For the second consecutive December, Stephen Harper is putting Parliament on ice. In the act, the Prime Minister is turning prorogation, a sometimes sensible parliamentary procedure, into an underhanded manoeuvre to avoid being accountable to Parliament. In the interests of political expediency, the government will diminish the democratic rights of Canadians.
Blogger The Galloping Beaver has pretty much summed up how I feel about Stephen Harper shutting down our Parliament to avoid criticism. Or perhaps more pointedly, how many of us feel about the Opposition leaders who will be too cowardly to do anything to stop him.
First, get over the illusion that you stand a serious chance at forming a government as individual parties. Then, understand that there are times when your survival as effective parties, let alone that of the Canada you claim to represent, trumps your ideological divisions. You must unite.
You must unite, and you must meet and raise Harper's ante. He keeps calling your bluff, and you keep folding. A coalition is a good start. So is attempting to meet anyway during the prorogue (wouldn't that be tantamount to a coalition as you would, de facto, be governing?). So is occupying the House and not leaving.
Why won't this happen? Again, G.B. sums things up pretty succinctly:
There is a don't-rock-the-boat cultural trait among Canadians that seems to cognitively prevent many of us from recognising what we must do when we've just been kicked ... We don't like hitting back and will condemn, parse and equivocate but not actually ball our fist and let fly.
Is that really our fate in this country? To be too polite, or too cowardly, to stand up for what's right?
