Facing certain defeat in the House of Commons on Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended Governor General Michaëlle Jean at Rideau Hall on Thursday morning, 4 December 2008 and requested prorogation of Parliament, which she granted until 26 January. His minority government thus obtained a reprieve and some breathing space, but the country was left in a precarious situation at a time of major economic crisis worldwide. The PM's manoeuvre has no precedent in Canadian parliamentary practice.
A potential coalition of opposition parties, with majority votes in the Commons, was left in limbo, furious. The nation can expect a bombardment of vicious propaganda in coming weeks as parties justify their position, and dig in their heels. The coalition may fracture long before it can come into existence. In truth, it has been deeply flawed and illusionary from inception.
Had the Governor General been courageous and refused prorogation, a ragtag combo of Liberals and NDP, with dubious Bloquiste support, would have attempted some response to the fast deteriorating economic condition of the country. Meanwhile, a bad constitutional precedent has been set.
If Her Excellency had either refused prorogation or taken the request under advisement, a furor would have erupted not unlike the fuss and rant in 1926 when Lord Byng of Vimy did not acquiesce to the prime minister of the day. In Canadian fashion she chose discretion rather than assertion. Nevertheless reserve powers of the royal prerogative remain, intact and dormant until some future crisis.
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2 comments:
from a friend, fellow historian:
..one hell of a mess — [Stephen Harper] is the perfect shit, a cheap ignorant Napoleon of Parliament Hill, and he will, in all likelihood go down in January or February. Clearly, he rushed this poor woman [Governor General Jean] immediately after her return from Prague. God knows what she knows of matters historical and constitutional, but it's not likely much. She should certainly have talked to the best experts in the nation before seeing him. Anyway, she gave way and doubtless she's covered by the vagueness of the residual prerogative she wields. But as for the rag-tag coalition of the pig-headed [Stéphane] Dion [Liberal] and the nitwit [Jack] Layton [NDP], supported by the revolutionary-independentist [Gilles] Duceppe [Bloc Québécois], it could never lead to anything good. The nation is a badly educated, quarrelsome polyglot regional mess; the ruling class has failed horribly these many decades; the rich are wildly irresponsible and ignorant. For the time being, the country is all but finished. It will not come back in our time, not even to the tiny little reputation it had when we were younger. So conjure your inner resources and make a life of them — that's all there is. For now, we have a deliquescent parliamentary system in abeyance, a craven civil service, and an intellectual élite that wins prizes now and again but hasn't a clue about how to be useful and effective. Our tiresome mean-minded little prairie Duce is king of the castle, the trained seals can go back to their constituencies, and God alone knows what will happen to the economy.
CBC, 5 December 2008: “A constitutional expert says he's worried the Governor General's decision to [prorogue] Parliament sets a ‘very dangerous’ precedent that allows future prime ministers to use the same manoeuvre to avert their own government's demise. ‘This is a major constitutional precedent and that worries me more than anything else,’ said Errol Mendes, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Ottawa and editor-in-chief of the National Journal of Constitutional Law. ‘Any time that the prime minister wants to evade the confidence of the House now he can use this precedent to do so,’ said Mendes.
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