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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Grits, NDP fight prorogue power

Join to restrict PM's abilities

By: Joan Bryden

Posted: 01/26/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

OTTAWA -- Liberals and New Democrats are joining forces in a bid to ensure Prime Minister Stephen Harper never again shuts down Parliament in what they call his bids to avoid a confidence vote or silence opposition questions on burning issues.

The Bloc Québécois is supportive in principle, but it's warning that efforts to rein in the prime minister's power to prorogue Parliament might not be constitutional. It's reserving judgment until it sees the fine print of the proposals.

Harper isn't waiting to see if the three opposition parties muster sufficient numbers to limit his power. His office is already raising the spectre of an opposition "coalition" conspiring once again to "usurp" power.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff chose Monday -- the day Parliament had been scheduled to resume until Harper suspended its operation until March 3 -- to announce his party's proposals for changing the parliamentary rules on prorogation.

The proposals would prevent the prime minister from proroguing for longer than one month or within a year of the last suspension of Parliament or when he's facing a confidence vote, unless a majority in the House of Commons consents.

The proposals would also require the prime minister to give at least 10 days' written notice of his intention to prorogue, spelling out his specific reasons for doing so, and allow a full debate on the matter in the Commons.

And they would allow parliamentary committees to continue to function while Parliament is suspended. That measure derives from the opposition conviction that Harper's latest prorogation was designed to silence a special committee looking into the Afghan detainee controversy.

Ignatieff said Liberals will seek to implement the changes through amendments to the standing orders or rules governing the House of Commons. But he said legislation could follow.

The Liberal proposals follow a simpler idea NDP Leader Jack Layton floated last week. Layton said the NDP will propose a bill that would require the prime minister to seek majority approval of the Commons before proroguing at any time.

Ignatieff had initially seemed cool to the idea of imposing limits on the prorogation power. But that apparently changed over the weekend when thousands of Canadians gathered in cities across the country to protest Harper's latest suspension of Parliament.

"I think we're listening to Canadians," said Ignatieff, standing with his entire caucus in front of the doors to the idle House of Commons.

"You don't need rules when people have a certain political character... We're dealing with a prime minister who's shown he doesn't have the political character to respect our institutions so, in our view, a change in the rules is needed."

Harper's office pointed out that the Liberal proposals would have prevented the prime minister in 2008 from proroguing in order to block opposition efforts to defeat the minority Tories and replace them with a Liberal-NDP coalition, propped up by the Bloc. The coalition idea outraged many Canadians, even though the manoeuvre was entirely constitutional -- and Harper had floated a similar idea when he was Opposition leader.

"The Ignatieff Liberals' new policy on prorogation is half-baked, irresponsible and dangerous," Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said.

"Clearly, Mr. Ignatieff continues to believe the Liberal-Bloc Québécois-NDP coalition was justified in its undemocratic attempt to overturn the results of the 2008 federal election and seize power."

The Conservatives continue to describe the coalition as undemocratic despite the fact the three opposition parties netted 54 per cent of the vote in the last election compared to 38 per cent for the Tories.

This time around, it's the opposition parties trying to capitalize on a groundswell of public anger over arcane parliamentary procedure.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 26, 2010 A6

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