On the day of the so-called Magna budget, the choice of venue seemed pointless and weird – just another odd decision by an eccentric leader. But it soon morphed into more than that: a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with democracy in Ontario during the Mike Harris era, which Eves had inherited. In October of that year the Eves Conservatives suffered a landslide loss to one Dalton McGuinty, who promised civility, decency and a breath of fresh air.
Nine years later we may be seeing a similar shift under way, this time, ironically, ignited by McGuinty himself. The ripple effects are still spreading, most interestingly in Ottawa, where the Harper government seems suddenly on the defensive after 18 months of wielding its majority as though it were invulnerable.
The Ontario premier’s brain trust would have known, certainly, that his surprise decision two weeks ago to resign and prorogue the legislature indefinitely would be controversial. They cannot have imagined that it would catalyze the tsunami of opprobrium that it has.
The fascinating aspect, politically, is the immediate conflation of McGuinty’s prorogation with the two, now three years past, by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In 2008 , facing an organized coalition between the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois, Harper sought and received the Governor General’s assent to prorogue over Christmas – during which time the coalition fell apart. In 2009, facing scrutiny in Parliament over the treatment of Afghan detainees by the Canadian forces, he prorogued again.
In both cases, his critics howled – but after a brief flurry, the public lost interest. In 2011, using rhetoric that fell just short of accusing the opposition of treason for seeking to form an entirely legitimate and legal coalition, Harper won his long-sought “strong, stable, Conservative” majority.
The lesson was that abusive prorogations don’t matter. Nor, for that matter do any of the other myriad ways in which parliamentarians and the legislative arm of government have been sidelined in recent years by the executive branch, not just under Stephen Harper but beginning in the 1990s, under Liberal Jean Chretien. Because Canadians just don’t care.
From there, it was a short hop to the conclusion that, in a majority situation with a significant restructuring of the Canadian economy on tap, efficiency is more important than engagement – and will pass muster with a public that, generally, doesn’t care about process. Hence the mammoth kitchen-sink bill last spring, rammed through without a single amendment; and now the 450-page C-45, which seeks to finish the job, amending 64 different pieces of legislation, including 20, as the New Democrats have been at pains to point out, that weren’t mentioned in last spring’s budget.
Why bother with tiresome debate when the outcome is a foregone conclusion, and no one is paying attention anyway? It’s all about efficiency.
But now we add McGuinty’s prorogation – and the law of threes. Martial artists know there’s something about threes – the third strike in a sequence stings the most. Three makes a pattern. And so with this prorogation, which although it occurred at a different level of government and was perpetrated by different leaders from a different party, is not being perceived as the first in a series, but the third. And opposition leaders – not Liberals, mind you, at least not openly, not yet – are talking about the contamination effect.
Green Party leader Elizabeth May points out that the Paul Martin Liberal government’s fall in a vote of non-confidence on Nov. 28, 2005 was no surprise to anyone. The outcome was foreseen days in advance. “Yet Paul Martin would never have (considered) proroguing the house to avoid that vote,” May says.
In 2008, the unwritten rules changed. That Harper prorogued for nakedly partisan purposes without suffering serious consequences, twice, clearly led McGuinty to judge he could do likewise. But third time unlucky: the law of threes. And now, intriguingly, amid the controversy in Ontario, there’s renewed focus on all abuses of the Westminster tradition, including omnibus bills, talking points, prohibitively rigid party discipline and bald-faced lying in the House of Commons.
It can’t be a coincidence that for the first time since they came into their majority, the Harper Conservatives have been suddenly open to, first, splitting the MP pension reforms off from the main budget bill, and second, sending out C-45’s various thematic tranches, of which there are nine, to the appropriate committees for study.
The Conservatives have become aware, perhaps, that three more years of being perceived across much of the political spectrum as high-handed, bull-headed and contemptuous of the democratic process won’t leave them in a great position in 2015.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Michael Den Tandt
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