Online Noise or Springboard to Action?

I’ve been watching a group on Facebook for the last couple of days called Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament. The group was formed on December 30th in response to Harper proroguing parliament the second time in a year. On Tuesday (Jan 5th) the group had just over 20,000 members, as of this writing it has surpassed 80,000.

A second group for coordinating the location of rallies across the country on January 23rd is also up and running. Offline planning meetings for some of the projected rallies are currently scheduled.

Discussion on the CAPP group is steady and lively. While some are simply demanding the MPs get back to work (aka back into Parliament) some are putting forth some very reasoned thoughts about how continued abuse of our Parliamentary system can be reigned in. Ideas about perceived needs for reform of various aspects of our Parliamentary institution.

People in the group are reporting on their attempts to contact their MPs, especially their Conservative MPs, to voice their displeasure. Most are being met with the party line that this suspension of parliament is just routine business and that the citizen who contacted them to express their will is misguided and misinformed. The arrogance of the leader has apparently rubbed off on those who follow him.

Yes, under normal circumstances, proroguing Parliament is the normal way to start a new session of Parliament. The Conservatives are using PM Jean Chretien having prorogued parliament four times during his ten years in power as an example of just how routine it is. Nice try guys but no brownie points. Three of the times Chretien prorogued was in order to call an election, that is normal and routine. The fourth time he prorogued was a dirty trick in that it brought about delay of the Auditor’s General report on the sponsorship scandal until PM Paul Martin was installed as leader of the Liberals and Prime Minister.

Chretien abused parliament to avoid wearing the sponsorship issue any sooner than he had to. Harper abused parliament to avoid a motion of non-confidence last January. His claim was that the Opposition parties were trying to overthrow the government the people had elected. He and his cronies took advantage of the fact many if not most Canadians don’t fully understand that we elect a Parliament of which the party with the greatest number of seats forms the government.

The government has to hold the confidence of the House (all the elected MPs) in order to continue to govern. In a minority government where the governing party doesn’t hold more seats than the Opposition’s combined the loss of confidence can mean a new election, the Official Opposition takes over government or even a coalition of Opposition parties could take over government. Harper and his cronies ignored those facts and took advantage of the Canadian people not understanding how their Parliamentary system works.

This current proroguing of Parliament contains elements of trying to take advantage again. This time, Harper may have overstepped himself once again. This time, even those who don’t fully understand the bill of goods being handed to them certainly understand that Harper is abusing the system and a growing number are working on demonstrating their displeasure.

Conservative media types and pollsters are dismissing the Facebook groups as just online noise which doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. I find the pollsters dismissal rather hypocritical. They take a sampling of usually 1500 people from across the country and then project from that rather small sample the pulse of the country. This group has 80,000 people and growing but they are irrelevant?

I’m not sure this lively group will translate into widespread offline protest across the country on January 23rd but I’m not willing to write them off. If nothing else, the group is a forum for those who are willing to organize and promote the protest to communicate and coordinate. That in itself is usually the base that is needed to start towards a successful protest.

Even more important, it is showing at least some Canadians are engaged and watching Harper and his antics. He currently has good reason to want to avoid an election no matter what those pollsters are claiming his level of support is.

Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority & character increase as the importance of the position increases~John Adams

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