Political Crisis Shuts Down House of Commons

Governor General agrees to PM request to prorogue Parliament

Dec 4, 2008

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has avoided losing his job after convincing Michaëlle Jean to prorogue parliament just days before he would have faced a non-confidence vote

It was the Prime Minister's only way out of the political cyclone and he was lucky to get it. His own government created this political mess last week by trying to pass dramatically partisan legislation, such as cutting all public funding to political parties, as part of a routine economic update.

If the Governor General did not agree to the Prime Minister's request to suspend the current parliamentary session until the new year, Stephen Harper would have been forced to face a vote of confidence in his government on December 8th, which he almost certainly would have lost.

The other options available for Governor General Michaëlle Jean, who had cut short a state visit to Europe in order to deal with the crisis, would have been to either call another general election or give the opposition parties the opportunity to form a government by voting out the Conservative minority on Monday.

Ms. Jean has apparently decided to let the Prime Minister keep his job without having to win yet another poll. Though the Tories had already put a deposit on a campaign plane and buses in preparation for that eventuality.

Dion's "Comedy of Errors"

Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion has been criticized in the past as a poor campaigner. So it should not have come as such a shock when his performance failed to measure up in the showdown of televised addresses that took place last night between himself and the Prime Minister he hoped to replace.

Stephen Harper's prime time TV address to Canadians, his first ever in his nearly three years as Prime Minister, went off without a hitch. Canada's leader gave a Martin Sheen performance; sitting behind his desk flanked by maple leafs with an austere look on his face. While many would have disagreed with his reasoning, he made his point simple and clear: Canada's government should be given the chance to govern without having to hand over the reigns of power to a Liberal-NDP coalition government backed up by separatists (he mentioned this word several times in reference to the Bloc Quebecois' support for the coalition plan, and by the end seemed to be virtually spitting it out), a mere seven weeks after a general election.

By contrast, Stéphane Dion's follow-up message looked less Prime Ministerial and more like a rushed college film project.

First off, it was late. The Liberal response to Harper's message was supposed to air immediately afterward, but because of a series of truly absurd technical gaffes (the taped message was delivered late, both French and English versions were on the same tape, the list goes on and on from there), more than ninety minutes of network television aired in between Harper's address and Dion's response.

Once the message finally began to play there were yet more issues. The quality of the video was so poor that after seeing it, CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge cracked: "It kind of looked like they shot it with a cellphone." It also didn't help that Dion struggled to pronounce the word 'significantly,' getting it right only on the third try.

Hubris of Opposition Leader

On December 1st, it was publicly confirmed that Stéphane Dion would become interim-Prime Minister in a proposed coalition government consisting of Liberal and New Democratic parliamentarians.

Many critics have since argued that for the Liberal leader to lead his party to its worst electoral defeat in more than a century, only to attempt to be installed as leader of Canada barely seven weeks later (and only six weeks since announcing that he would step down as leader of the federal Liberal Party by May 2009), was nothing less than an act of pure hubris on the part of the Leader of the Official Opposition.

It was Dion’s last shot at the country's top job, but today’s decision by the Governor General has consigned him to the consolation prize of being only the second Liberal leader never to serve as Prime Minister.

A Canadian Press reporter said it best following Dion's address, "Just a few moments earlier things had seemed far more promising for the Liberals."

The copyright of the article Political Crisis Shuts Down House of Commons in Canadian Politics is owned by Jameson Berkow. Permission to republish Political Crisis Shuts Down House of Commons in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.