by Ryan Robert Hallett

Created on: May 18, 2010

Prorogation of Parliament is the early termination of a parliamentary session, which essentially drops all legislation before Parliament and halts the work of parliamentary committees.  Prorogation ends when a new session of Parliament begins. 

According to the National Post, Canada is the only country using a Westminster style of Parliament (this includes Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia), which has shut down a session in order to "free its leaders from unwanted censure or scrutiny"(1).

Canadian leaders have done so three times in the country's 143-year history, according to the report, and two of those times were by the same Prime Minister in consecutive years.

On December 4, 2008, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the Governor-General had agreed to his request to prorogue Parliament, marking the first time since 1873 that Parliament was terminated in order to protect the sitting government. 

The move was controversial, as it was seen as an attempt to avoid an imminent confidence vote in the House of Commons, which likely would have seen Harper's Conservative government replaced by a coalition between the Liberals, who were the leaders of the official opposition, and the New Democratic Party, with additional support from the Bloc Québécois.

On December 30, 2009, Prime Minister Harper again announced, following a telephone conversation with the Governor General, that he would prorogue Parliament, this time until March 3. 

The Prime Minister's spokesman, Dmitri Soudas, cited the need to consult with Canadian citizens, businesses and stakeholders before moving ahead with the "next phase" of its economic recovery plan (2).  He also cited the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics as a reason for prorogation (3).

The decision was clearly unpopular, as according to an EKOS poll conducted barely a week after the announcement, 58% of those aware of the decision were opposed to it, compared to 31% in support (4). 

Opposition parties and some of the mainstream press suggested that the move was really intended to sidestep the issue of the torture of Afghan detainees, a hot-button topic in Canada. 

Others suggested that the prorogation was a device to enable the scuttling of bills which were unpopular in the House of Commons and the Senate. 

The bill-scuttling theory may have merit, as Harper himself alluded to the need to balance the Senate, which was weighted in favor of Liberals, and also during

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