CampusIntel

A poll last week by EKOS shows the Liberals have regained some support among voters and are now in a virtual tie with the Conservatives despite the government’s Haiti recovery efforts. Around Christmas, Harper polled around 40 percent compared to Michael Ignatieff trailing at the 23 percent mark. Ignatieff, whose nosedive in the polls reflected levels of Stephane Dion’s disastrous reign the year before, has made a comeback in vote-rich Ontario and Atlantic Canada, as well as gaining popularity with younger voters.

The poll suggests that if an election were held tomorrow, 30.9 per cent of those polled chose the Liberals and 31.5 per cent would back the Conservatives. 14.9 per cent of respondents supportedthe NDP, 11.5 per cent the Green Party and 9.1 per cent the Bloc Québécois.

The poll also highlights the mixed feelings among voters when it comes to the performance of their government. Forty-five per cent feel the government is moving in the right direction while  42 per cent believe they are moving in the wrong direction.

It seems as if Harper’s strategy to prorogue parliament until the federal budget is revealed has hurt him in the short term among voters, but as quickly as polls change, I suspect by March Harper will make a comeback as the storm dies off and parliament gets back to business.

I’m not one to jump on bandwagons, mainly because I think there are multiple sides to every argument, and many angles to consider. Assigning myself a category to fit into on hot topics like global warming, partisan politics, and other unmentionables is somewhat hypocritical. Recently, I was on face book and noticed that my friend joined the group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, and I felt a bone-crippling need to play devil’s advocate, and possibly educate people about the whole prorogue scandal.

The news of Canada’s Conservative government proroguing parliament for the second time in 2 years is all over the news. The decision, anticipated to be announced early this week, has raised a roaring response from the Canadian media, which largely portrays Prime Minister Stephen Harper as cheating us out of our civil liberties. Prime Minister Harper wants a prorogue in order to reassess Canada’s federal budget for 2010, but this is ignored in lieu of the thought that Harper is playing God and calling a “re-do” whenever he sees fit.

Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament raises a number of thoughts within me, but I don’t think it’s the end of the world. Why? Because proroguing parliament simply means that our elected officials in the House of Commons will, basically, start fresh. All documents being passed through the legislature before the Holiday break (an annual prorogue of sorts, if you will) will be scrapped, and the government gets a clean slate to work with.

What the headlines tell us is that a prorogue is completely undemocratic; that it undercuts Canada’s essence of fair representation; and that Harper is messing around with our government without our direct permission. That sounds good enough to protest about, but I think another side is being downplayed.

When we vote, we vote for a representative based on their political platform. Then, we are powerless. We send our hometown heroes to settle into their seats in the shark tank of politicians that is our House of Commons. By saying that proroguing parliament is undemocratic is technically true, nothing in our constitution defends us against them. But the amount of political back-scratching that plays a huge role in forming legislature is also ironically missing. None of us vote for game playing, but it‘s what we get. If things were truly democratic, we would hold a referendum for everything. By Harper using his lawful right to prorogue parliament, he is only acting on the power that democracy itself gave him.

Positively speaking, proroguing parliament could be beneficial for many Canadians. Not only will the federal economic budget be brought through the courts again, but many other bills that were defeated in 2009 will have a chance to pass. This means that us, united democratic citizens, must petition our representatives for a harder stance on issues that affect our communities, lives, and families. If Harper says the budget gets a re-do with his prorogue, than every other bill that was left dangling in 2009 gets a fresh beginning as well.

If you really want to get extreme, proroguing government could potentially result in a complete reorganization of parliamentary politics. New deals will now have to be struck in order to get things back to the way they were in the race for new legislature, meaning our elected representatives will have to find out again where their friends lie. Maybe the HST tax will suffer due to different agendas, and bills politicians failed with previously will now stand in its way for success. Who knows, maybe by the next election the Conservatives will have even fewer supporters because the budget, and other high priority issues, will look worse than they did before. Anything can happen.

As for flag-waving facebook groups, I’m gonna stay away from them. I don’t want to be wrongly represented by something that I may have some belief in. It might sound a bit anti-democratic, but sometimes the majority is wrong.