Limiting the PM's power

This week, a New Democrat motion passed in the House of Commons that should put limits on the use of prorogation by our current and future Prime Ministers. I say ‘should’ because our current Prime Minister immediately refused to acknowledge or abide by the motion which was passed by a majority of MP’s.
The text of our motion is as follows: “That, in the opinion of the House, the Prime Minister shall not advise the Governor General to prorogue any session of any Parliament for longer than seven calendar days without a specific resolution of this House of Commons to support such a prorogation.” The motion as worded here passed in the House of Commons by a vote of 139-135.
Rather than respect the will of a majority in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister immediately issued a statement declaring that he would continue to use prorogation “as he sees fit.” The problem of course, is not with Prime Ministers’ retaining the right to prorogue parliament, but the judgment of this and other Prime Minister’s and what situations they “see fit.”
The motion itself does not prevent the Prime Minister from proroguing parliament. In fact, the motion reaffirms the right of the Prime Minister to prorogue parliament at any time he or she wishes. For extended periods of prorogation (longer than seven days) the Prime Minister would be required to consult parliament and seek its consent in a clear vote before proceeding. Put simply, if the Prime Minister wanted to prorogue parliament then they could do so whenever they wanted, but could only do so for an extended period with proper justification and the support of a majority of elected Members of Parliament. Once upon a time, the Conservatives would have supported such limitations on executive power on the grounds that they would increase accountability and protect democracy. Oh well, I guess that was then.
So why do New Democrats feel that this motion is needed in the first place? Well, the short answer is because this Prime Minister has abused his prorogation privilege twice in the past twelve months to further his own partisan interests, and we believe that this sort of behaviour is an abuse of that power. This Prime Minister has forgotten that we live in a democracy and that sometimes, once in a while, he must be held accountable by the elected representatives of the people. Our prorogation motion as presented to the House would help strengthen our democratic institution and increase accountability.
The two most recent instances in which this Prime Minister invoked his power to prorogue parliament are prime examples as to why this executive power must be reined in. In December 2008, the Conservative government faced imminent defeat in a confidence motion because the Finance Minister presented an economic update which denied we were in a recession, bragged the government was still running a surplus for that fiscal year, and stated that it would never table a deficit budget. Everyone, including private sector economists, knew this economic statement was a fantasy, that our economy was in deep trouble, and that the Conservatives were already running the first of many large structural deficits. Then in December 2009, the Conservative government was facing persistent questioning about its transfer policy for Afghan detainees, which was thought to be inadequate and possibly lead to the torture of those prisoners, and was resisting a demand by the House of Commons for all documents related to that policy. The Prime Minister’s office flatly refused to produce these documents for parliament and the Conservative Party started to tumble in the polls on public concerns about this government’s true commitment to transparency and accountability. Just two weeks after the six-week Winter Break began the Afghan detainee issue started to ‘blow-up’ for the government as some serious revelations about ‘what the government knew and when’ on the matter, so the Prime Minister decided to prorogue parliament for an additional six weeks to dampen the issue. In our opinion, both instances stand out as abuses of the Prime Ministers’ power to prorogue.
Historically, the prorogation power has been used by Prime Ministers’ whose government were near the completion of their legislative agenda. For the most part, the prorogation power has been used properly and is an accepted part of the parliamentary process. But this Prime Minister, certainly in the two examples above, has abused this privilege like none before him. He has used prorogation to duck out of confidence votes and run away from committees that were investigating the conduct of his government. What’s next; the prorogation of parliament until the next election because he doesn’t like answering questions in Question Period? Admittedly, such a development is unlikely, but it is technically possible until the Prime Minister accepts the passage of our motion or agrees to voluntarily change his own policy on prorogation.
This NDP motion, as passed by a majority of elected representatives in the House of Commons, should put some modest but needed limits on the use of prorogation while still allowing our Prime Minister’s to exercise this right as needed. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s immediate refusal to respect our motion and the will Parliament underscores why greater accountability is required in the first place, and it begs the question; how long can a Prime Minister abuse the will of the people before they ultimately return the favour?