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Posts Tagged ‘prorogation’

Following through with what his spokesperson indicated at the time of the prorogation of parliament,  Prime Minister Harper made five new appointments to the Senate this past Friday, bringing the Conservative Party to a total of 51 seats in the 105 member body. While that number does not represent an outright majority, holding a plurality in the chamber (much as the Conservatives do in the House) will manifest itself with a larger Conservative presence on reconstituted committees once parliament reconvenes, as well as greater sway of Senate’s agenda. Kady O’Malley has a nice rundown on each of the new senators here at the CBC’s Inside Politics blog.

Wasting no time in indicating how this new found power in the upper chamber will be wielded, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson held a press conference on Friday with two of the new senators. Much as they have since first forming a minority government in 2006, it appears the Conservatives will ride the perennially popular stance of being “tough on crime” as much as possible; all 5 new appointees shared the ‘tough’ credential, while Minister Nicholson made sure to colour the Opposition with dread “soft on crime” label. The minister even went so far as to imply that opposition parties, especially Liberal members of the senate, were actively preventing the administration of justice. The Globe and Mail was quick to note that:

In fact, of the 17 crime bills introduced by the federal Conservative government in the last session, only two were held up in the Senate for more than six months. Most died on the order paper when Mr. Harper prorogued Parliament in late December.

As a campaign stance, being “tough on crime” is one of the oldest plays in the book as it is a virtually an unassailable position; who could be said to be against improvements in public safety? But what does getting “tough” mean from a governing standpoint? So far, it seems to consist of widening the scope of, as well as lengthening mandatory minimum sentences. Much of the governments introduced crime legislation on this front has been amended through debate in the House (funny how a minority government will do that.) As has been noted by many others, this does not sit will with Mr. Harper. With the new arrangement of the Senate and most of the uncompleted work of Parliament ‘dying on the docket’ when it was prorogued, some bills are set to be reintroduced in the Senate in their original language when parliament reconvenes. With so much attention being heeded crime and public safety, it is worth taking a moment to take a look at crime levels as they currently stand in Canada:

From the ‘The Daily‘, a regular feature of the Stats Can webpage, here is the overall police reported crime rate, as well as the Crime Severity Index:

Declining Crime Rate: 1998-2008

And from the Juristat report ‘Homicide in Canada 2008′, the homicide rate per 100, 000 people from 1961-2008:

Canadian homicide rate: 1961-2008

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That’s what Justin Beach is suggesting over at his blog. Justin is a great writer who also happens to run a fantastic Canadian Music News blog, North by East West; I don’t know where he finds the time (NxEW does have a great pan-Canadian team). Justin doesn’t just provide insight and analysis in his postings, he’s usually also contributing ideas on actual ways to enact change. Just the other day he was noting that that Canadians are clearly frustrated with the continual tactical leveraging from Prime Minister Harper, and states:

[...]this seriously begs for electoral reform and Parliamentary reform. The current system is totally and completely broken and there is no sign that there will be another majority Government of any stripe for the foreseeable future and it comes at the worst possible time.

We have serious problems to fix.

As I’ve noted before I also believe that Parliamentary reform is in order, both for the House and Senate. Electoral reform should be a natural partner to that as well. That prompted me to ask in comments “Are there any functional tools that Canadians can employ to attempt to undertake some electoral and Parliamentary reform? Can these things only originate from the House itself?” Today Justin has a post up that begins to answer that oh so important question, what can be done?

[...]the broken Parliament has been an ongoing issue for me and many others. It’s not just the proroguing of Parliament. That’s just the most recent symptom of an ongoing disease. The uniting of the right combined with the fragmenting of everyone else (and Liberal infighting) have allowed 30% of the population to run the country.

There has been talk in the past about ‘uniting the left’ but that’s easier said than done [...] what about the Liberals and the Greens?

[...]the Liberals have ‘the establishment’. They have infrastructure, money and names (and a party logo) that Canadians know [...]What the Liberals do not have is ideas.

[...]The Greens do not have ‘establishment’. Other than Elizabeth May people at large don’t know who they are [...] What they do have is street cred and ideas, lots of ideas. (see GreenParty.ca for examples.)

[...]In the last election the Liberals and the Greens did work together to a small extent. The Liberals did not run a candidate in Elizabeth May’s home riding and at one point and Elizabeth May at one point urged strategic voting to defeat the Conservatives. She also supported the idea of a Liberal/NDP coalition – so I think it’s safe to say that the door is open if Ignatieff has the courage to walk through it.

I like the idea on the merits, but am skeptical about the viability of this coming together; I suspect the Liberals will be inclined to stay in a holding pattern, railing against the Government when they can, holding off an election as long as possible and hope that circumstances such as bigger and continuing budgetary deficits eventually change electoral fortunes back to at least a Liberal Minority. I can appreciate where Liberals would take a stance like this from a strategic standpoint, but I do not respect it. Ideas being floated by people like Justin is at least a start on some change; we as a nation most certainly need it.

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Something that I’ve tended to think about the current tenure of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is that although his government has pushed through (or tried to push through) much legislation that I personally disagree with (cuts to the CBC, cuts to arts funding, “tough on crime” legislation), by and large the government has been competent (there have been exceptions to this though too.) Being one who has never had much love for the media, Harper had made no public comments on his recent prorogation of the Canadian parliament until he recently deigned to sit down with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge for an interview:

At 5:24 into the piece, Mansbridge asks the PM about his decision to prorogue the current parliamentary session; in a very casual manner, and apparently doing his best to dissuade me of my belief in his government’s competency, Harper says “coming off an extraordinary year [2009][...]we want to take some time to recalibrate the government’s agenda, both on the economy and on some other matters.” What kind of government is not capable of evaluating what you’ve done in the past, realign goals for the future and govern at the same time? Not one worthy of governing in my opinion. Unfortunately this video clip cuts off without showing Harper’s comment that since the controversy about the transfer of Afghan detainee’s isn’t on Canadian’s radar at large it’s not something that his government is going to be concerned with. To see that as well as Mansbridge’s logical followup question “Just because it’s not an issue in polls, does that not make it important?” you can view the full clip here.

Something I find rather interesting is to compare our PM’s assertion that the government needs two months to ‘recalibrate’ and that they are focused on the economy, not silly little things like the rule of law and how we adhere to international treaties, with the constant criticism that President Obama faces in the US that he is not ‘focused’ enough for his decision to deal with the terrible legacies Bush left in the GWOT, healthcare, the economy, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan and whatever other issues an effective executive needs to deal with. The blogosphere in the States makes the easy analogy that one can walk and chew gum at the same time to illustrate that good governments needs to be multifaceted, as we are a multifaceted society. It’s a shame our PM either feels that is not the case, or crassly makes that case to defend his current politicking.

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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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