Tories aren’t the only ones who play parliamentary games

Jonathan Malloy is a professor of political science and public policy and administration at Carleton University.

Byline: Jonathan Malloy (originally in the Citizen)
Publication: Vancouver Sun (Canada)
Date: Thursday January 7th, 2010

Prime ministers have always controlled when Parliament meets, but this is ridiculous. After his dramatic request to prorogue Parliament just over a year ago, Stephen Harper has done it again, overturning the parliamentary calendar and phoning the governor-general on Dec. 30 to close down Parliament until March (announced just as everyone was watching the picks for Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team). When Harper asked the governor-general for prorogation in December 2008, Parliament at least went out with a bang. In December 2009, it faded away with barely a whimper.

But to be clear, not just the Conservatives are to blame. The era of Liberal and Conservative minority governments since 2004 has seen an incredible bending and twisting of parliamentary rules and conventions. Many of these practices, like the convening and ending of parliamentary sessions, have long been kept unwritten to allow flexibility and adaptation to the circumstances at hand. But even these flexible rules are being contorted to an alarming degree.

Examples are many but the bending of the confidence convention is perhaps the most serious. Scholars are still debating whether Paul Martin’s government was defeated on May 10, 2005 when it lost a motion calling for its resignation. (Martin did not recognize it as a confidence motion, and nine days later won another vote thanks to the defection of Belinda Stronach.)

Three-and-a-half years later, Harper escaped almost certain defeat on Dec. 1, 2008 by postponing the scheduled opposition day for a week, after which it was cancelled thanks to prorogation three days later.

Another area of rule-bending is parliamentary committees. Committees have functioned best when members at least respect each other and their partisan roles, even if they cannot reach consensus.

But Commons committees are increasingly scorched-earth battles in which no quarter is given, leading to mudslinging inquiries and breakdowns.

A third mess is election dates. This would not be a problem if Harper had not passed his own (flexible) law to fix the dates of future elections, then  promptly ignored it to call the 2008 election.

Voters obviously weren’t incensed enough to defeat the Conservatives, so Harper can claim some vindication here.

Returning to prorogation, prime ministers have always scheduled Parliament at their convenience, with sessions starting and stopping all over the place — remember Jean Chretien’s prorogation in November 2003 that postponed the damning sponsorship scandal report until after Paul Martin took over?

In fact, the crucial prorogation of December 2008 may have been an example of flexibility at its best, allowing the entire system a chance to calm down and avoid the three-headed instant coalition of convenience proposed by the opposition parties.

This latest prorogation was rumoured for weeks and Harper hasn’t broken any written rules. But the sheer banality of pulling the plug in the middle of Christmas holidays — and by phone call — is just one more example of not caring about the larger spirit of the game.

The irony of all this is that Parliament has become more important and central than ever under minority government, with its many nailbiting votes and showdowns.

But it’s a hollow victory, at the expense of any larger agreement or regard for Parliament and the rules of the game.

Again, it is not just the governing party; all parties are to blame.

And it is not just parliamentary and constitutional scholars who suffer, but all Canadians, when there is less and less agreement about the rules and the larger unwritten spirit of Parliament.