Poll : 23% of us are Con loonies

                                                                        updated below

Ottawa Citizen : Some say PM could justifiably shut down Parliament in crisis: survey

"A small but growing minority of Canadians says the prime minister would be justified in closing down Parliament and the Supreme Court in the face of “very difficult times,” according to a survey

What a fabulously leading survey question! Who wants to know this?

It found 23 per cent of respondents said the prime minister would be justified in shutting down Parliament when the country is facing a crisis or “very difficult times,” and 17 per cent would accept dissolving the Supreme Court for the same reason. 

Keith Neuman, executive director of Environics Institute, said he couldn’t explain the findings. "

Here's a wee bit of a clue, Keith. That 23% who are happy to shitcan Parliament and the Supremes under "very difficult times"?  It's not near a quarter of Canadians - it's just the 349 Con voters out of the 1517 Canadians you interviewed .
24% self-identified as "right wing" this year in response to your question on page 29 for the Americas Barometer survey : "According to the meaning that the terms 'left' and 'right' have for you, and thinking of your own political leanings, where would you place yourself on this scale?" 

This, as it happens, is about the same proportion of eligible Canadian voters that voted Con in the last election after Harper had already shut down Parliament twice. "Difficult times" is apparently code for not wanting to answer difficult questions in the House.

The article also makes mention that this 23% of people happy to shitcan Parliament and Supremes has been "inching up" compared to the 2010 and 2012 surveys. Given that less than half of the 1500 surveyed in 2010 and 2012 were asked this question, I'm not sure how it's possible to determine that percentage is "inching up", but yes, indeedy in 2010, 83 respondents thought it would be justifiable to close Parliament while 70 thought dissolving the Supreme Court would also be just fine. 

I must say the 2010 survey seemed a lot more fun -- particularly their inclusion of a number of leading questions about whether a military coup would be justified in Canada if there was "lots of corruption" - 264 said yes, or "lots of crime" - 226 said yes. The stats :

Coup justified - lots of corruption
264 - A military take-over of the state would be justified 

474 - A military take-over of the state would not be justified

4 - Don't know        1 - Skipped              757 - Not Asked

Coup justified - lots of crime
226 - A military take-over of the state would be justified 

513 - A military take-over of the state would not be justified 

4 - Don't know            0 - Skipped            757 - Not Asked

Really? More than a third of those you asked thought a military coup would be justified in Canada?

Exactly who needed to have this kind of info about Canada in 2010? Why were over half "Not Asked"?

Another set of questions from both 2010 and 2014 inquired whether people who disagree with our form of government should be allowed on television or to vote or to run for public office. And what survey on governance would be complete without those 85 Canadians who answered affirmative in 2010 to the statement : "We need a strong leader who does not have to be elected" ?

I don't blog polls anymore because they're pretty much just noninfotainment when they aren't outright push polls - but the Citizen/Global has eked a half dozen stories out of this one survey in the last week, including one with the entirely misleading headline : "Majority of Canadians worried about potential voter fraud, study finds". 
As the 50+ commenters below it point out, it's not non-existent voter fraud we're worried about - it's election fraud for the third time in a row. 

Note : For the 2014 survey, in addition to the 24% righties, 15% of respondents self-identified as "left" and 61% as "middle" in Canada. This was the lowest percentage of self-identifying lefties of the 27 "Americas" countries surveyed, minus the USA where the question was not even asked. The gender split in Canada was 50/50 with approximately 60% of respondents between the ages of 30 and 60.

h/t CC

Sunday update : Dr. Dawg takes issue with my scepticism re the Americas Barometer survey and the signs of fascism inherent in some of its findings. I left a comment there which I'll expand on a bit here. 

It isn't that I think that Canada is immune to fascism - certainly history has shown that if the public sphere is set up to only reward bastards, eventually many of us will fall in line and become bastards to each other - and it does seem the neoliberal corporate experiment we have all been living under these past few decades has grown increasingly tired of our noisome plaints about rights and freedoms.

Rather, my scepticism re the survey is based on its questions having originally been designed for the US's southern neighbours - hence its name : Latin American Public Opinion Project - and that its principal funding comes from USAID, recently featured in the news for running covert disinformation campaigns in neighbouring countries, presumably on behalf of US interests.

