These are my predictions for the Olympics for Vancouver 2010:

Canada will win 25 medals including the first Gold Medal won by a Canadian in Canada. (I won’t jinx you, bumps skier). Sadly, we won’t “own the podium.”

These are my predictions for the Olympics in Sochi in 2014:

Canada will win significantly fewer medals after major funding cuts to Olympic programs. Olympic athletes, who have been talking about this issue for four straight years, will be widely criticized by Canadians for “underperforming.” Canadian sports fans will blame the athletes themselves for not measuring up to world standards without understanding that the financial assistance and training programs have been severely slashed because the Canadian Olympic commitment only applies to home games.

Canada spends more money on prisoners than it does on Olympians.

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.