Parliament suspended

Bricklefritz!

And they bravely ran for the hills!!

Ok, if you're watching/listening to C-PAC, you're hearing it now: the minister of Justice/AG is reading the proclamation.

Parliament is prorogued until 26 January.

The Speaker stands and leaves the chair.

Oh, what a groovy solution to an economic crisis.

This is a disastrous precedent.

I'm thinking it's time to petition the Queen to replace the GG.

I would have accepted a request to another Conservative to try to form a government, a request to the leader of the opposition to try to form a government or an election. I do not accept adjourning parliament to protect the government from a non confidence motion. If Harper is looking for fundamentally anti democratic, he just got it.

I have to agree with mahigan, I don't think this is acceptable at all. Any of the alternatives he lists would have been more appropriate.

Fuck.
So a guy without the confidence of the Commons can now hire, fire, set policies, and up to a surprisingly large point spend money (I live in BC; the Socreds at one point, not wanting public scrutiny of their actions, spent a long time doing government spending by orders in council rather than passing any money bills even though they had a majority. I can see the Cons doing something similar federally). He probably considers himself eligible to negotiate and implement international treaties and declare war.

She should not have done this. Michaelle Jean is a pleasant person, but when it came to the crunch she did not have the backbone to do the ethical thing. No, much more--she did not have the backbone to do her duty, her duty to the Canadian people, to Canadian parliamentary democracy--even her duty to the Queen she represents.

I will not call for insurrection like those Albertan Christian Taliban loonies. Nonetheless, in a very real sense for the next month and a half we will be governed by a government with no legitimacy, a so-called Prime Minister with no actual right to occupy the Prime Minister's Office. I would argue that any substantive steps he takes during that period should be declared null and void once we have an actual government representing the Commons.

The Tories were talking prorogation since the weekend; I wonder if we failed to push back against the idea hard enough until too late. Even non-NP/Sun/etc media sources seemed confident of Harper's choices.

I thought they meant confident he could get a few weeks, to regain a confidence he'd pretend was only in crisis rather than lost. Prorogation until the end of December is an obscenity; I'd hope that the opposition would defy it except that I'm sure Harper would pull a Yeltsin and shoot at them.

What kind of Stuart monarchy )(*@#$& is this?

I disagree with prorogueing parliment, but her duty was in no way clear. The arguement that i would expect her to have gone along with was that the conservatives needed time to reach out to the public and the other parties, that the conservatives "misread" the mood of parliment, and wanted to try again, and that her responsibily was to allow the elected government every oppertunity to survive.

But the 27th?????!!!!!
Didn't Harper promise a economic stimulous for the 7th??? holy crap, Obama will have been president for a week before our guys get back from F'n Christmas - thats ludacris

Read "chances" and "January" for "choices" and "December"

Jason - This isn't to the end of December - it's until late January>

I wonder if we failed to push back against the idea hard enough until too late.

I'm never going to accept that it's our fault for not filling her inbox or for not hitting the streets in anticipation of a decision she hadn't made yet. The terrible precedent this sets is obvious to anyone who gives it 30 seconds of thought. It should certainly be obvious to her and to whoever is giving her advice.

I don't know, maybe she cocooned herself when she realized she was stuck being Julian Byng, and somehow wound up with a really weird perception of things; in which case the pushing and shoving in the press would be meaningless.

But the notion that a prorogation would be reasonable - which, if it were a question of three weeks, perhaps conditionally, is sane - did definitely spread out in our pathetic media - sometimes in mutant forms like "for a month" and once or twice "till the budget" which is whose fault but ours exactly?

This is horrible. Between Harper's fait accompli and the manifold frailties of our media and political parties it's hard for me to be confident at all now. Harper may, in fact, be giving marching orders for a three month election while he sings his kumbayas in the media.