The Canadian affiliate and sponsor of the Canadian portion of the survey, the Institute on Governance, is "an independent, not-for-profit public interest institution with a mission to advance better governance in the public interest through exploring, developing and promoting the principles, standards and practices which underlie good governance in the public sphere."

Ok ... except the board is chaired by the Deputy Minister of Industry Canada whose IoG bio touts his oversight of the dismantling of the Wheat board, while IOG VP of Public Governance did the same under Deputy Minister of Transport Canada for the Navigable Waters Act ... so yes, I'm thinking their mission of "good governance in the public sphere" might have rather more to do with privatization and gutting enviro legislation.

Also I'm sceptical as to why Canada has been included for the last four surveys in what was originally a USAID project aimed principally at Latin America and why a PostMedia paper has now run six separate stories touting the results of this year's survey without mentioning that.
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Canada on torture : We're buying if you're selling

Canada's collateral fallout from Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee summary on the torture of prisoners at CIA “black site” prisons around the world.

"A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney’s office said Wednesday that Canada does not engage in, or condone, torture by national security agencies but ...  Canada will act on “a tip from any source” if Canadians’ lives are in danger."

This is our usual "we're buying if you're selling" approach to torture.

Feb. 2012 : "The latest directive says in "exceptional circumstances" where there is a threat to human life or public safety, urgency may require CSIS to "share the most complete information available at the time with relevant authorities, including information based on intelligence provided by foreign agencies that may have been derived from the use of torture or mistreatment."

April 2010 :  Day One of Omar Khadr's trial at Guantanamo. Confessions elicited via sleep deprivation, denial of pain medication, stress positions, being forced to urinate on himself and being used as a human mop, being terrorized by barking dogs, and being threatened with rape and torture. Khadr's defence team was only allowed to interview three of Khadr's 30 interrogators at Bagram and Gitmo, two of whom admit the 15 year old Khadr was threatened with rape.

FBI agent Robert Fuller

"... elicited from Khadr the identification of another Canadian, Maher Arar, who Khadr during interviews by Fuller claimed was training with al Qaeda operatives at a training camp at a time that, it later turned out, Arar was actually at home in Canada.

"In contrast to testimony he gave Monday, [FBI]special agent Robert Fuller told Khadr's war-crimes hearing that the young Canadian was not immediately able to name Arar, but did say he looked familiar." 

Shortly after Fuller reported the identification of Arar to the government, Arar was apprehended at JFK airport and rendered to Syria for interrogation there.

FBI agent Fuller also got Khadr to confess to throwing a grenade at US forces."

December 2009 : Harper shuts down parliament for two months in what turned out to be a successful strategy to muzzle parliamentarians regarding Richard Colvin's testimony about the torture of random Afghan farmers and taxi drivers under Canadian watch. 

Harper hired Bruce Carson to "stickhandle" the Afghan file "on a daily basis, involving senior officials from departments such as foreign affairs, defence, RCMP, justice and corrections". In 2007 a requisition for special boots to allow Correctional Services Canada inspection teams to wade through blood and shit in Afghan prisons was made public.

I think it's fair to say any report similar to the US Senate summary made partially public on Tuesday would never see the light of day in Canada.

April 2009 : "More than 16 months after Canada's security agencies cleared Abousfian Abdelrazik, government lawyers are now pressing him to admit to being a senior al-Qaeda operative, echoing American accusations extracted from Abu Zubaydah, water boarded more than 80 times under the Bush administration."

As noted by POGGE at the time : 

"While the rest of the world is coming to terms with the fact that the Bush administration was actually using torture to elicit false confessions in an effort to justify their invasion of Iraq, the Hapless Government™ is trying to use statements from a man who was waterboarded 83 times to prove that Abdelrazik is a terrorist."

March 2009 : The same day that CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O’Brian told the public safety committee there is no absolute ban on using intelligence that may have been obtained from countries with questionable human rights records on torture, RCMP spokesman Gilles Michaud tells the same committee :

"I want to be clear here - there is no absolute ban on the use of any information by the RCMP."

