What is prorogation?

As most people are aware parliament has been prorogued. With what would have been the first two weeks of the spring session parliament behind us, it’s a good time to explain a bit about what prorogation is, how it has affected the work of parliament, and why I think Mr. Harper pulled the plug on the last session of parliament.
In one sentence, prorogation is the end of one session of a parliament and the start of another. The Prime Minister alone decides when and under what circumstances prorogation will happen. The prorogation period between sessions typically ranges from a few hours to many weeks. Prorogation often happens for very good reasons, like a national crisis or running out of suitable legislation, but not this time. In this instance, Stephen Harper decided to prorogue because he needed a break from all the tough day-to-day questions he was being forced to answer and decided it was best to shut parliament down for three months - from December 10, 2009 until March 3, 2010.
The most common question I’ve heard over the break is ‘how does prorogation affect the work of this parliament?’ For starters, all government bills that were tabled in the last parliament and did not pass to become law are officially dead. These bills include most of the Conservative “tough on crime” agenda like bill C-52 (The Retribution on Behalf of Victims of White Collar Crime Act) and C-35 (The Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act). For some of these bills, it is the third or fourth time that they have been introduced by Mr. Harper without coming to a vote in the House of Commons or making it to the Senate.
Parliamentary committees are also dissolved, and their work has been put off until after March 3. The work of these committees was yielding some interesting findings about how this government was failing Canadians by pressing forward with the HST and not providing data related to the stimulus spending, and failing our military by not ensuring that there was a proper system to monitor the transfer of prisoners of war and uphold our responsibilities under the Geneva Convention.
Private members’ bills (PMB’s) are also affected by prorogation and return to the start of the stage of the legislative process that they were at in the last session. For C-391 (the bill that could finally abolish the Long Gun Registry) it means that instead of being debated in committee in February and brought back to the House for a final vote by March it must now wait for committees to be struck again, then meet, then set an agenda before finally debating the bill. Because of prorogation C-391 will probably not return to the House for a final vote until May or June at the earliest, and only if parliament survives three additional confidence votes which are due before the end of April.
To wrap things up on the issue of prorogation, I think Mr. Harper decided to shut parliament down because he likes the idea of democracy, but believes that democratic accountability is a burden. He doesn’t want to defend the actions of his government to Canadians, especially while he is raising our sales tax, failing to protect our international reputation and our troops in Afghanistan, and while his incompetent Finance Minister continues to destroy the finances of the country for years to come. Even his former advisors concede that Mr. Harper prorogued parliament for three full months because it was in his private and partisan interest to do so and because he thought you wouldn’t notice. Looking at the most recent polls, I guess he was wrong.