To prorogue or not to prorogue: the government's question

It has been a few weeks fraught with headaches for the government. The testimony of Richard Colvin on Afghan detainees was followed by a black eye at the Copenhagen climate change summit, where environmental groups have honoured Canada with the "fossil of the year" award for climate change inaction.
 
Pollsters say the government is getting poor to failing grades on both issues. So, nobody was too surprised this week when the rumours began swirling that the government might not actually come back from winter break, or not right away.

Instead, the Conservatives were musing about proroguing Parliament -- or ending the parliamentary session -- come January.
 
Anne McGrath is chief of staff to NDP Leader Jack Layton. Her reaction to the idea of prorogation is a good example of what the opposition will say if it happens.
 
"We've already had a prorogation," she says, referring to the parliamentary crisis of fall 2008. "We have a committee supposed to be meeting to talk about the treatment of Afghan detainees. ... So I think (prorogation) is a way of evading their democratic responsibilities."
 
McGrath argues the government has a lot of heavy lifting to do on the Number One issue, the economy.
 
"We keep hearing that the recession is over, or on the upswing, but for many Canadians this has been a really tough year," she says. "People are worried about jobs, their retirement security. their parent's retirements security, their children's futures. that's really what's uppermost in people's minds."
 
Some political analysts agree the Conservatives would not be wise to try to interrupt Parliament's work for their own political purposes.
 
David Docherty teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.
 
"I'm not convinced that proroguing the House is going to help the Conservatives at all," Docherty says. "I think that quite frankly, it will not help Mr. Harper's image. In fact it will help solidify his image as someone who's disdainful of opposition and disdainful of any kind of accountability mechanisms."
 
Docherty adds that even if the Conservatives were to prorogue the House and deliver a Throne Speech immediately, it could still make the Conservatives look weak on the detainee file.
 
"Any attempt to prorogue the House will inevitably be linked to his fear of a minority government committee trying to explore what happened with Afghan detainees," he says. "No matter how he tries to spin it I think it will come back to that."
 
But Conservatives argue their reasoning is completely different: they want to prorogue in order to gain full control of the Senate, which will soon have a majority of Conservative-held seats.
 
Geoff Norquay is a Conservative strategist and Ottawa lobbyist.
 
"The Conservatives are very close to a majority in the Senate," he explains.

"Early in the new year they'll cross that point. And so the prime minister will have the opportunity to appoint some new senators. The issue as I understand it is that unless the House is prorogued you don't get to press that reset button on the senate committees."
 
Norquay argues the point of prorogation is not to avoid tough issues. He believes the government would very likely table a throne speech within days of the prorogation, if it were to happen.
 
"I don't really think there's much to be gained by trying to prorogue Parliament to run away," he says.
 
Norquay also rejects the notion that the government has not handled the climate change file well. He argues a key part of the government's work in the new year will be to implement whatever agreements may be reached at Copenhagen, and to stickhandle a new relationship among provinces on the issue.
 
"This is going to be even more important in future," he says. "To arrive at the right set of balances so producing provinces
 
don't take it in the neck and that consumers -- who we all are across the country no matter where we live -- pay our fair share. And that's going to be an interesting and challenging exercise in federalism."
 
Still, almost everyone agrees the most important issue will remain the economy and managing the nation's books, which are now deep in the red.
 
"At some point in time they are going to have to cut spending or generate revenue if they want to be as fiscally prudent as they want to be," he says. "And that, I think for them, is going to be the biggest challenge going into next year."
 
Deficit elimination could be even more of a challenge when the provinces come knocking for help. When they do, they may very well bring an old issue with them, says Liberal strategist John Duffy.
 
"You're going to see them start doing what they did in the 90s coming out of that recession and the 80s coming out of that recession, which is, starting to march on Ottawa, saying we need money and we need it to pay for health care," he says.
 
"Which is a powerful emotive issue, and it's one the Conservatives have not had to deal with. I predict it's going to come back in 2010."
 
It's enough to make the government want to hide out, far away from Parliament Hill. But even a prorogation may not be bad news for the Official Opposition. Duffy argues the limping Liberals need to refocus their efforts on crafting a clear alternative set of policies and propositions for Canadians.
 
"The more that the Liberals play the Hill game frankly, the worse they do," he argues. "That's a game that the Conservatives enjoy natural advantages in, because they're the incumbent government. ... And at the end of the day it doesn't seem to be a game the Liberals have mastered, so why not get off and work on something that's of greater moment to Canadians which is coming up with this compelling alternative proposition?"
 
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is now huddled with his new chief of staff, Peter Donolo, who has sent a clear signal: no election talk for the foreseeable future. The party is looking forward to a policy convention in Montreal in March.
 
Meanwhile, the Conservatives have seen their advantages in the polls knocked down by recent controversy. All these factors mean a ratcheting down of election rhetoric that  may very well give the government and the opposition what each of them needs from a strategic point of view: time to lick their wounds. And in the meantime, there's the business of governing during some difficult times.