It’s official – Harper made a call to Her Excellency yesterday, and she once again allowed him to push the reset button on Parliament for no discernable reason. Parliament is now prorogued until March 3rd. Time enough for the Harper government to stand on every single podium they can at the Olympics, try and hope a little of that gold lustre rubs off on them, and really, really hope that the whole Afghan detainee issue will just go away.
Uh huh. But what’s really messed up is that it took the Clerk of the House to actually confirm that Parliament was prorogued, and that the Prime Minister’s spokesperson couldn’t even do so – even though he distributed helpful talking points to justify it. Said spokesperson also studiously avoided answering whether he would answering whether the government would appoint a new chair to the Military Police Complaints Commission so that they can finish their own investigation into the Afghan detainee issue. But hey, you know, that’s “old news” that Parliament shouldn’t be focusing on. Or something like that.
I could express my own particular outrage at how this is one more example of a Prime Minister turning ever the more into a monarch in the way he’s circumventing Parliament and undermining our very system of responsible government and democracy. But Andrew Coyne over at Maclean’s did it so much better than I ever could, and so I urge you to read this quick post. And once you’re done, urge your MPs to follow Coyne’s advice and meet anyway – even if Harper and company bar the doors.
And elsewhere today, Her Excellency also announced 57 new appointees to the Order of Canada. A cursory glance shows me that out gay NAC artistic director Peter Hinton has been promoted to Officer in the Order, so congrats to him.
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