minister
Pierre Trudeau 171 days Brian Mulroney 215 days Jean Chrétien 176 days Paul Martin* 159 days Stephen Harper 108 days
* Martin's one session ended in November 2005 when his government was defeated in a confidence vote.
Prorogation is the ending of a session of Parliament, and the decision to do so is the prerogative of the Crown. The Governor General issues the proclamation to prorogue, but only upon the advice of the prime minister. There are no rules about when a prorogation can or can't happen, or for how long the House can be prorogued. There is no requirement for the prime minister to seek input from Parliament or the public.
What does it mean?
It ends all the work of the government on the current agenda. All government bills die where they are, committees are disbanded and cannot sit during the prorogation. Private members' bills do not die, mainly due to a standing order that recognizes there is less time devoted to debating private members' bills, so it takes longer to pass them.
I just love this new video on Youtube. Almost sounds like Stompin' Tom ... sort of old time Canadian folk music. You can't really dance to it but it's great if you're just trying to recalibrate.
Wait a minute! 'Great' ... 'recalibrate' .. do I see a new folk song in my future?
Don't worry, I won't sing. Besides I got my copy of YouTube for Dummies, and realize I now need a copy of Reading YouTube For Dummies, for Dummies.
I was very disappointed in Peter Manbridge's interview with Stephen Harper. I usually like Mansbridge. He's not your normal Conservative Hawker, but where were the tough questions? Everything was so sugar coated my teeth ached just listening to it.
Shhhh! Stephen Harper is ‘recalibrating' The Globe and Mail Which is a sensible thing for a leader to devote himself to – if he's confronting a Borg Cube Tabatha Southey January 09, 2010
Twice during his interview with Peter Mansbridge, Stephen Harper used the word “recalibrate” to describe what the Prime Minister planned to do now that he's prorogued Parliament.
It took Mr. Mansbridge a while to get to the apparently delicate question of the proroguing of Parliament because the more pressing matter of body scanners at airports had to be addressed first.
This issue conveniently deflected any attention that Mr. Harper's decision to suspend government – a move that was revealed during the holiday, after five Canadians were killed in Afghanistan, on the day we learned the lineup for the Olympic hockey team – was receiving.
Which wasn't much.
I'm fairly sure that were it now swimsuit season, instead of directly after the holidays, a time when some people are feeling heavy, Canada's response to the body scanners might have been closer to indifference. But then I'm also reasonably sure that indifference isn't what the government was shooting for with its rather dramatic scanner rollout.
Still, Mr. Harper took Mr. Mansbridge's questions about proroguing in his stride. It's almost as if he considered them to be reasonable ones. It wasn't entirely clear that Mr. Mansbridge thought so. His questions about the motivation for proroguing came surrounded in a flock of qualifiers – he might as well have been asking a starlet eagerly promoting her new film about a recent, tabloid-rumoured breakup with George Clooney.
“What do you say to those, outside of the political process, who look at what's happened here – second time in a year, different circumstances in both cases – but the argument being made by many, I mean, you know you can't pick up a story on this issue without somebody referring to the Afghan detainee issue, saying that that's really the reason you and your government wanted to stop the investigative work of the committee?” Mr. Mansbridge said. His words have a “my producers want me to ask” tone, don't they?
Also, I'd prefer that interviewers not ask, “What do you say to … ?” or “How do you respond to … ?” On principle, ask for the truth and then listen to whatever someone chooses to answer to a particular allegation.
Mr. Harper dismissed the question by saying, “I think polls have been pretty clear, Peter, that that's not on the top of the radar of most Canadians.”
Yet polls were not what he was being quizzed about. There was a brief rally from Mr. Mansbridge on this point before he allowed Mr. Harper to return to the economy, which is his comfort zone.
“We're in a very different kind of economic year and that's what we're adjusting to,” Mr. Harper explained, ostensibly choosing to answer the proroguing question this way: “I don't think it makes sense for a session of Parliament to go on and on without the government periodically re-examining its overall agenda.”
I would have liked Mr. Mansbridge to push Mr. Harper on this assertion – just how big an agenda shift is he contemplating that he needs this much time off? Are the Conservatives going to return heavy on the taxes and light on crime? Will I be allowed to smoke dope?
How much re-evaluating has to occur, Prime Minister? Is this an Eat, Pray, Love situation we have on our hands? Because then I really will lose patience.
Recalibrating is, by the way, the same as calibrating. Except that calibrating is adjusting something to take external factors into account or to allow comparison with other data, and recalibrating is what starship captains do when scriptwriters want them sound busy and starship-captain-y.
Recalibrating – and the word's being thrown about a lot lately – is sort of like “reversing the polarity.” It's a sensible thing for a leader to devote himself to, if he's confronting a Borg Cube.
It's not my place to decide what it is that Canadians are concerned about (apparently, it's Mr. Harper's), but polls do suggest that defeating the Borg isn't a priority. Polls also show that Canadians are unhappy about Mr. Harper's recalibration vacation.
