Saturday, January 2, 2010

Now That Canada is Officially a Dictatorship, Will we Get Uniforms?

I've never lived under a dictatorship before so I'm not sure what happens next. Will we get uniforms? Will there be a curfew? Will they paint a big blue 'C' on our foreheads to identify the malcontents?

I just have so much to learn.

I don't even know how we are to address the dictator. Do we call him 'Herr Harper', 'Your Majesty'? 'Your Holiness'? 'You scum sucking dirt bag dictator monster rights denying SOB' ... oops ... did I say that out loud?

Andrew Coyne leaves us with no doubt about what just happened in this country.

What’s at stake
by Andrew Coyne
MacLeans
December 31, 2009

Just to reassure anyone who might be in any doubt: I am not actually calling for civil war. What the government has done is not illegal. It is merely wrong: an abuse of process, an insult to Parliament, another step on Parliament’s long slide into irrelevance. Those of us who worried about the precedent set by the last prorogation of convenience, during the coalition crisis a year ago, must now worry about the even worse precedent this sets.

Prorogation the last time sailed close to the wind of unconstitutionality — the government had not actually lost the confidence of the House (as it had in May 2005, when Paul Martin’s government barricaded itself in office for nine days), but was almost certainly about to — but could be justified, perhaps, by reasons of state: namely, to avert the far more destabilizing consequences if the coalition, Bloc and all, had been allowed to seize power. I rather think that’s why the Governor General acceded to it, as the least bad option. I said at the time that she gave the right answer to a question that should never have been asked ....

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