The story that the Roman Emperor Caligula wanted to appoint his horse to the Senate is apocryphal, but it is a sad fact that Canada’s own quasi-Emperor has appointed 36 unelected horses (or posterior portions thereof) to the Canadian Senate in just the past four years. And on Tuesday the Prime Minister’s stable of equine […]
Tag Archives: Prorogue state
Prime Minister too powerful: Canadians
According to a recent poll conducted by Nanos Research, 42% of Canadians think the Prime Minister’s Office has too much power (Campbell Clark, “PMO too powerful, Canadians say,” Globe and Mail, 24 February 2010). Nine percent of Canadians think that the PMO has too little power, while 40% responded that it has the right amount. By comparison, […]
Hard power, fuzzy logic
Prime Minister Stephen Harper used the occasion of a visit to Canada’s aid efforts in Haiti on Tuesday to praise the virtues of his government’s spending on “hard power” items like the C-17 transport aircraft: “This fleet of new aircraft, the C-17 fleet, is a big part of making this response possible. I single out […]
Anti-prorogation group should not be ignored: study
A study released today by the Rideau Institute finds that Facebook has been adopted by older, politically engaged voters to express frustration over the government’s decision to prorogue Parliament. A survey conducted by online public engagement strategist Pierre Killeen suggests that a majority of the more than 200,000 Canadian Facebook users who joined an anti-prorogation […]
Discontent in the prorogue state
Two public opinion polls released on Thursday show that Canadians are not happy about the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue Parliament until March 3rd. According to the poll conducted by EKOS Research Associates, 67% of Canadians are aware of the decision to prorogue Parliament (including 52% “clearly aware”), and those who are aware of it […]
PM prorogues Parliament
Prime Minister Stephen Harper went ahead with his much-anticipated plan to prorogue Parliament on Wednesday, shutting down the operations of the House of Commons and Senate until March 3rd. The prorogation will have the effect of preventing parliamentary discussion of the detainee torture scandal for another two months, at which point a new federal budget […]