Harper had put the GG in a terrible position. BJ Bjornson over at The Galloping Beaver has a good point, I think. Imagine the howls of outrage from the bull-goose loonies when the "unelected, Liberal-appointed, former CBC reporter, separatist-supporting, immigrant female of the ethnic persuasion had the gall to refuse the totally legal request of the duly elected Head of Government, (Yeah, not true, but try telling that to the Cons)".

The helluvit is that when Parliament reconvenes, Harper will present a budget that contains everything that Dion, Layton and Duceppe have proposed, and then argue that they have no basis for a vote of non-confidence.

To quote The Trailer Park Boys: "Greasy".

The decision is a bad one, as much for its precedential value as for its impact on the present situation.

However, in addition to complaining about how the GG is postponing Harper's defeat through this undemocratic decision, we should also DEMAND the transcript of her meeting with Harper and Giuorno.

Since there are apparently "no precedents", then why should the people be excluded from knowing why we have to stomache this government for another seven weeks?

The coalition made the decision to press policy differences as the defining issue of the crisis rather than Harper's attempt to bankrupt the opposition.

Because he'll undoubtedly agree to any policy prescription that will allow him to live to tyrannize another day, we need to refocus back on the original Fiscal Update power-grab - as part of a pattern of behavior, along with 2006 party finance changes designed to game the system for the CPC at the Liberals expense, and in a pattern along with his NDP tape nonsense and now this non-confidence dodging prorogation.

In my view the coalition has always been a profoundly risky; the opposition hung their asses out on a clothesline because it was, at long last, actually the safer course of action, as against allowing Harper to continue using every practical (as against legal, which he cared less about) means to destroy the opposition parties.

With that being said one of the main goals of this possibly very costly enterprise has always implicitly been to get rid of Harper; to make his caucus eat him, or to have him sulk back to his think tank again.

We need to make clear that no policy remedies are sufficient if they are brought in by "Prime Minister Stephen Harper," who will commence his ruthless campaign against political opponents once he's preserved his government.

(It goes without saying that, while we should have governments fall without elections regularly, there is no consensus on this view; the Ontario precedent is what is being cited and it only applied to an abortive government that never got started.)

I agree with pogge. And given that scholars and historians have been reaching out to the experiences of other Parliamentary democracies, such as Australia and the UK, for precedent; then I suppose Jean has set a new precedent for Parliamentary democracies the world over. Potentially devastating to those who value accountability of the executive to the responsible legislative branch.

It's truly staggering. We are being held hostage by a tin-pot dicatator who has effectively lost the democratic legitimacy to govern - precisely at a time when billions of dollars of new spending is being desperately demanded of the government. And to top it all off: they are throwing Quebec under the bus in the process in the middle of a Quebec election campaign that can easily swing to the separatist PQ!

Thank you very much, Prime Minister Fucktard. I guess you decided since your head exploded, Jean Charest's should too.

Even Bush would be an improvement.

How refreshing for us poor Americans to see parliamentary democracy in action -- we of course are practically powerless to remove the head of government when he/she has lost the confidence of Congress, apart from the cumbersome process of impeachment in the House of Representatives and a trial in the Senate.

Up north, though, the Prime Minister must always retain the confidence of a majority of the House of Commons -- unless he is leader of the largest party in the House and has a "mandate from the Canadian people" (apart from most Quebeckers and most of metropolitan Toronto), in which case he can rule by decree for several weeks. I've been trying to find the authority in the Constitution Act that validates this exception to Prime Ministerial responsibility, but as a clueless Yank I've had no luck finding it. I'm confused about one other point -- if it's so antidemocratic for the "appointed" Governor-General to refuse the "elected" Prime Minister's request for prorogation, how is it democratic for the Prime Minister to rule the country by decree for two months? It rather makes you wonder what Harper would do with a real majority in the House of Commons.

Obviously, it isn't democratic in the slightest.

An unelected Governor General has allowed an un-confirmed Prime Minister two months of free governance.

The new precedent is indeed a bad one. A prime minister who can have parliament suspended at any time to avoid a confidence vote is effectively a president. Welcome to the Republic of Stupid (North). This GG has made a terrible mistake.

