Harper’s Important Work Takes Place Outside of Democracy
The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa Notebook1 (12 January 2010) raises some sore issues for Stephen Harper’s prorogue problem.
First, there’s the Business News Network2 (BNN) interview he did the previous day. When BNN asked him about the risk of the prorogue to our reputation in the world as a “reliable” and “stable” country he responded that there was
“…zero risk… The games begin when parliament returns. The government can take its time now to do the important work to prepare the economic agenda ahead.”
That little statement implies a lot. Harper gives the impression that important work doesn’t take place while parliament is in session, but rather games do. That’s something of a slap to our democratic institutions. The idea that the “important work” is done by just a small group of individuals, not even representing the majority of Canadian votes and outside of the government institutions created to democratically represent our will, is pretty presumptuous for a prime minister. The prime minister was once considered “first among equals”3 it’s too bad that Harper has so powerfully furthered the trend away from that stance.
In addition, it’s not too hard to recall that the Conservatives are the ones directly responsible for any games that may be taking place in parliament. Let’s review.
- 2007 there was the 200 page book the Conservatives made for their members on how to obstruct parliament.
- 2008 there was Harper’s prorogue precedent, which he pulled off largely in reaction to the crisis he provoked through his own parliamentary budgeting games.
- 2009 there was the underhanded procedural trick the Conservatives came up with to kill bills and invalidate parliament’s work.
- 2009 there was the Conservative boycott of a special committee looking into the Afghan detainee abuse issue
The Tories are guilty of causing parliament to operate in a dysfunctional way and then running from that dysfunction under a number a of guises, the most recent being Harper’s need to do “important work.”
But can we really believe this latest excuse for running from Parliament? In the same Globe and Mail article we find out that Tom Flanagan, who was the former chief of staff to Stephen Harper was interviewed on CBC. Flanagan seems to have made the point that Harper requested the prorogue in order to put an end to the inquiry on the Conservatives’ Afghan torture scandal.
(Update 13 January 2010 – MP Charlie Angus (NDP) wrote up a good piece on Harper’s “coup of pinstripes” notion that parliamentary democracy creates instability)
