Excerptcize

PM Harper outside Rideau Hall last year after his first request to prorogue parliament (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

Amidst reflecting on the year gone by, looking forward to the coming one and forming resolutions that will more often than not be forgotten by February, the end of 2009 also brought the opportunity for Canadians to once again delve into relatively obscure parliamentary procedural processes as the Prime Minister (who executed a similar tactical play towards the end of 2008) called (literally!) for Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to prorogue the current parliamentary session; that is, end the session without actually dissolving parliament. When this tactic was performed at the end of 2008 (extra emphasis on ‘tactic’ as it is strictly crass politicking) the reasons were rather obvious; a pending confidence motion in the House that the Conservative government was not going to survive would have either triggered an election just months after the last one, or brought about a Liberal-NDP governing coalition. Neither of these options were acceptable to Mr. Harper, so he flexed some of the arcane powers of our parliamentary system through prorogation, saving his government through the lackadaisical holiday season, enabling him to deliver a budget when parliament reopened that focused on the output gap the country was enduring amidst the recession that we are just moving into recovery from (albeit a jobless recovery.)

Since the PM has once again decided to ask the GG to end the current session without dissolving parliament, (in much less dramatic fashion this time; in 2008 the news camera’s were on hand to watch Harper go “cap in hand” to Rideau Hall, but he is more battle hardened now and this time around simply called Ms. Jean to make his request for prorogation) it begs the question; to what end is he executing this parliamentary sleight of hand? I’m not aware of any positioning from the opposition that would indicate they are about to defeat the government. I’ve heard people speculating that the PM wants the House shutdown during the Vancouver games to avoid embarrassing dissent in the Commons, but this does not seem very plausible to me; I do not see any evidence other than that Canadian Members of Parliament overwhelmingly want the Games to be a success (and why shouldn’t they?)

CBC’s longtime political reporter Don Newman has an interesting take on the PM’s move that strikes me as more likely. He suggests that prorogation is Harper’s opening gambit in a ploy to gain an outright majority in the House of Commons:

Get ready for a spring election. That is phase two of Stephen Harper’s newest plan to try and secure a majority government. Phase one came this week, when for the second time in just over a year, he asked Governor General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament and schedule a new session for March 3. [...] If Parliament returned as first planned on January 25, his administration would again be under fire over how much it knew about the torturing of Afghan detainees by the government in Kabul. He also knew that, with a budget to be delivered on March 4, all those previous weeks in the House of Commons would have been filled with opposition suggestions for what to put in it.

Perhaps the Conservatives have some internal polling suggesting that the Afghan detainee brouhaha is hurting them, but to this outside observer it does not appear (sadly) that this is an issue that has grabbed or rattled the voting public, rather one that has play in the media and the House. For every opinion I hear arguing, much as I have, that this is a serious issue that demands an investigation (we are talking about Canadian complicity in torture, a violation of our Geneva and other treaty obligations) one can find a voice shouting that we need to support our troops and that it does not matter how we treat those who would attack our soldiers. I would be very happy to know that the government’s handling of this issue is seeing them slip in Canadians eyes, but I’ve yet to see any strong indication that this is the case. If it is true however, and the government’s response is to prorogue parliament to silence dissent, I do not see much hope that my call for the PM to deal with this in a mature manner that is becoming of the Canadian government will come to fruition.

A more likely impetus for Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament is the crafting of the next federal budget. One thing that I feel confident in asserting from my observation of Harper’s tenure as Prime Minister is that he hates being in charge of a minority government. That the opposition parties can have a hand in crafting the shape of the budget seems to infuriate the PM. Mr. Newman seems to have a similar opinion; displaying a level of snark I don’t remember seeing until his recent retirement, he says:

That these [budgetary] suggestions [from the opposition] might well be impractical, even irresponsible, goes without saying. They would likely be politically popular and there was no good reason, from the government’s point of view, to let the opposition parties get away with that.

Through prorogation the Prime Minister can table an initial budget plan without any input from the opposition parties. The budget that he would like to implement were he to have a majority. Bruce Anderson of the polling firm Harris-Decima seems to agree; “I think he wanted to send a clear message to the Liberals and to the other opposition parties that he really does intend to act as though he has a majority.” Governing as though he already has the majority he so eagerly desires, Harper seems to be daring the opposition into defeating the government come the March 4th budget. Hoping that a string of national feel good moments from medal wins at the Olympics bumps their poll numbers and makes Canadians even more adverse to an election than they already are, Harper seems to be playing at leveraging the defeat of his current minority government into the elusive majority that he can only pine for right now. The last time the word ‘prorogue’ was in the news, Errol Mendes, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Ottawa worried that a dangerous precedent had been set when the Gov. Gen. agreed to the PM’s request. It may be that he was right; I don’t claim any constitutional expertise but the usage of this procedure does seem to be disingenuous to it’s intended purpose to me. To my mind it makes the government look weak, cold and calculating. Perhaps Harper’s calculations are correct and the electorate will be so incensed with another election being triggered by any combination of the Liberals/NDP/Bloc that they will hand him the majority he seeks. One thing I do know is that so far Canadians have seemed rather content with having a minority government; I’m sure it is too much to ask that our elected officials try to work within the limited mandate we have given them (many times over now!)

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