Tuesday, January 26, 2010

harpercon bleat: "B-B-B-ut Prorogation is 'Constitutional'!!"

That's one of the things that I've been reading on the "Blogging Tories" response to the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament movement. Duh. The proposed Liberal-NDP coalition was constitutional too. But they called it a "coup."

Anyway, CAPP isn't against proroguing parliament so much as we're opposed to harper's unprecedented abuse of this privilege as a means to escape his own self-created crises.

Suspending the legislature when you get yourself into trouble is a sight more problematic than having a majority of the people's representatives decide that a sitting government isn't representative of any of their views and doing something about it.

2 comments:

no_blah_blah_blah said...

The one point lost in the "Harper needed to prorogue Parliament for time to plan the next phase of economic recovery" argument is that (even if the government was incapable of multitasking) Parliament could have been adjourned. That would have left the Parliamentary committees working even if question periods weren't held.

Of course, the point was to shut down that one particularly worrying committee studying the transfer of Afghan detainees, eh?

thwap said...

Oh yeah. That "recalibration" of their economic policies is such a stupid, insulting explanation that I often forget that harper even made it.

harper himself seems only desultory efforts to sustain the fiction.

Considering the few noises they were making about fiscal policy were about winding down their stimulus spending, it's really hard to sustain the belief that they needed to abruptly prorogue parliament for that.