Prorogation

So I'm maybe a little late to the party, but I'm still about two months earlier than the House of Commons.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, that - early March - is when MPs will next be sitting in Parliament after Stephen Harper decided to prorogue (read: dismiss) the House.

There are three levels on which one can take this news. Intelligent commentators and political scientists are looking at (as Andrew Coyne does here as a further example of the continuing decline in importance of Parliament, and the further acquisition of power by the Prime Minister (and I'm trying to make a distinction between the position and its current holder). The problem here is that Parliament is elected by the people and the Prime Minister is not - if the peoples' representatives are being stripped of their legitimacy in favour of somebody not really accountable to the populace, well, that doesn't bode well for Canadian democracy.

Another audience, mainly a partisan and non-Conservative one, is seeing it as the government hiding from the scandal du jour and hoping it all blows over by March. Yes, the idea that Canadian officials are complicit in torture is scary and worth investigating - but like so many other issues, it will blow over (or be buried in the sand) before anyone convinces the public to care about it.

(The Conservative talking point response, that there wasn't any outrage any of the times Chretien prorogued, doesn't pass the sniff test - when Chretien prorogued, he had already accomplished quite a bit in his session. The Liberals prorogued four times in ten-plus years, this is Harper's second prorogation in thirteen months. Beyond that, Harper claims prorogation is needed so his government can think through what needs to be done next - Chretien and every other PM we've had has been able to walk and chew gum at the same time.)

Unlike the previous scandals, though, this one has filtered down to the average Joe in a mutated form - politicians are taking a paid holiday. Canadians, most of whom would love a paid holiday, don't like that - after all, we elect these people to run the country, not to take paid holidays.

It's so simple, and yet it's so effective - and the weird thing is, it caught on without any sort of pushing from the opposition. People who follow politics were harping on about Afghan detainees and contempt for Parliament and all that stuff, and regular people figured out the paid vacation thing all on their own.

It's okay for people to keep talking about the issues - they won't kick Harper out of office on their own unfortunately, but they will continue the trickling of support away from the Conservatives. What is important, though, is that for these Canadians who are upset at politicians getting to take two months off, they realize that not all of them wanted to do so, and most of them didn't have a choice - it was Harper's decision and Harper's alone.

--Ryan