Harper cancelling MPs vacations to catch up from prorouging.
- Thread starter rafterman
- Start date
its a pr move exactly the same way the screaming and shouting from the opposition is designed to get media attention. So now the opposition gets to argue about their hoildays and if they say the don't want to attend parliment during their off time they lookjust like the hypocrits they are. The Tories are playing politics and from the look of things they are playing to win
The only way this will make Harper look any better is if the opposition refuses to sit those extra days or if they complain too loudly about it. If the opposition just quietly accepts Harper's extra days, the focus stays entirely on Harper. There is no way the pubic is going to see Harper's sudden decision to work overtime as a genuine change of heart or an attempt to make amends for prorogation. Everyone knows Harper is doing this because he got a lot more blowback than he expected when he prorogued once too often. If nobody had objected to this last prorogation, Harper would probably have done it again and again. So this is not a new Harper - just the old one trying to squirm off the hook.
The poroguing thing is silly i think. By the time the house sits again, the Senate has already shifted and the CPC can put through tons of bills previously stalled by the Red CHamber. THe Liberals, etc. complaining about the house not passing bills will be sorry they said thay pretty soon i get the feeling.
No. What wasn't passed starts again. Back in the Commons—where most of the debate time on all those 'vital' measure was already spent, not in the Senate—where the process of trying to get a majority of MPs to stop talking and vote for stuff they think is crap has to be done all over again. And in the Senate, as in the Commons the Cons don't have a majority either.
Whatever purpose proroguing was supposed to serve, it's silly to suggest it was somehow to speed up government business.
Whatever purpose proroguing was supposed to serve, it's silly to suggest it was somehow to speed up government business.
First of all, the backlash wasn't just about the act of prorogation alone. There was much more to it than that. It was the fact that Harper prorogued with so much legislation awaiting passage and the fact that he almost certainly used prorogation as a last-ditch attempt to stop the shit-kicking he was taking at the hands of the detainee inquiry. Shortly after he prorogued, almost 2/3 of Canadians didn't believe his excuse that he suddenly needed to "recalibrate". That number has probably grown since then.
Also, you really ought to check your facts before you claim Liberal senators were holding up Harper's bills in the senate. Harper has been a far greater obstacle to the passage of those bills than the senate has. This Canadian Press article makes it very clear that Harper has been the one getting in the way. He's been whining about his law and order legislation since day one but he's stranded it through prorogation and his other delaying tactics. Meanwhile he's been blaming the Liberals for his own delays. Just more tactical mastery from our "all-politics-all-the-time" PM. If he actually wanted those bills passed, they'd have been passed long ago. But he doesn't really care about law and order or getting his bills passed. He just likes to pretend he cares while he conducts his own personal war of misinformation.
http://www.680news.com/news/nationa...hat-liberal-senators-have-blocked-crime-bills
Record doesn't support PM's claim that Liberal senators have blocked crime bills
Joan Bryden And Bruce Cheadle, THE CANADIAN PRESS Jan 29, 2010 19:25:31 PM
..."Harper himself has done far more to delay his own crime legislation, by proroguing Parliament and other stalling tactics, than Liberal senators have ever done.
During the last session of Parliament, the government introduced 19 criminal justice bills, 11 of which were still wending their way through the House of Commons when Harper suspended Parliament on Dec. 30, essentially wiping the legislative slate clean.
Technically, those bills could be reinstated where they left off, but only if the opposition parties consent. They appear to be in no mood to co-operate given the partisan beating inflicted by the Tories.
Of the eight bills that actually made it as far as the Senate, four were passed by the then-Liberal dominated chamber.
Two were still being debated or studied at committee at the time of prorogation. And another - a bill orginating in the Senate to scrap the long-gun registry - was being deliberately held back by the government, which has opted instead to back an MP's private member's bill that would accomplish the same goal.
One other bill - C-15, which would impose minimum mandatory sentences on those running marijuana grow-ops - was passed by the Senate but with amendments that would leave some judicial discretion in cases involving fewer than 200 plants. The government claimed the amendments would gut the bill, an impasse that was unresolved at the time of prorogation.
At a celebratory news conference Friday, accompanied by two of the new senators, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson was asked repeatedly how he can blame Liberal senators for holding up his law and order agenda when the prime minister is the one who actually wiped out the bulk of it with his decision to prorogue.
Nicholson insisted the record shows "the Liberals are soft on crime." He accused Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff of making a show of supporting tough legislation in the Commons but then allowing Liberal senators to "obstruct, delay and gut some of our most important measures."
But he could point to only three specific bills: C-15; C-26, a bill to crack down on auto thefts; and C-25, a bill to end the practice of crediting convicts with two days of time served for each day spent behind bars before trial.
C-25 is not, perhaps, the best example for the government to dredge up. After a mere 19 days in the upper chamber (compared to 36 days in the Commons), the so-called "Truth in Sentencing" act was in fact passed by senators last Oct. 21. It received royal assent the following day.
Yet, after all the badgering of supposedly foot-dragging senators, cabinet decided it could wait four months - until Feb. 22 - to actually bring the law into force.
"They could've made it effective the next day," Liberal Senate leader James Cowan said in an interview.
"If ever there was an example of the facts differing from their rhetoric, that's a pretty good one."
On C-26, Nicholson complained the bill has been "stuck" in the Senate for six months.
But the six-month tally doesn't take into account the fact that the bill was handed over to the Senate just before Parliament broke for the summer. By the Liberals' count, the bill had actually been before the Senate for 38 working days by the time of prorogation - four days fewer than it took to get through the Commons.
Indeed, the Senate has regularly spent far less time examining and voting on bills than the House of Commons, which has taken as much as 95 days on some crime legislation that never got beyond second reading debate.
Given the government's own foot-dragging, Cowan questions whether Harper is really serious about passing his criminal justice agenda, or simply wants an excuse to keep reintroducing measures that allow him to bash the Senate and accuse the Liberals of being "soft on crime."
"It makes you wonder if they'd rather talk about it than actually do it."
Now some of the MPs are upset because they won't be able o attend any of the para-olympics on behalf of the government because the house is being scheduled to return at the same time. So much for Harpo's claim that he supports the Para athletes in the same vein as the able bodied ones. He's probably going to send some 2nd assistant deputy minister to represent the government and feel good about it.
Oh ya, time flies I'm back. Shhhhhh!
Oh ya, time flies I'm back. Shhhhhh!
Since Harper still hasn't got a majority either in the Commons or in the Senate, and still can't figure out how to attract anyone but his claque of drones to his 'program', that'll be a long time coming. So far the party that has killed the most government bills has been the Conservantives. Two proroguings and a useless election waste a lot of time and hard work.
But just imagine if he put stuff on the table that the majority—and not just the dyed-hard and brain-dead—wanted. Iggy, Jack and Gilles would be so eager to take credit for it, your head would spin, it would pass so fast.
That's how democracy works: by doing what the majority wants, not by a minority trying to ram their partisan views down eveyone else's throats.