November 2006 : CSIS director Jim Judd said it had done nothing wrong by accepting as genuine the confession of Maher Arar, who was secretly and illegally bundled off by extraordinary rendition to a prison in Syria where he was held and tortured for a year.

"It does not necessarily follow that because a country has a poor human rights record that any information received from it was the product of torture," Judd told Parliament's public safety committee.

G&M : "In an Oct. 16, 2003 e-mail marked “secret,” officials of the intelligence unit of Foreign Affairs note that CSIS agents will pass on details of their then just-completed interrogation of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo and planned to “send two officers to Sudan next week to interview Abdelrazik.” 

Dec. 9, 2014 CBC : "This is a report of the United States Senate," Harper told the House of Commons on Tuesday. "It has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada."
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Update : Tom Tomorrow
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Stop the presses : Unreported crime up 3% over 5 years

Whenever he's faced with StatsCan reports showing a decrease in the crime rate, including the violent crime rate over the last decade, Public Safety Minister Vic lock-'em-up Toews always attempts to refute the evidence by claiming that the unreported crime rate is going up.
And that is presumably why we have to build more prisons to house all the unreported criminals.
I know, I know, but just bear with me for a moment.

On Steve Paikin's The Agenda this week, Toews stated :

"Quite frankly Canadians don't care what the crime rate is"

and went on to produce stats on his unreported crime meme :

"From 2004 to 2009, instead of 34% of crimes being reported to police, only 31% were. So what we are seeing is a gradual decline in confidence in the justice system."

Holy crap! A 3% increase in unreported crime over 5 years.

Toews also explains that "an apples to apples comparison of Canadian victimization surveys with American victimization surveys is the proper standard to use" and recommends everyone read the Vancouver Board of Trade Victimization Survey, which he says shows an increase in unreported crime.

Did that already actually, Vic, and blogged about it back in 2007. While applauding the addition of spousal violence to the survey, I'm not convinced we need more prison spaces to deal with other survey questions such as whether the questionnaire respondent has received unwanted emails or had a window or fence broken.

To Toews' claims of public safety being the Cons first priority, Paikin asks why then did the Cons scuttle their own crime bills by proroguing parliament?
Toews :

"Essentially as a result of prorogation we were able to reconstitute the committees in the Senate which would allow us to get the criminal bills through.

We're right on track with our agenda and now we don't have to worry about the unelected Senate impeding the will of the House of Commons."

[cough]Climate bill[cough]

Indeed, yesterday the Senate voted to make possession of 6 pot plants subject to a mandatory prison sentence.

But guess what, Vic, unreported crime (click the video viewer on the right at the link) is indeed getting a massive increased airing this week.
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Stop me if you think you've heard this one before ...

Canwest :

"Because the president cannot rely on Congress to pass the legislation ... sources say the agreement as structured would allow the White House to use executive power to treat sectors of the Canadian economy as American by claiming supply chains are so integrated they cannot be separated.

While Canadian government officials declined to comment, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative distributed copies Thursday of the Canada-U.S. agreement for review by members of an industry advisory committee."

Harper and Co have been working hard since their dismissal of Parliament. Coincidentally they have decided now would be the best time to introduce a crippling new extension of NAFTA into our lives.

The Deal : In exchange for a 10 day window of opportunity in which Canadian corporations will theoretically be exempted from just some of Obama's protectionist Buy America economic provisions, Canadian provinces and municipalities will permanently relinquish their right to award local contracts to local businesses.
Our taxes, our jobs. Bye bye 'Buy Local', hello WTO.

Or as Steve himself once put it :"I do think that the proliferation of domestic preferences in subnational government procurement is really problematic."

Stockwell Day has been pushing the provinces towards this since last June, even though many US cities and states sensibly have laws restricting their contracts to their own domestic contractors, and now much of Obama's US-only stimulus spending has already been spent.
Well, these are the folks who negotiated the softwood lumber deal for us after all.

CP :

"Harper says he doesn't believe there will be any opposition to the agreement, but adds his government could ratify the deal without Parliament."

