Tories suspend Parliament, again

For the second time in two years, the Tories have prorogued Parliament. They are spinning that this is a routine event, having occured 104 times before (yes, but since 1867!!). But this is far from routine. Past governments have ended a session of Parliament once their legislative programs were largely completed and a new Throne Speech was required to lay out their plans for a new session.

In the last 30 years, Parliament was prorogued 11 times, always in these circumstances, except for the last two times in the current Parliament. The Harper Tories have instead used prorogation as a sneak attack to get out of messy jams. Last year, it was to put the brakes on the coalition that threatened to vote them out as a result of their poison pill fiscal update. This was the first time ever that a government had asked the Governor General to suspend Parliament to avoid a confidence vote. Hardly routine.

This time, there is an even less legitimate reason to prorogue. Their legislative program is far from complete, with many of the goverment's own cherished "tough on crime" bills still on the order paper and therefore now back to square one. Even the repeal of the long gun registry has been killed (although this piece of government policy was presented in a private member's bill, which traditionally is given a free ride in a new session of Parliament. Wake up Oppostion!) This is more evidence of the depth of cynicism that animates this goverment. They are willing to kill the bills that they aver are most important to them for some kind of political calculus that nobody can figure out. The best anyone can come up with as the real reason for prorogation right now is that it dissolves all the Parliamentary committees, in particular the ones that are causing them grief, like the one investigating the issue of detainees in Afghanistan. (Maybe some members of the public do not care about the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan. According to some, we could torture them ourselves and that would be fine. But we hope, and expect, that our government is wiser than this.)

What this really shows is that this government, like their ideological brethren, the Republicans in the United States, is willing to use any loophole, ambiguity or omission in convention or legislation to its advantage, adopting the letter over the spirit of the rules that govern our institutions, and subjugating the means to the ends in every case. This is because they are a minority, a desperate minority, trying to survive by whatever means. And the end is not about good government. As Stephen Harper has made abundantly clear in the past, his objective, and therefore that of the party he rules so completely, is to change the historical political culture of Canada permanently, from a small l liberal polity to one with a clear conservative bent. This a daunting, long term project, and capturing and controlling the apparatus of government, even on an a minority basis, is just a step along the way.

Prime Minister Harper is not a power hungry demagogue and dictator as some fear. He is a different type of politician, more insidious and arguably more dangerous. He is an ideologue, a true believer in a grand cause, and he will do whatever it takes to achieve his aims.