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 mention Canada’s response to the earthquake in Haiti in episode six of the Roger Kingkade Podcast (now with 40% less echo!). I wanted to elaborate here on my blog.

This could easily be a post about how embarrassed the Liberals should be of Ujjal Dosanjh and his comments aimed at politicizing a major catastrophy. No shame at all. I’ll let the speed at which he recanted his remarks speak for itself.

Still, there are some who figure that the Canadian response to the crisis is inadequate. I don’t know if this is genuine sentiment or political axe grinding. Either way, I totally disagree.

The government of Canada has done enough… at the moment. This isn’t a matter of cost or obligation. It’s a matter of coordination and doing what is necessary. Don’t lose sight of that. Canada could reasonably have deployed tens of thousands of troops and other response teams along with boats full of food and water and other supplies and dropped them all on Port-au-Prince just as the rest of the world is coming to the rescue. This would not have been the metered response that the devastated country needs.

I can’t help but think that this sentiment comes from Canadians who are more concerned with keeping appearances than doing what’s best given the situation.

Canada isn’t the authority on how to handle an earthquake. Let’s not pretend we are. We have a very good asset in the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) and our armed forces are more than capable. Still, organizations like Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are much better at dealing with these situations since that’s pretty much what they exist for. Put it this way: If disaster relief were a foot race, the Red Cross would be Usain Bolt and Canada would be Rita McNeil, by comparison.

Let’s enable humanitarian organizations to do what they’re good at and, when their work is well underway and it’s time for us to step in as a government, Canada can do what we’re good at; help police the state as needed and aid in the reassembly of good government… which is when Haiti will really need us if they are to have a lasting recovery from this catastrophe.

Humanitarian aid isn’t a red carpet event. It’s not the right place to be seen. Sometimes, hanging back is the best way to allow the process to work.