John Manley, head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, former Liberal deputy prime minister, Canada Chair of the deep integration project 2005 Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, and co-author of "Building A North American Community" is also celebrating :

"It's good that it has given us a relationship with the United States that recognizes the degree of integration of our economies."

2010 was of course the date by which Manley predicted "the establishment of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter."

Or, as a Chicago School alumni once told me, Canadians will be ok with Canadian culture, industry, and military being absorbed into the US as long as they still get to vote and keep their flag.

We'll see about that:

"More than 25 organizations are meeting today in Ottawa to launch efforts to counter this and other trade deals whose aim is to destroy local democratic control over public spending."

Walkom and Laxer also think this is a crap deal for Canadians.
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I am the pro rogue

Only in Canada ...

"Go searching for the last time a Westminster-style parliament was shut down to free its leaders from unwanted censure or scrutiny — and you'll end right back in Canada, where you started.

It turns out, no other English-speaking nation with a system of government like ours — not Britain, Australia or New Zealand — has ever had its parliament prorogued in modern times so that its ruling party could avoid an investigation, or a vote of confidence, by other elected legislators.

"The strength of the federal government — and the prime minister's own authority — must flow through Parliament. If Parliament is weak, and if the prime minister ignores its members and tries to rule without their consent, then his legal right to govern evaporates."
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Top Ten Reasons to Prorogue Democracy ... so far

~Recalibratin' Economic Action Plan Pt 2 but not making any changes
~Time out to go to burning stick festival*
~We got nearly everything we wanted passed anyway
~Busy busy busy back home on winter barbie circuit
~Everybody does it, albeit mostly in the 19th century
~Only "elites" and "chattering classes" will notice anyway
~Can't do what we like in stupid minority parliament

Last night we got two more :

Tom Flanagan, former mentor to Steve, on CBC :

"The government's talking points don't have much credibility. Everybody knows that Parliament was prorogued in order to shut down the Afghan inquiry, and the trouble is that the government doesn't want to explain why that was necessary. I personally think that was a highly defensible action but instead of having an adult defence of it the government comes up with these childish talking points so then you try to backfill with other stuff that doesn't make much sense either so it's a self-created problem."

And if you were starting to warm up to Tom a bit here, by "highly defensible", he explains it was the Libs' fault, long time ago, yadda, yadda, yadda, the NDP don't like "force" anyway and the Bloc are trying to break up the country... Just in case anyone was even thinking about some kind of new-fangled coalition.
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Then on Business News Network tonight, Harper explained that markets don't much care for parliament either :

"The games begin when Parliament returns. The government can take time now to do the important work, to prepare the economic agenda ahead. That said, as soon as parliament comes back, we're in a minority parliament situation, the first thing that happens is a vote of confidence and there'll be votes of confidence and election speculation for every single week after that for the rest of the year. That's the kind of instability that I think markets are actually worried about."

Gosh, best get this man a majority for the sake of the markets then.
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Ok, that's only nine reasons from the Cons so far. #10 should be along shortly. Any time now...
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* burning stick festival™ - The Rev
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Democracy and Parliament not sidestepped, only suspended

We would like to thank Con MP Brent Rathgeber for that lovely explanation of Steve's dismissal of parliament - first ignoring its will and then proroguing it - and move on to how the media props up that contempt by ignoring it.

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With a little help from his friends ...

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As pointed out by POGGE here and here, CBC and CTV/CanWest both blew their year-end interviews with Steve.

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Mansbridge took a stab at getting some explanation from Steve on why he prorogued parliament but then allows Steve to blow him off with bafflegab about how Canadians don't care about it anyway. The question Mansbridge should have asked is why Steve is ignoring a parliamentary motion to hand over unredacted documents on the Afghan detainees and did he shut down parliament to avoid doing so?

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At least Mansbridge gave it a shot. In their year end interview, the CTV/CanWest tagteam of John Ivison and David Akin don't even mention proroguing or detainees, never mind ignoring the will of parliament. They just skip the whole friggin thing. In fact their interview, which ran in the National Post, opens with this :

IVISON: "Prime Minister, it seems there is not going to be much for us to write about, unless there are Senate appointments in our near future."

