This is starting to feel like an episode in the Twilight Zone.
Still, there's word the Tories
may go further to ensure prorogation becomes routine. Government sources say they're contemplating formally shutting down Parliament at the end of every year, so the government can start afresh with a throne speech and a budget.
Do it often enough, it becomes routine, and people come to believe it's the norm. Normal to kill any work still on the table and start all over again just to kill the same bills the following year. Normal to incurr waste of taxpayers dollars on wasted bills. Normal to wipe the slate clean of work done by committees studying abuses and scandals.
Sort of like going to confession on a regular basis: wipe your sins away without coming to terms with them or being held accountable so that you can go out and commit a whole new set of sins, repeat some of the same ones, secure in the knowledge that never, ever will you be held accountable.
The role of elected representatives will erode further if the federal government makes good on its suggestion to make prorogation an annual event, experts say. "It's not easy to see how this can work," said David Mitchell, president of the Ottawa-based Public Policy Forum. "It raises the question: Why do we have a Parliament?"
No fucking kidding! Our vote, our will comes to mean very little.
Regardless of what party you support, you should oppose this move in any way you can. Do any of us want this to be the way any party in power - today the conservatives, tomorrow, who knows - by-passes our elected representatives who are supposed to act on our behalf?
The government's use of prorogation shows it believes Parliament has become an "inconvenience" that needs to be managed, rather than an essential part of the democratic process, said Mitchell.
Our will, as represented through those we elect, an inconvenience that needs to be managed? Oh sure, because the CONs seem to think they know what we want better than we do, and actually consulting with us, or taking our misguided concerns seriously is a waste of time.
(emphasis mine)
But (political scientist Nelson Wiseman from the University of Toronto) doesn't expect much of a public backlash from the move. The public doesn't seem to get worked up about the erosion of Parliamentary power, he said. His feeling is echoed privately by Tory MPs, and by a poll showing that 46 per cent of Canadians just don't care whether Parliament starts sitting in January or takes a break and comes back after the Olympics in March.
How fucking insulting and offensive is that? We don't care about the erosion of Parliament? We don't care that we are losing our right to shape our own future? We just don't give a damn that our democratic act of voting is just to lull us into believing this is a democracy but actually means very little?
Show these pompous bastards how fucking wrong they are. Show it in polls, show it by protesting prorogation. If you don't, then they are right. You really don't care whether or not we live in a democratic country, and I'll add that you don't give the slightest damn about your children's rights.
And why has our precious media given this monumentally important topic so little coverage? Maybe part of the problem why so many people don't seem to give a damn is that the media is doing such a shit job at bringing it, and its serious nature, to our attention.
