For starters, I’d like to apologise for trying to invent the word “proroguement.” Perhaps I was trying to blaze a trail. Perhaps I know as little about it as most Canadians.

In the seventh episode of my podcast, Jeff Wilson reminds me that prorogation has been used over a hundred times in our nation’s history. It’s true. This stat is probably ubiquitous enough by now that it’s meaningless again. In pointing this out, however, we get some insight into just how little we know about our own Parliament.

While Harper deserves all the licks he’s getting for shutting down Parliament for, let’s be honest, most of February, this tactic is right out of the Jean Chretien playbook. You may remember that Chretien used prorogation to avoid Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s report on the sponsorship scandal. Not much outcry then.

He also used prorogation to dodge the heat of the Somali affair. Not sure if you remember that one. It was similar to the Afghan detainee thing, except it involved actual Canadian soldiers actually killing somebody. Not much outcry then.

Chretien’s abuse (today’s definition) of prorogation was every bit as egregious as Harper’s is today. Yet, the public outcry isn’t nearly as loud. Perhaps we could spend some time thinking about this and asking ourselves some hard Canadian questions. At the very least, we could pretend we care all the time, not just some of the time.

In closing, I’d like to thank Mr. Harper for restoring an element of competition to Canadian politics that was absent for some time. It clearly has a positive effect on the population, albeit a somewhat baffling one.

I’ve spent the better part of the morning trying to write something about how Alberta handles political adversity and gets things done whereas the rest of Canada just seems to whine and cry and blather on about how hard done by they are without affecting any change. I was on roll, too, I thought… (maybe I’ll work on it and publish it tomorrow). Something caught my eye that made me realize I was writing a piece intended to show the divide among Canadians. But when the world needs us, we tend to unite and do the right thing.

I’m talking about Haiti and how Stephen Harper has deployed the DART to aid in recovery efforts, just as Paul Martin did for Thailand after the Tsunami struck in ‘04.

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