In refusing to face our elected parliament twice in one year, Stephen Harper is showing his contempt for Canadians. We ought to return the favour

You know what I’d like? I’d like to extend my just-ended Christmas/New Year vacation into the spring. During the week-and-change I take off at the end of the year, I get to avoid all the tough decisions and demands and accountability of work, not to mention avoiding the work of work, and just focus on the good stuff: time with family, retrospective sentimentality, resolutions for the future. It’s cold out there! But it’s warm on my couch and the Olympics will soon be on TV all day and all night. So here’s a thought: how about we just extend Christmas vacation so that it lasts until March Break — wouldn’t it be nice if we could all avoid all of our responsibilities for an entire season?

Ah, but there’s the rub. You and me, we have responsibilities. Hibernating won’t make the bill collectors go away or shorten the to-do list. As every schoolchild learns, hiding from your responsibilities just pisses everyone off and ultimately makes the work harder.

So what is up with Stephen Harper? Here’s a guy with more responsibilities — and more important, life-and-death responsibilities — than most of us, and he’s decided to shut down the entire legislature by proroguing parliament until after the Olympics. Is he lazy?

If only it were laziness. You see, Harper has unpleasant business at the office. His government has been ordered by parliament — ordered by law by the representatives of the Canadian people — to produce information about its knowledge of the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan. And he has defied the expressed will of the Canadian people by refusing to produce this information. Does he have something to hide? If not, he’s sure going to great lengths to hide it.

Such great lengths that rather than return to the House of Commons to answer to Canada’s representatives about issues of national importance during wartime, Harper has just dismissed those representatives. He’s not being lazy by trying to avoid work. He’s trying to weasel out of having to answer to those he serves.

He’s pulled this stunt before, last winter, when it became clear that he likely did not have the confidence of the house, a situation that would generally result in his being removed from the Prime Minister’s office. Instead, he visited the Governor General Michaëlle Jean and had her suspend parliament so he could wait for the blowing of better political winds before getting on with doing his job. To our country’s great shame, Madame Jean granted his request.

You’ll notice something common to cheaters and thieves and liars — they develop bad habits in a hurry if they aren’t caught. Studies show that most embezzlers, for instance, don’t start out to defraud their employers of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Usually, in a time of crisis, they chisel off a tiny bit, and, when no one notices, they do it again, until eventually it begins to seem normal to them. Next thing you know, the audit committee notices a few million has been misplaced.

Well, look at Harper: last year’s game of constitutional Three-Card Monte worked out OK for him, so now he’s getting greedy. Facing a hostile political situation again — but no threatened constitutional crisis this time — he’s playing the same con game again, hoping for the same result. He is even getting a bit lazy, too: this time he phoned over to the Governor General rather than visiting. And the Governor General once again said yes, essentially acknowledging that her view is that the Prime Minister is essentially a dictator — that she and our democratically elected parliament serve at his pleasure, rather than the other way around.

In the meantime, the majority of Harper’s own legislation will die on the order paper because of his efforts to avoid his responsibilities. Why did he waste our time introducing all of this legislation — crime bills he’s been claiming are urgently needed, for instance — if he was going to let them die of neglect while he buggered off as soon as he didn’t feel like doing his job anymore?

In taking a powder — and in forcing the entire parliament to take a powder too — Harper has shown his absolute contempt for Canadian democracy. It’s time for Canadian democracy to return the favour. As others have suggested, parliament should convene anyway, even if the government benches will be vacant. The opposition parties form a majority of the house — they have enough members to make quorum — so they should meet and order the government back to work.

And Canadians should not let Harper’s attempt to weasel out of a bind pass. If you or I called into the office to say we’d be taking a break for a few months, we’d be fired. When we have an election later this year or next, we should apply the same standard of accountability to our prime minister.

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