Barrel Strength

In granting Mr. Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament, Madame Jean has correctly interpreted her role, and taken the most appropriate action.

For those of you who missed it – Ted McWhinney, a Constitutional expert and former Liberal MP, appeared yesterday on CTV’s Mike Duffy Live with some cogent and helpful comments on the situation. McWhinney, who has advised a number of governments on constitutional impasses of this kind, said that as far as the GG’s options/responsibilities in this kind of situation, “There’s virtually no writing of any value – based on empirical studies from here or abroad. Constitutional law is 50 per cent rules, and 50 per cent high politics and a successful G.G. knows how to maintain that balance. Reading public opinion is crucial.”

He said the GG should make her decision in light of what provides the most political stability and that she is obliged in the first instance to take advice from her first minister, Harper – a view echoed by other constitutional experts I have seen interviewed this week, who all opined that it would be very peculiar for her to refuse to grant his request for prorogation, as long as he specified when a new session of Parliament would be opened and the timeframe was reasonable (BTW, in all of the hullabaloo, no one seems to have noticed that the House was scheduled to recess Dec 12 to Jan 26, so one week has been lost).

McWhinney also said it would be completely inappropriate for her to meet with anyone else other than the Leader of the Opposition (i.e. not with Layton), and any meeting with Dion could only be after meeting with the PM in order to explain her decision in person, if she wished to do so – she is under no obligation. He was adament that any kind of communication – much less ‘negotiations’ – with the opposition parties prior to giving a decision on Harper’s request for prorogation would be wholly incorrect.

McWhinney also said there “is a heavy burden” on the opposition to prove that they can form a stable coalition government. He said it’s important for the opposition to put an agreement down on paper, like they have already done, but said the agreement needs to be signed by the Bloc Quebecois in addition to the Liberals and NDP, otherwise there is no real guarantee of stability as the coalition is claiming. He called the current agreement “unsatisfactory,” on that account and on the fact that Dion would only be PM for four months before stepping down in favour of an unknown person at this point, so again indicating a lack of stable leadership for the country. Based on all this, he thought it highly unlikely that the GG would seriously entertain asking the coaltion to form a government at this stage.

McWhinney also made reference to a comparable situation in Australia in 1975, which had a sad outcome for then GG Bob Kerr when he decided to overreach his mandate. Kerr thought it advisable to play politics by going behind the back of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and asking the opposition to form a government because the budget had been stalled in the Senate by opposition hacks for six weeks and the government would at some point be unable to pay its bills (the story is more complicated but that is the essence).

The news that Kerr had dismissed Whitlam immediately triggered protest demonstrations acoss Australia, and for the rest of his term as GG, Kerr was rarely able to appear in public without encountering angry demonstrations against him. Even worse, Labor party MPs and Senators refused to accept his legitimacy as GG, as did Labor parliamentarians in the states and territories, shunning all official functions where he was in attendance. He apparently took to the bottle, resigned early from the office of GG and lived abroad for the 14 yrs prior to his death to escape the vilification that both he and (sadly) his wife faced at home. McWhinney said that when he met Kerr living in Europe he was “a broken man”. It is a sad, salutory lesson of what can happen when an essentially honorary appointee oversteps his/her functions and presumes on the limited powers granted to the office.