Am I missing something?

Back on December 15th, when rumours of prorogation began to be published, I opined on why it made sense to me and I expected the government to follow suit. Today, for the second day in a row, almost the entire line-up of op-eds from across the country, conveniently organized on NationalNewswatch for a quick scan and overview, are focused on this issue. Now admittedly some of the commentary today is a response to some of the over-the-top coverage yesterday (e.g. Toronto Star Headline - "Grassroots fury shutters Parliament" ). Still,this extensive coverage suggests that either all of these media types who are overdosing on this issue or I am grossly misreading public opinion on this issue.

Let's start with the basics. What is Parliament for? Without turning this into a history or political science essay, it goes back to the Magna Carta and the notion that responsible government involves the consent of the governed. Parliament is the place where the government (which is very distinct from Parliament - the government acts in the name of the crown and in our system, the leader of the party that has the most seats in Parliament is invited to form the government)is held accountable. All of its actions -- and particularly its power to collect money from citizens through taxation -- can only take place with the consent of Parliament. That is why when the government loses the confidence of Parliament, we have an election. In this case, the government has announced that instead of coming back to the old agenda on January 25th, it will come back to a new agenda on March 3rd. Given that no one is calling for an election right now and that the Afghan detainee issue is one that is several years old (so a month's slowdown in holding the government to further account for how they have dealt with the matter hardly seems that big of a deal), the case against prorogation seems tenuous.

So much for Civics 101. Critics of the present prorogation rightly point out that it is another in a series of events over recent decades which have lessened the influence and import of Parliament. They seem to think that the Afghan detainee issue is one that is being totally mismanaged by the government and that the government is hiding rather than being accountable on this one. Let's assume for a moment they are right. (For the record, based on what we know to date, it seems more a case of mismanagement than scandal-- still it's the opposition's job to bring this to the public's attention.) But as Jonathan Malloy points out in a Citizen op-ed, this example is hardly the worst example of recent government's avoiding Parliament. Paul Martin's ignored a non-confidence motion on a technicality in May 2004,bought himself a bit of time during which he managed to recruit Belinda Stronach to save his government. Last year, Harper avoided a non-confidence motion on his proposal to cut political funding to parties, bought himself a month, and then came back without that proposal on the table to survive for another year. In 2003, Jean Chretien prorogued Parliament to delay the tabling of the sponsorship scanadal report, an issue that ultimately played a significant factor in the Liberals demise and ended up in people going to jail. All of these are by any objective measure exponentially more scandalous than Stephen Harper's present move which delays his facing Parliament by about 40 days.

So why the outrage this time? I suspect that apart from opposition parties, interest groups, and media types who have an interest in pretending there is a mass outcry, it simply isn't happening. There is no grassroots fury burning up any phone lines that I am connected on. The Liberals are trying to take advantage of this issue to show themselves harder-working and more responsible (for which no one should blame them - day to day politics is about building brand -- but as other reports show, that can be a tricky exercise) while Fair Vote Canada is using the occasion to call for more fundamental electoral reform. All quite predictable and ordinary stuff that non-political junkies take a pass on and ordinarily ignore. As best I can tell, they are doing so today, in spite of the perception created by media that a populist uprising is about to be unleashed. I suspect in a few months, this will be more comparable to a tempest in a teapot than the Canadian version of a Boston Tea Party.