With apologies to Bruce Springsteen, who sings, “It’s a long time coming my dear, a long time coming, but now it’s here,” Canada’s prorogation crise d’année has been a long time coming. Each political regime has language unique to its own experience. “Prorogation” is unique to the Westminster system of Parliament found in countries like Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia. If Canadians didn’t know what the term meant before, the fuss over the most recent prorogation of Parliament, requested by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and granted by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean, means that Canadian understand what it means now. Or do they? The present crisis is the result of two corrupting factors that have been plaguing Canadian politics for quite a while now: the steady increase over the past generation of the power of the Prime Minster and the reigning confusion over the nature of foreign and defense policy, which this current crisis is partially about.

Prorogation: 1867 versus 1982

Prorogation is a power, exercised by the Crown (represented by the Governor-General), on the advice of the Prime Minister, to cease the current business of Parliament. It stands between dissolving Parliament (which would necessitate an election) and sending parliamentarians off on vacation for a little rest and constituency work. Prorogation means all government bills die on the order table and all committees cease their work.

Harper’s decision to request prorogation has proven controversial because his critics (some of them sympathetic to his political program) believe he is abusing his executive power over Parliament. This is just another chapter in the long decline of Parliament, begun a generation ago, and the centralization of power in the hands of a small group of people surrounding, and including, the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is a either a “friendly dictator” or an unfriendly one, depending on whether one is a Harper supporter or opponent.

Harper’s defenders point out that there is nothing unconstitutional about prorogation and that Parliament’s current dysfunction justifies it. A more interesting defense would suggest that, as Harper has requested prorogation three times in the past three years, he’s only returning affairs to the original plan of the 1867 British North America Act. Most Canadians do not realize that section 20 of that Act, which Pierre Trudeau repealed, required prorogation. It stated that “There shall be a Session of the Parliament of Canada once at least in every Year,” whereas the 1982 Constitution Act (section 5) states that provides that there shall be a sitting of Parliament at least once every twelve months. The annual “session” has been replaced by an annual “sitting.” One term makes a big difference because “session” means prorogation (i.e., new legislative agenda and new committees) while a new “sitting” retains the old agenda and committees. Trudeau’s innovation gave the Prime Minister greater control over the legislative agenda than he had under the original section 20. Or perhaps Harper’s practice, which differs not a jot from his predecessors, including Jean Chretien, does not rebalance things to the original plan because he still retains the level of control over the legislative agenda that Trudeau wanted. Even so, observing this forgotten chapter of our constitutional history should remind Canadians that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, seen by many to signify Canada’s democratic maturity, and seen by others as establishing the dominance of the Supreme Court, also contributes to the prominence of the Prime Minister.

Some of the criticisms of Harper have been comic, as with example of a group of academics, none of them of course supporters of Harper, invoking their seriousness and their apparent expertise as academics to criticize Harper, not for disobeying the law, but for contradicting its spirit. What is that spirit? They argue the Prime Minister should be nice.

Some of the criticisms have been more serious, as with the example of Harper’s Conservative Party, having polled popularity close to giving them a majority government, now finds itself tied with the Opposition Liberal Party of Michael Ignatieff.

But for the most part the criticisms of have been comic, as with the most recent example of Liberal Party leader (and leader of the Opposition), Michael Ignatieff. The former Harvard intellectual (from the JFK School, and not, my Harvard friends insist, from the more rigorous of Department of Government) proposes that any request for prorogation require the consent of Parliament. Since prorogation is constitutionally granted to the Crown, his proposal is irrelevant, notwithstanding the regard the Crown should prudentially offer the demos (as I have previously argued, with reference to John Locke).

Harper’s Strategy

There appear to be two main reasons Harper requested prorogation. Terminating Parliament’s current business means that all committees in Parliament – including the House of Commons and in the Senate, which up until now has been controlled by the Liberals – will be reestablished. The re-composition of committees in the Senate is especially important for Harper because it allowed him to take control of the Senate. With the new session, the majority of Senators will, for the first time in a very long while, be Conservative instead of Liberal. Many parts of Harper’s legislative agenda have been held up by Liberal Senators. By having majority control, and having control of the committees, Harper’s Conservative allies in the Senate will be able to pass more of his legislative agenda into law. Harper will retain a minority of seats in the House of Commons, but having a majority in the Senate will help him out in an area he desperately needs. While a partisan move, this move too may reestablish the original constitutional balance of 1867. One of the reasons many of the Founders accepted a non-elected Senate was that, as the “sober second look,” it would limit its activities to refining, not holding up, legislation passed by the House of Commons. It would be thus limited because its members are appointed, and therefore it lacks the democratic legitimacy of House.