Yup, year end review, not much goin' on here right now. What ever will we write about?

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In his blog entry : Interviewing Harper: What to ask? Why not ask about prorogation? David Akin explains that Mansbidge already covered that issue - no, David, clearly he did not - and that they did not have much time to ask questions that could be rewritten up by their affiliate papers :

"[T]he goal for Canwest, at least, is to leave the interview with a story that the local editors of the Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and other Canwest papers would find interesting enough that they would make (valuable) space for in their papers."

Yet within that admittedly short 13 minutes there was apparently ample time for questions like this :

AKIN: Do (you) see yourself in a decade -- you may not be prime minister -- do you see a career for yourself after this? I don't sense you're the board of directors type but I don't know, maybe you are -- an academic? What do you want to do? Where are you in a decade?"

Steve in a decade? Who gives a rat's ass? We want to know where our parliament is right now.

Akin responds in comments at Pogge's.

Happily the conservative US UK mag The Economist, in two separate articles, goes straight to the heart of what the Canadian media to a truly frightening degree ignores :

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Harper goes prorogue

Parliamentary scrutiny may be tedious, but democracies cannot afford to dispense with it

Never mind what his spin doctors say: Mr Harper’s move looks like naked self-interest.
His officials faced grilling by parliamentary committees over whether they misled the House of Commons in denying knowledge that detainees handed over to the local authorities by Canadian troops in Afghanistan were being tortured.

A legislature matters more than the luge
Mr Harper is a competent tactician with a ruthless streak. He bars most ministers from talking to the media; he has axed some independent watchdogs; he has binned campaign promises to make government more open and accountable. Now he is subjecting Parliament to prime-ministerial whim. He may be right that most Canadians care more about the luge than the legislature, but that is surely true only while their decent system of government is in good hands. They may soon conclude that it isn’t.

Canada without Parliament - Halted in mid-debate

Stephen Harper is counting on Canadians’ complacency as he rewrites the rules of his country’s politics to weaken legislative scrutiny.

The danger in allowing the prime minister to end discussion any time he chooses is that it makes Parliament accountable to him rather than the other way around.
It is now up to [the opposition] to show that Canada cannot afford a part-time Parliament that sits only at the prime minister’s pleasure.

One would hope it would also be a matter of some concern to the Fourth Estate.

CANADIANS AGAINST PROROGUING PARLIAMENT - 92,000 120,000 140,000 and counting ...
On Facebook .

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80,200 85,800 90,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 150,000 175,000 200,000 members and counting ...

CANADIANS AGAINST PROROGUING PARLIAMENT

On Facebook

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Meanwhile, Alberta Con MP Brent Rathgeber, who sits on both the Justice and Human Rights Committee and the Public Safety and National Security Committee, made this statement to his local paper yesterday about the proroguing of parliament (h/t Aaron Wherry via Scott):

"Democracy and Parliament are not being sidestepped — they are only being suspended.
We have received six emails and phone calls telling us it was a mistake. I don’t think it is a significant issue in the minds of Canadians.

Most Canadians don’t follow the day-to-day operations of Parliament at the best of times, but during the Olympics any attention they might have had will be quite rightly focused on what’s going on in Vancouver and Whistler."

Only six emails you say?

You can email Brent at Rathgeber.B@parl.gc.ca

Telephone: (613) 996-4722
Fax: (613) 995-8880

Be sure to copy Steve on this - pm@pm.gc.ca - in case he hasn't heard anything about it either.

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I also liked the bit where he explains it's just as well that suspending democracy has shut down the Afghan detainee issue, lest foreign Olympics visitors hear about it :

"...that is not the kind of reputation of Canada that I think we want our international visitors to depart with."

Hey Brent, did Steve authorize this interview? Coz I'm thinking not.

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Rick Mercer : 22 Days of Snow Days

Excerpted :

"It is ironic that while our parliament has been suspended we are a nation at war. On New Year's Eve we greeted the news that five Canadians were killed in a single day with sadness but not surprise. We are at war because ostensibly we are helping bring democracy to Afghanistan. How the mission is progressing is open for debate but this much is certain – at present there is a parliament in Afghanistan that it is very much open for business. Canada has no such institution.

In Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's government faces fierce opposition at every turn; many of his cabinet choices have been rejected in a secret ballot by the more than 200 parliamentarians that sit in the legislature. Simply closing parliament down and operating without their consent is not an option for Hamid Karzai; to do so would be blatantly undemocratic or at the very least downright Canadian. If Hamid Karzai suspended parliament on a whim we might be forced to ask why Canadians are dying to bring democracy to that country.

Stephen Harper doesn't have that problem. The Parliament of Canada has been suspended for no other reason than the prime minister simply can't be bothered with the relentless checks and balances that democracy affords us. He doesn't want to have to stand in the House of Commons and hear anyone question him on any subject. I don't blame him. Parliament is filled with jackals, opportunists and boors. The problem is, like it or not, they were elected.

I also don't blame the Prime Minister for wanting to keep his ministers out of the spotlight. This is a prime minister who could argue he is Canada's greenest PM simply because he's the only one who has gone out of his way to give potted plants key portfolios.

The problem is he is the one who appointed Cabinet and like it or not they are supposed to be accountable. A minister's job is not to hide in their riding; it is to be accountable in Ottawa – or at least that was the promise. This prime minister has gone from the promise of an open, accessible and accountable government to a government that is simply closed.

It is too bad that prorogation isn't something that our soldiers have in their arsenal. When faced with the order to head out on a foot patrol in the Panjwaii district of southern Afghanistan, to risk their lives to bring democracy to that place, wouldn't it be nice if they could simply prorogue and roll over and go back to sleep. Soldiers don't get that luxury. That is afforded only to the people who ultimately order them to walk down those dangerous dusty roads in the first place."


Thank you, Rick Mercer.
I would quibble with your "we are a nation at war" and that we are "helping bring democracy to Afghanistan" - but let those who use those words today to defend our rogue prime minister eat them now.
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Wish you were here too!

Via Impolitical, who suggests a companion pic of the opposition parties showing up on Jan 25th as originally scheduled to fill the opposition benches would make a very strong statement against the missing rogue PM. The Owelympix stamp is a nice touch, given that parliament is about to be temporarily replaced by photo ops with athletes.

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Travers, today :

"Last year ministers threatened to go over the head of the de facto head of state if Governor General Michaëlle Jean allowed a coalition of "Liberals, socialists and separatist" to use their Commons majority to topple his minority."

[That would be Baird here]

"This winter Harper is essentially making the argument that Parliament is getting in the way of his government governing."

Responding to news of the prorogation in his New Years letter, Michael Ignatieff writes :

"Canadians are rightly starting to wonder if Conservatives intend to shut down government whenever things don’t go their way.

I’ll be spending the first few months of the year reaching out, travelling from coast to coast, holding town-hall meetings, web forums and small gatherings to hear from Canadians first-hand ...

On March 26 to 28, 2010, some of Canada’s leading progressive thinkers and doers will gather in Montreal for a conference entitled Canada at 150: Rising to the Challenge. They will be part of a national conversation about the Canada we want to be in 2017 when we celebrate our 150th birthday..."

Jebus chripes on a stick ...

Dear Iggy, Wish you were here too.

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This is what democracy looks like

It's 1.2 million people marching on Mexico City in 2006 to denounce the abrogation of their right to fair democratic representation by their government.

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You know why I'm posting this picture.

For the second time in a year, Steve the Despot and Her Excellency of the Rubber Stamp have dismissed Parliament to avoid facing accountability for government actions. All 37 bills before the current Parliament will die, the motion to disclose government documents relating to the cover-up on Afghan detainees will die, parliamentary committees cannot sit, and by the time Parliament eventually resumes on March 3, Harper will have appointed 5 new Cons to the Senate giving him a possible majority on the Senate committees.

And he can do all this secure in the knowledge it's unlikely even one-millionth the number of protesters who marched on Mexico City to defend their right to a fair government will be marching on Ottawa.

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So why is that?

We blame the corporate media, we blame the spineless opposition, we blame the non-voters.

We go shopping, we look down our noses at the US, we send each other cute pictures of cats.

