On December 20, 2009, Stephen Harper Prorogued Parliament ... Again

On January 20 Jack Layton and the NDP announced they will propose legislation that the government be permitted to prorogue Parliament “... only on a vote in the House of Commons, not on the whim of the prime minister...”   Since then, the Liberals have agreed to support this change to the workings of Parliament .

“Proroguing” Parliament  ends the session and sends MP’s back to their ridings.  Parliament is usually prorogued when a prime minister has finished the work of the Parliamentary session.

But this is not what happened on December 20, 2009.  Stephen Harper ended this Parliamentary session long before the work of Parliament was finished for this sitting.  Prorogation killed 36 government bills which were making progress, including bills dealing with important issues such as consumer protection, white collar crime and digital policy.

Harper has prorogued Parliament before, in December 2008. On that occasion Harper was dodging a vote of confidence that would likely have brought his government down.  Harper had gotten himself into trouble by antagonizing the opposition with a highly partisan budget directed not at the business of Canada, but merely at putting opposition parties at a disadvantage.

This time, Harper’s public explanation for proroguing Parliament was the government wished to adjust its agenda, and prepare a new budget in March.  Harper has also claimed variously that Parliament and Canadians would be better able to concentrate on the business of the country without Parliament, and even that it was a non-issue about which Canadians cared very little.

Most political observers believe the real triggering event for this prorogation was the situation the government had got itself into over the Afghan torture scandal.  The government has continually denied that Afghan detainees had been unwittingly handed over to the Afghan government and had been tortured, in spite of warnings from its own employees.  In increasingly desperate attempts over a 3-year period to avoid responsibility, the Harper Conservatives have resorted to the attempted smearing of diplomat Richard Colvin, and blocking the work of the Military Police Complaints Commission by refusing to produce requested documents.

Some commentators have suggested  that the Harper government could have avoided all this by simply admitting that there had been mistakes made in Afghanistan, and that these would be fixed to avoid their happening again.  But Harper’s arrogance and generally autocratic mentality seem to have betrayed him into stonewalling and denying until the position of his government was hopelessly and inevitably descending towards complete embarrassment.

During an interview with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, Harper claimed that the issue “didn’t resonate” with Canadians.  However, Harper seems to have miscalculated. Recent Ekos poll numbers show the Harper Conservatives losing a 15 point lead and dropping to 31.1%, slightly behind the Liberal opposition at 31.5%.

Many commentators  believe all of this has been the result of Harper’s personality, his inclination to summarily dismiss any opposition to his wishes in whatever manner lies to hand.  It is an arrogant attitude that could be highly dangerous to the long-term health of this nation’s democratic tradition. In the words of The Economist, “The danger in allowing the prime minister to end discussion any time he chooses is that it makes Parliament accountable to him rather than the other way around.”

It is reassuring that the Harper Conservatives are not having an easy time of it.  The reaction to Harper’s abrupt move against the Canadian Parliamentary tradition has not died.  Witness the remarkable creation of the Facebook group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament   This popular movement resulted in protests across the country on January 23.

But beneath this struggle for power by a somewhat autocratic Canadian party leader is the darker suspicion of an agenda rooted in the kind of right-wing thinking held by the more extremist members of American republicanism.  In Canada, this kind of ideology has long been promoted by the National Citizens Coalition of which Harper was a long time member, and once the president.

It is an ideological hatred of government intervention in society promoted by a traditionally extremist Libertarian  ideology that wishes to dismantle many of the features of a liberal Canadian society that has created itself over the course of a century.  The suspicion is that the rise to power of this kind of ideology would effectively end the Canadian social safety net and especially our medicare system which we have come to depend on for our health in an age where medical costs often rise beyond the means of ordinary people.

For those of us who see nothing wrong in common action supported by government with its goal of promoting equally the good of everyone in Canada, it is an ideology that is highly dangerous.  Nevertheless, it is a way of thought, and in Canada we believe that people should be free to think different thoughts about the running of our country.  Out of this collision of ideas, we believe, people may test the validity and efficacy of their beliefs.

However, while we can and should do nothing in Parliament to enact laws against such ideologies, we can and should at least make certain that such thinking is not allowed to overthrow our Parliamentary institutions and traditions – including the shutting down of Parliament.