The other reason Harper appears to have required prorogation is to avoid scrutiny over allegations that Canadian Armed Forces personnel handed over al-Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan over to their (and NATO’s) Afghan allies, where a few were alleged to have been mistreated or tortured. Critics of the Harper government’s decision to prorogue Parliament believe Tom Flanagan, a former Conservative advisor, confirmed their case. He asserted proroguing was indeed about avoiding scrutiny over the Afghan detainee issue and that the PMO’s strategy in handling this issue was “childish.”

However, what the critics overlook is Flanagan’s subsequent argument that there actually is a good case to be made in proroguing Parliament, namely that the Opposition can offer nothing but theatrics in “scrutinizing” the detainee policy and this has made Parliament dysfunctional. To paraphrase Flanagan, the Bloc is not interested in Canada and has an interest in undermining Canada’s troops, the NDP doesn’t believe in force and therefore has nothing meaningful to contribute, and the Liberals crafted the Afghan detainee policy in the first place and are now only posturing. None of the Opposition parties has any interest in asking “serious questions,” as Michael Ignatieff pretends to ask. This may be a case of “oppositionitis” that Harper himself would have displayed on the Opposition benches. Even so, the Opposition, unlike the governing party, lacks the responsibility of governing and thus does not feel the imperative to get things done in the same way that government does.

Whether the corruption of all parties justifies prorogation is open to question. More important, though, is how all the parties have become so corrupted. I think the current prorogation debacle is the result of a perfect storm, the combination of two corrupting influences on the Canadian polity that have been at work for over a generation.

Perfect Storm: The First Blast

The first corrupting influence is the dominance of the political executive over the House of Commons. The Prime Minister wields immense powers over his caucus, including his Cabinet, which has been characterized as little more than a focus group. Few commentators, however, have noted that the political executive has gained power over the last generation because Canadians have accepted the expansion of the administrative state. Canadians seem to love big government, and a strong political executive, with bureaucrats instead of parliamentarians making laws, is the result. Canadians are angry with their “benevolent dictator,” but they seem to get angrier when their MPs act and think independently, which they do when they switch parties. Canadians like their strong political executive because they like government taking care of them.

Perfect Storm: The Second Blast

The second corrupting, and related, influence originates in our foreign policy, and the Afghan detainee issue shows how the Conservatives are trying to avoid facing this fact. Military strategists for time immemorial have taught that military force must be used exclusively to fight wars, which includes defense of the homeland and, if necessary, conquering one’s enemy. They cannot bring democracy to places like Afghanistan or anywhere else because that is not what militaries do. As Machiavelli taught, you can’t change the laws of a conquered principality unless you’re willing to spend significant amount of resources. More importantly, as a conquering power, you must play factions in the conquered country off one another. This includes ensuring your enemies fear being handed over to their own domestic enemies. Failure to do so means placing your own troops in harm’s way.

NATO countries have ignored this ancient wisdom. Instead of conquering Afghanistan and withdrawing (and retaining the threat to return), governments of NATO countries have justified their intervention as a humanitarian mission. It seems postmodern warfare can only be justified on humanitarian grounds. Canadians like being taken care of, and they like to think of themselves as nice. While in some sense gratifying these impulses, humanitarian missions are problematic because they lack concrete ends. Without a clear idea of what ends your military is trying to accomplish, of necessity the means by which you’re trying to bring them about will be confused, muddled, and, in the end, will corrupt you.

This confusion over ends and means has led Liberal and Conservative governments to make a series of compromises, including entrusting our Afghan allies deal with their jihadi enemies, but not trusting them enough for fear our allies will not treat them humanely. Our Afghan allies don’t mind this because it’s in their interest to have us fight their wars for them. It’s not because they’re Afghans, but because they’re allies, and that’s just what allies do – get you to fight for them. Canadian soldiers since the Second Battle of Ypres have understood this injustice.

A Plague on Our House

The Conservatives inherited this second form of corruption from the Liberals, who created the Afghan detainee policy, as they have the first (the dominance of executive power over Parliament). But they now “own” both and are responsible for fixing both. In closing their eyes to the corruption in Canada’s foreign policy thinking, they have aggravated the corruption of our parliamentary institutions. The Opposition parties find it in their interest to perpetuate both forms of corruption. This is why the only proposals for reforming Parliament the Opposition parties will produce will be silly, irrelevant, and conducive only to posturing. This is also why Ignatieff cannot be taken seriously when he calls for “serious questions” to be asked of the Afghan detainee policy.

Sadly, calling a plague on all their houses is to call a plague on us.