Jeff House, how do we know that Guy Giorno was there?

I've been trying to find the authority in the Constitution Act that validates this exception to Prime Ministerial responsibility

I don't think your failure has anything to do with your lack of a clue. I think it has everything to do with the fact that this decision is literally unprecedented unless you go back to the days when monarchs actually, you know, ruled.

The President of the United States has no power either to convene sessions of Congress or to force adjournments.

Pretty handy to have a Governor-General for a neighbor when you're Prime Minister, particularly when you have a spineless Caucus backing you up. Imagine what the world might look like today had Neville Chamberlain taken the Harper approach when faced with losing the confidence of the British House of Commons in May 1940.

Pogge:

Even George III was obliged to accept first Rockingham and then the improbable duo of Fox and North (as improbable or more than Dion and Duceppe) as his ministers at the end of the American War of Independence, because they commanded majorities in the House of Commons (notwithstanding the absence of intervening elections).

Let harpo govern then. I think the coalition is toast.

Let harpo and fuckerty preside over this capitalist-caused recession. Let their imbecilic economic policies intensify the suffering.

Then, that half of the electorate who polled as being opposed to the coalition MIGHT finally grasp what a hateful moron their hero is.

Too bad that the rest of us have to suffer.

Maybe we could find another planet for the stupid people to live on. They can be ruled by bush II, harpo and pinochet forever.

My own blog is long dead, so please pardon me if I use this thread as one of the launching points for this. I propose a new meme.

-------------------------

Keep meeting.

To the coalition: Keep meeting.

Parliament has been prorogued. So you're not meeting in an official capacity. But nonetheless meet as if you were not prorogued.

Find a site. Pay for it yourselves, and be explicit about that. You're citizens meeting to speak. But in so doing, keep up the business of Parliament. Debate. Draft bills. Hold (unofficial) committee meetings. Vote... on memoranda of understanding.

Show the country, its citizens, and its investors that while you do not argue with the legality of the delay, you see no need to go on vacation in this crucial economic time. Assume (without even explicitly saying it) that in January when Parliament reconvenes, Harper will fall, the coalition will form government, and the memoranda of understanding and drafted bills will be dealt with, bang-bang-bang, because you have already hashed this out.

Invite the Conservatives to join you. If you get some momentum, you might get no few disgruntled members willing to bet that Harper's fury will not control their lives.

Let the Conservatives take an extended vactation. Shrink the proposed vacation period instead, to mark the severity of the economic need.

Make it plain that you do not dispute Her Excellency's right to consent to her nominal first minister's request to prorogue, and that you respect her for making a difficult decision in uncharted waters. Open each session with a consistent, well-crafted adaptation of protocol which is sufficiently distinct that it does not trespass upon Parliament's formal privileges... but that nonetheless shows clearly that you do this out of the uttermost respect for the Queen, the Governor General, and the Canadian people.

Repeat frequently that you're just trying to get work done now, so that things can happen fast when the doors unlock in January. It can't be trespass upon the privileges of government if its level of formality is that of a caucus meeting.

Be completely transparent. Defeat the smoke-filled rooms meme. Heck, hold it in a bar, if you can find one big enough.

The media will come to you. I can think of no more efficient way to stretch your advertising dollars than a bold, newsworthy stroke like this.

If you do this, I will donate to the limit of my ability. I will write letters to the editor praising your actions. I will take my four children and go door to door. In Edmonton. In December.

Pass it on.

KEEP MEETING.

I guess you could say I passed it on. To the front page.

Woot! A guest spot on pogge! I can die happy now. ;) Yes, absolutely, I'm very glad to have you put that up on the front page. Permission wholly given.

Before I get to the front page, I just hafta say, BRILLIANT!

"Jeff House, how do we know that Guy Giorno was there?"

It was mentioned on CBC radio while they were waiting for the door to open and the decision to be announced.