‘Winning was easy. Governing’s harder.’

On January 6, Prime Minister Trudeau announced his resignation and simultaneously prorogued Parliament. Curiously, the first editorial I ever wrote for Christian Courier was about prorogation – “The rogue and fool,” January 2009. In it, I described then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper as inconsistent, changing the rules to suit his own agenda. “Nonetheless,” I concluded, “I believe Harper did the right thing in requesting that Parliament be postponed. To allow a non-confidence vote that would usher in a coalition government on even shakier ground than his own would have been disastrous.”

It’s interesting to compare the prorogation decisions of these two Prime Ministers, one Conservative and one Liberal. Both Harper and Trudeau were leaders of minority governments. There’s a whiff of desperation in their decision to go outside normal parliamentary procedures. Both of them had dropped in the polls and were trying to avoid a non-confidence vote that would almost certainly sink their governments. And, in both cases, it was winter: December 4 for Harper and January 6 for Trudeau.

Sufficient cause?

Of course, despite those similarities, there are also key differences. In 2008, Harper used prorogation to try and strengthen his minority government; though he didn’t gain a majority, he was Prime Minister for another seven years. There’s no chance of redemption for Trudeau, who was forced to resign after losing the support of members of his own Caucus. Prorogation in his case was not so much to save his own skin as to give the Liberal party time to prepare for an election.

Trudeau’s stated prorogation goal was to “turn the temperature down” on vitriol in the House of Commons and “reset Parliament.” Whether a pause will relieve polarization, I don’t know. It seems like a bit of wishful thinking, and it has just the hint of a whine. In the Broadway musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton complains to George Washington that his opponents “don’t have a plan, they just hate mine!” Washington is blunt: “You have to find a compromise. Figure it out, Alexander, that’s an order from your commander.” That’s advice Canadian politicians would be wise to heed, since even more than in the U.S., successful governing here hinges on the ability to compromise – especially during minority governments.

Prorogation is a grey zone, constitutionally speaking. In the UK, Boris Johnson was taken to court in a case called “R v The Prime Minister” over his 2019 decision to prorogue British Parliament. He lost, even though the Queen had approved it; that instance of prorogation was declared unlawful for “preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions.” I wonder too about the role of the Queen and the Governor General in these decisions: does the royal assent have any real meaning? Is it a rubber stamp or a true safeguard?

There isn’t legal precedent for such a court case in Canada, but the reasons for prorogation should be carefully considered. It should never be allowed to prevent reports of any investigations into the current government, which is the way Jean Chretien used it in 2002. The sponsorship scandal surrounding his party at the time didn’t vanish during prorogation, however, as he might have hoped, and Chretien’s leadership ended the following year.

The creatives chime in

In 2015, two bands called Hey Rosetta and Yukon Blonde teamed up to write an anti-Harper song in the run up to that year’s election. It’s a lilting folk song with a modest crescendo, depending more on its rhetorical power than volume or intensity. “Do they think they can ride it out for another one?” the chorus asks. “Well, we say they can’t. There is a time / when change has to come. / For you to speak your mind / For you to fight for the land you love.”

I googled “anti-Trudeau song” to see what would come up about current events this month and found an artist called OGR-Scintilla with a catchy parody of Don Maclean’s song, “American Pie.” (Think “Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry,” and add that tune to the following lines.) “It’s about time Mr. Trudeau resigned / Spending everybody’s money on vacations and flights. / From the conservative truckers to your own party ties. / We finally agree you did something right / Because Mr. Trudeau finally resigned.”

Hamilton is an interesting musical because, even though it’s about the American Revolution, it doesn’t end with Independence Day, 1776. That comes halfway through the play. The rest of the musical enacts the roller-coaster political struggles of a new country. In my opinion, one of the show’s best lines comes at the end of “Cabinet Battle 1,” when President George Washington tells Hamilton that, “Winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder.” Justin Trudeau, looking back on his decade in leadership, would surely agree.