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Posts Tagged ‘Parliamentary Procedure’

The Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament protest wends it's way to Victory Square (photo by Jess Sloss

January 23rd, 2010 saw thousands of people of all political stripes (as well as those lacking any stripes) from across the country come together in peaceful protest to demonstrate their displeasure with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s newest habit of proroguing parliament when it is convenient for him and his government to do so. With excellent traffic co-ordination from the VPD some 2000+ (my estimate, may not reflect reality, awaiting more official crowd estimates) Vancouverites convened at the steps of Art Gallery and marched to Victory Square. There, demonstrators heard speeches delivered from representatives of Fair Vote Canada, the BC Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Council, the Sierra Club and a Conservative angered with his party leader’s crass tactical maneuvering. All of the speakers came at the issue from a slightly different angle, yet all made substantive and important points. As audio and video of the demonstration become available online I will highlight what was said in more detail here. The CAPP Facebook page is a good place to join in the discussion, view photos and some video clips of Saturday’s action.

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Senate Chamber, Centre Block, Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada (photo by Montrealais, used under Creative Commons Attribution and ShareAlike license)

In my haste to post on the prorogation of parliament, I completely forgot to mention one of the more tangible reasons for Mr. Harper to do so; Senate appointments. As I understand it, (mostly by way of Kady O’Malley) with parliament not in session, the Prime Minister will be able to appoint at least 5 new senators and possibly as many as 13 depending on his willingness to get out the old parliamentary playbook again. Five new Conservative senators would give them a plurality in the upper house (did you know that there are still 2 PC Senators?) along with more bargaining power on the allotment of Senate committee seats. If Harper invokes Section 26 of the Constitution Act (only previously successfully done by Brian Mulroney to allow passage of the bill that created the GST) then he could appoint 8 additional Senators to the 5 seats that are currently unoccupied, thus giving the Conservative Party an outright majority with 59 seats out of a total of 113 (there are 105 ‘regular’ seats with Section 26 allowing the temporary addition of 8 Senators, with attrition then being in effect until the Senate returns to the ‘normal’ level of 105 seats through retirements.)

This benefit is by far the most likely prize for the PM; shutting down the House to continued criticism on the handling of the transfer of  Afghan detainees and delivering a budget clean of opposition injections when Parliament reopens are ancillary bonuses to being able to get legislation that has cleared the House through the Senate unmarred by those lefty Liberals and NDP’ers (don’t forget the rump PC’ers!)

This puts me in an interesting position; while I don’t agree with the means that Harper is using, I can sympathize with the ends he is trying to reach. As one who spends far too much time enveloped in US politics, I have developed a healthy fear of an overly powerful Senate. Now obviously the two bodies are very different but as time goes by it increasingly seems that the Canadian Senate is also becoming a place for legislation passed by our elected representatives to go to die. My wikipedia tells me that “[...]as a matter of practice and custom, the Commons is by far the dominant chamber. Although the approval of both houses is necessary for legislation, the Senate rarely rejects bills passed by the directly elected Commons.” I need to do some more looking to qualify my feeling that the qualifier ‘rarely’ is becoming less appropriate as time goes by, but I certainly do feel that is the case. If any readers have info that supports or refutes that feeling it would be much appreciated. In my own humble (am I allowed to add considered?) opinion, Senate reform is something both the US and Canada need (the US much more so than Canada, but why shouldn’t we get ahead of a growing problem ourselves?)

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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.

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