How's that workin' for us so far?

We have a government elected by 20% of us which has set a precedent to dismiss Parliament whenever it gets into trouble.

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Coyne ... Coyne! : "As Canadian democracy spirals further down the drain : In what other democracy is it permissible for the government of the day to hide from the legislature for months at a time?"

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Siddiqui : "The extent of Harper's misuse of power becomes clearer when you realize that the Conservatives are replicating some of the worst practices of the Republicans under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney."

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Boris : Resistance

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One day we will look back on this time and say that this was when we lost it - the possibility of turning on our comfy little oligarchy into something that actually represents us.

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Emperor Steve

Montreal Simon catches Steve playing Napoleon on Canada Day :

"Harper managed to get the military to give him a salute that's normally reserved for the Governor-General. As Heritage Minister James Moore explains in the video, this was something that the Prime Minister apparently wanted."

Really? How very presidential of him.

The Governor General is the Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Forces – not the Prime Minister - but I guess since she allowed him to suspend parliament and declare himself head-of-state back in December, she may as well let him play with her honour guard as well.
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Update : Good point. Impolitical notes the hideous irony of James Moore, Minister of Heritage, being sent out to defend this latest example of "creeping political vandalism".
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Canada as a northern banana republic

Good opinion piece in the Star from Jim Travers today : The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy.
It's not often one reads in the press about our slow slide towards becoming a northern banana republic and I can't remember the last time anyone mentioned the quiet coup perpetuated on an unwitting electorate by Canada's premier paramilitary organization or the failure of our three main parties to address it.

To Jim's points I would add the following three conditions that also qualify Canada for banana republic status :

The Security and Prosperity Partnership
Rumours of its demise have been greatly exaggerated and mostly by its fans. A government assisted corporate plan to free up the movement of capitol and labour without public participation or oversight within a militarized North America, it has scarcely received mention since the last big Three Amigos bunfest. Yet on Thursday Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan appeared before the public safety committee to announce some princely sum in the millions "towards further implementation of the SPP".

Dispensing with the bother of elected representation
In addition to the first-past-the-post electoral system in which only a handful of votes in a few swing ridings actually count, there is the matter of both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition holding office by fiat. Harper dissolved parliament rather than face an election and Iggy was just simply crowned after the Liberal Party executive voted last year not to give the actual rank and file members of the Liberal Party the vote.

Media concentration
Canadians are more likely to know the names of Sarah Palin's grandchildren than they are to know that they probably got this news from just three Canadian media corporations.

Banana republic stuff - all of it.

Travers' column previously noted today by Jennifer, Chrystal, and Chet.
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To the coalition : Keep Meeting

Thousands of pro-coalition supporters protest on Parliament Hill after the Governor General agreed to suspend government until late January.

From Eric Finlay at POGGE :

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.

Pass it on to your MP and the federal party leaders, or write one of your own but keep on these guys. The Corporate Television Vehicles™ are saying it's over. It isn't. We're just getting started.

Steve pulls the fire alarm and walks into the exam

GG says it's ok and grants him an eight week extension on his separatists and socialists topic.

"Following my advice, the Governor General has agreed to prorogue Parliament," Harper said outside Rideau Hall after a two-hour meeting with Jean."

Prorogue just means recess

but it still contains 'rogue'.

Proroguing is trying to stop your government from falling by cancelling Parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote, or as Justin Trudeau put it : "pulling the fire alarm before you go into an exam you know you're going to fail."

If the Governor-General grants Harper's request, technically he has up to a year to recall Parliament.

While we're all hanging around Kady's this morning, waiting to see if the GG is going to grant Steve his big re-election do-over, let's just take a moment to talk about do-overs in general.

So Steve. Where exactly was your astrologer cum make-up stylist last night?

You have a winter, nay, a zombie palette, Steve. Stay clear of lipsticks with names like Majority Red or Red in Tooth and Claw. Also trowels - it's ok to be pro-rouge, but only just enough to cover your base....

Oh ye gods, Steve's fire alarm just went off.

GG says he doesn't have to write the exam after all.

And naturally he's calling it "the will of Canadians".