Stephen Harper Has No Need for Democracy – A Prorogued Parliament is a Silent One
Photo Credit: Canadian Fermentation
As I’ve arrived home from my Christmas holiday, I like many other Canadians, am feeling the wave of depression at the prospect of going back to work. It is that time, and it is a painful time. Unfortunately, I have a full-time job like so many of you, I get paid every two weeks like so many of you, and like so many of you, I have to actually show up to work to receive my paycheque. But I can dream, and that dream is to work for the Canadian government. If I did, I wouldn’t be returning to work until March with the blessings of my boss and my paycheques still in hand. What a generous guy that Stephen Harper is when it comes to our tax dollars paying his MP’s salaries. Call me a slave driver, but I would expect my employees to actually earn their wage, particularly if the Canadian public is paying their salaries. I mean a four month holiday from Parliament seems a little excessive, doesn’t it?
Now it doesn’t take a keen observer to see what our government is doing here. They were under fire because of several torture allegations, some of which were coming from members of our government and from our military, and they didn’t exactly come off with flying colours at the recent Copenhagen conference on climate change. I remember a time when I screwed up at work – boy did I ever wish I had a four month holiday afterwards so I didn’t have to deal with the aftereffects of my bad decision. But I suppose if I ran the country, I would have the power to do that. Except, isn’t there this thing called democracy? Didn’t somebody say once that governments should fear their people, not the other way around (or at least something similar?)
It seems to me that our government does not fear us, and given our indifference to anything they’ve done in the past year, why should they? There is no upcoming election, leaving them plenty of time to win our love back with tax breaks and handouts. And how convenient – the government’s big plan for March is to unveil the budget for the year, already 3 months in and after the first quarter. I’m no business major or financial guru, but isn’t that a tad late? My boss would be ticked if our poor financier was that late with our companies financial projections for 2010, particularly in the middle of this downturn. Good thing the country doesn’t run according to the standards of pretty much every functioning business in the Western World. Standards, as anyone who has ever experienced a long phone call on hold with a passport office or gotten the runaround from the Canada Revenue Agency, are flexible and close to non-existent when it comes to government. Instead of the ones setting the bar, our government is constantly seeking to lower it.
The last time I checked, MP stood for Member of Parliament. This to me means that they should be spending most of their time in Parliament; that place where the people we elected go to run our country. Forgive me for being simplistic, but sometimes I think our government has forgotten and we have outright failed to remind them. So I am being simple. This is wrong. The democratic process doesn’t just stop being important. The world doesn’t just stop turning. Problems don’t just stop arising. It would seem to me that Parliament has become useless and we do not need it anymore. Mr. Harper has his Conservative cabinet just in case anything comes up, so who needs another opinion? Those just take time to listen to. Who needs democracy? That silly institution? Well at least until March, Canadians don’t need it. We have PM Stephen Harper, he doesn’t need help from anybody.
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Tags: democracy, prime minister, prorigue parliament, stephen harper
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January 12th, 2010 at 4:10 am
Do you really think that an MP’s job is to sit in Parliament all the time? SO you really think they are all on vacation? Anyway, the merits of suspending parliament fall on the quality of the Bills still before the house – have you read them? Can you name them? DO have any comments on them? And how do you know they just weren’t stall tactics to drag on in the House and make noise? I am not against you, only that it is clear from this post that you haven’t really read anything that matters on the subject.
January 12th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Woa woa woa, I am not ignorant of what’s going on in Ottawa, I’m simply commenting on the fact that we are going almost 4 months without having a session in the House. I don’t actually think they are all on vacation, I am aware they have offices in the districts they’ve been voted in and I”m sure some of them are working very hard, however time does not stop and Canada doesn’t just stop needing a sitting government. Proroguing Parliament, really, just shouldn’t be done, I don’t care what the circumstances are.