“Stephen Harper has used prorogation to avoid difficult political circumstances,” the Liberals’ 2015 platform complained. “We will not.”
Well, that was then. Mr. Harper, it is true, had used the power to prorogue Parliament in the way the Liberals described: to escape certain defeat on a confidence vote, in December, 2008, and to cut short a parliamentary committee’s inquiries into the Afghan prisoners affair, in 2010.
But the Liberals have proved no slouches in that department, whatever their protestations. Justin Trudeau prorogued in 2020, in almost identical circumstances to Mr. Harper’s in 2010: to cut short a committee’s inquiries, this time into the grant of a billion-dollar contract to a charity that had hired his mum.
And now the Liberals are reportedly thinking of restaging the 2008 crisis. Facing almost certain defeat in a confidence vote when Parliament returns next month , various people in the party have raised the possibility of proroguing – either to give the Prime Minister time to think of a way out, or to give the party time to hold a leadership race to replace him, or just to stave off the inevitable.
But the gist of the proposal, as it was in 2008, is to allow the government to carry on governing, in defiance of the wishes of a majority of the House. Entertaining as it is to watch the two sides debate who are the bigger hypocrites –
Liberals: I can’t believe you Tories! You supported prorogation in 2008 but now you’re against it.
Conservatives: The nerve of you Liberals! You opposed prorogation in 2008 but now you’re for it.
– it remains a terrible idea. If anything, Mr. Harper had the better case to make.
The two situations are not identical. In 2008 the House had barely returned from that fall’s election before the opposition parties announced, not only that they were ready to defeat the government, but that they had agreed to form a coalition government in its place, which they petitioned the then governor-general, Michaëlle Jean, to accept. It was to forestall that possibility that Mr. Harper advised her to prorogue instead.
In the present case, the government’s defeat would not lead to anything so novel. More than three years after the last election, there isn’t any doubt what would happen: the House would be dissolved, and a new election held. In 2008 Mr. Harper argued prorogation was needed to prevent a weak and unstable coalition from taking power. Mr. Trudeau could make no such argument today.
There was, moreover, some merit in Mr. Harper’s argument, self-serving as it may have been. There’s nothing wrong with coalitions, in principle, just as there is nothing wrong with prorogation, in principle. But the coalition proposed in 2008 was an extraordinarily rickety contraption. The Liberals had just come off their worst election showing in their history (to then). Their leader had already announced he would step down. They were in no condition to be governing anything.
Then that same leader agreed to form a coalition government with the NDP, with the Bloc Québécois propping it up. It seemed unlikely the arrangement could last more than six months, but in the meantime the Liberals – divided, demoralized and desperate to avoid another election – were obviously vulnerable to blackmail, and by a separatist party to boot. All of this in the middle of the worst economic crisis in two generations.
That wasn’t necessarily enough to make the case for prorogation. But it gave the governor-general something to think about. And in the end she acceded to Mr. Harper’s request.
That was probably the right decision. Whatever advice she may have received from the opposition parties about their intention to vote no confidence in future, they had not yet actually done so. Until that happened, Mr. Harper was still her prime minister, and she was still constitutionally bound to follow his advice. It was, to say the least, a highly unusual situation.
Mr. Harper arguably did her a favour. Had the confidence vote gone ahead, the governor-general would have faced a terrible dilemma: hand the government over to an unstable coalition at the mercy of a separatist party, or plunge the country into another election, less than two months after the last. Prorogation may have been the least bad option of the three.
Again, no such dilemma would face today’s Governor-General. Improper as it may be for Mr. Trudeau to ask for prorogation solely to escape defeat on a confidence vote, until the vote actually takes place Mary Simon would be bound to take his advice. It would be the right answer, but it would not make the question any less wrong.