Possibly, people feel that governing isn't like having a paper route. It's full-time. Get in there, guys. It's a sitting Parliament. How much work can it be?
Well I hope that while Harper is sitting home with his feet up, he's learning a new Beatles song, because he's on the ropes in popularity. To help him out, I'm suggesting one: HELP!
As always, he underestimated the Canadian people. Fool us once, like you did last December, shame on you. Fool us again and you're out. We don't put up with this nonsense.
So that poison pill budget, including Steven Fletcher's sneaky little offerings, that you planned to present to force Canadians to polls - I'd rethink it if I were you. And if you were going to give Dimmy Witty a senate seat ... I'd rethink that too.
But here's a novel idea. Do your damn job!
Thursday, January 7, 2010 Prorogation hurtles 'out of dusty law texts into the mainstream' Gloria Galloway
Most Canadians are aware that the Prime Minister has suspended Parliament until after the winter Olympics and they are, by and large, not pleased with the decision, polls released Thursday suggest.
Although there was strong suspicion among pundits and Parliament watchers that Canadians would pay little attention to the prorogation announced by Stephen Harper’s office, two-thirds of respondents to an EKOS poll this week said they knew about the move – 52 per cent of them saying they were “clearly aware.”
And, among those who said they know that Parliament will not sit again until early March, the margin of disapproval is two to one.
“This has morphed out of dusty constitutional law texts into the mainstream of public opinion,” EKOS president Frank Graves said. “The public decisively say they are familiar with this and, when you go on to find out what they think about it, they’re opposed and they tend to concentrate in the strongly opposed category.”
Nearly two-thirds of the 1,744 respondents to the EKOS poll agreed with the statement: “The elected House of Parliament is the proper place to conduct the business of the nation and suspending Parliament is antidemocratic.”
The Conservatives have given the opposition a two-month opportunity to attack the government without leaving themselves much or an opportunity to change the page, Mr. Graves said.
Meanwhile, an Angus Reid online poll also released Thursday suggests prorogation has been rejected even by Conservative supporters. Thirty-five per cent of respondents who voted Conservative in the last election said they disagree with the decision to suspend Parliament.
Not surprisingly, the move was panned even more decisively by supporters of the opposition parties.
Across the country, 53 per cent of the 1,019 respondents to the Angus Reid poll said they disagreed with prorogation. That compares to the 19 per cent who said they supported it. About 28 per cent were undecided.
The rejection of the decision to suspend Parliament was highest in Ontario (59 per cent) and lowest in the Prairies (50 per cent in Alberta, 48 per cent in Manitoba and Saskatchewan).
Two in five Canadians who took part in the Angus Reid poll said they believe prorogation was invoked in order to curtail an inquiry into the treatment of Afghan detainees. About one quarter of respondents (23 per cent) agreed with the federal government’s position that prorogation was necessary to recalibrate, consult and deliver the next stage of the economic plan.
The EKOS poll also suggests the issue has eroded the strong base of Conservative support that has, at times in the past year, seen the party skirt majority territory.
Just 33.1 per cent of respondents said they would mark their ballots for the Conservatives if the election were held this week.
While close to the margin of error, that’s a drop of 2.8 per cent since December. And it means the Tory lead over the Liberals, which was as high as 15 percentage points in October, is now about 5.
“Those are the worst numbers we’ve seen for them in at least six months,” said Mr. Graves.
“It’s very difficult to attribute it to anything other than prorogation because it was a period when nothing much else was happening.
The drop for the Tories suggested in the EKOS poll has not been a boon to the other parties. The Liberals climbed by just 1.1 per cent to 27.8 per cent in voter support. The NDP actually fell a little to 16 per cent. The Bloc Quebecois remained virtually unchanged at 9.8 per cent. And the Greens saw a slight increase of 2.2 per cent, which brought them to 13.4 per cent. But Mr. Graves said the numbers suggest that Canadians know what prorogation means and are not happy about it. And the Conservatives should be worried.
“Clearly this has hit a nerve,” he said.
Mr. Harper and his party “must be hearing footsteps,” the pollster said. “Instead of pondering how their majority is going to work out, they are closer to sitting on the other side of the House.”
A poll of this size is expected to reflect the opinions of all Canadians within 2.4 percentage points 19 times in 20.
It suggests that support for the Conservatives is once again spiralling downward in Quebec, where just under 15 per cent of respondents said they would vote for Mr. Harper’s party. EKOS attributes that to three factors: the detainee issue (as well as broader opposition to the Afghanistan mission), disappointment with the perceived tepid federal performance on the climate change file, and lingering fallout from the gun registry.
But their troubles don’t stop there. They have also lost their double digit lead in Ontario and the poll suggests that the Liberals are ahead in Ontario for the first time in several months.
Dean Del Mastro, the Reform-Conservative MP for Peterborough, suggested that during their two and half month Prorogue-Vacation, his government can't be expected to walk and chew gum at the time.
