Following up the sanctimonious hand-wringing over degraded democracy when Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament in later December, the Liberals decided to take an extended vacation on exercising that democracy by abstaining on the budget vote. Citing the need to both oppose the budget, but not defeat the government because, as we all know, “Canadians don’t want an election right now”, 29 Liberals abstained from representing their constituents on the budget.

In early January, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff called the prorogation of Parliament a “crazy way to run a democracy”, and said the Liberals would return to work in Ottawa on January 25 as scheduled.

The Conservatives took a considerable amount of heat in the polls from their decision to cancel Parliament. In an Ekos poll taken in early January, 59% opposed prorogation with 41% of that number “strongly” being in opposition to the idea. The outrage had multipartisan support, and even conservative supporters felt that the Prime Minister was using extraordinary powers for his own personal advantage.

The opinions on the reason for prorogation were divided, but most opposition supporters believed it was to avoid questions on the detainee affair in Afghanistan. Conservative supporters speculated that it was a move to reconstitute the Senate in order to gain control of committees, and appoint five more Senators to control the Upper Chamber.

To fight against the backlash, the Conservatives announced before the Olympics that they were cancelling the March and April parliamentary breaks.

“Sure! We’ve been at work since Jan. 25,” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said at the time. “Now he’s scrambling to catch up to the Liberals.”

Well, that time has come for the leader of the Official Opposition. Except he isn’t at work as promised. No, the far more pressing issue for the Liberal leader this afternoon was addressing students at O’Donel High School in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland.

The former Harvard Professor, who has at times been called arrogant and aloof, too often relying upon his comfort zone in academia, is once again seeking support in his comfort zone. Telling high school students that Canada has to become the “most educated society”, his address marks part of yet another cross-country speaking tour leading up to his famous “thinkers conference” in Montreal at the end of the month.

The news that Michael Ignatieff wasn’t in Parliament had even partisan Liberal supporters concerned today, as the blogosphere was alight with questions on his absence. Many Liberals feel the need for Mr.Ignatieff to be in the House of Commons is greatest at this time, to hammer the government on issues like the budget, Afghanistan, and unemployment. Unfortunately for many of his loyal supporters, however, it is Mr.Ignatieff who is avoiding work this time.

Michael Ignatieff gave a speech in the House of Commons yesterday, which attempted to capitalize on the subsiding anger over prorogation, and the resurgent Afghan detainee affair.

The very first thing he does is accuse the Conservatives of shutting down Parliament to avoid blame for “credible” reports of torture in Afghan jails, saying Mr.Harper “did nothing.” As wont as many are to let such broad allegations slide, the truth is far from this fiction.

Before 2005, the Liberal government had decreed the protocol for Afghan detainees suspected of ties to al-Qaeda or the Taliban was to hand them directly to the U.S. military. Convinced they would receive humane treatment, this practice continued for three years, until abuse allegations at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced.

Canadian diplomats stationed in Kabul at the time repeatedly warned the former Chretien and Martin governments in 2003, 2004, and 2005 that torture was commonplace in Afghan prisons. Despite these warnings, the Martin government signed an agreement with the Karzai government in December of 2005 to hand over all Canadian-captured prisoners to Afghan authorities, according to official documents by Foreign Affairs.

The original agreement and followup to Afghan detainees was determined flawed by the incoming Conservative government, and in May of 2007 the Harper government overhauled its prisoner-transfer agreement with the Afghan government, negotiating a new one that allowed for follow-up visits to ensure detainees weren’t abused.

As it stands, there are still no “credible” reports of torture as claimed by Michael Ignatieff, other than testimony provided by a low-level diplomat. Now, while Mr.Ignatieff calls for a full, independent public inquiry into the issue with a mandate to examine the entirety of the mission, his continued characterization of unproven allegations as being true, is proof positive of his “guilty until proven innocent” mentality. This seems at odds with his public position on Omar Khadr, who also faces very serious charges and allegations.

Then later in his speech, he makes another disturbing reference to Afghanistan:

“The Conservatives are cutting four-and-a-half billion dollars in planned foreign aid, right when our focus in Afghanistan is shifting from military to humanitarian engagement.”

Well, you have to cut somewhere, don’t you. At a time when the government is running $50 billion deficits, does it really make any sense to continue sending foreign aid to other countries? And since when have we changed our focus from a “military to humanitarian” engagement? Are we not making a humanitarian difference in Afghanistan? His words here are very revealing, not only of his changing views on combating terrorism, but his acceptance of the fallacious notion of Canada as a bunch of peacekeepers.

In that respect, then, I’m surprised he didn’t praise Mr.Harper for reneging on earlier promised spending increases for the Department of National Defence.

Does it get any more obvious than this? Photo: Greg Kolz

It would be ridiculous to suggest that the prorogation of parliament has been a good move, though I would be hesitant to go as far as Jim Travers and the rest of the columnist circuit as saying that this has awoken a slumbering electorate. It has piqued our curiosity, however temporarily, but the idea that this gives the opposition party’s the moral high ground is to ignore their opportunistic charade currently on display in an empty Parliament.

If ever there was a more blatant display of pandering to public opinion polls, Michael Ignatieff has yet to point it out. Today the Liberals used the prorogue meme in order to appeal to the only two user groups who, until recently, were even close to supporting the Liberal Party. Prorogation has brought those two demographics back into the fold of the big red machine, and unless you haven’t yet guessed it, those would be young people and women, though one need not use the word “respectively”.

In fact, the words young and women can be used interchangeably here, as they are the new target for the Liberal Party. And using them in a speech identifying the people who need the most focus by the Liberals is a transparent recognition of that.

Leader Michael Ignatieff used the third-straight day of Liberal forums and announcements on Parliament Hill to attack the government’s funding cuts to special interest groups and feminist lobbies as a clear sign they need to draw support from the fairer gender.

Surrounding himself by female Liberal MPs, Mr.Ignatieff asserted that women have “suffered” under the Harper government, and promises to restore funding to women’s group and feminist lobbies.

“We have still got an enormous road to go, and we feel the Harper government … has set us back,” Mr. Ignatieff said.

How utterly depressing to see yet another opportunistic political hack play one demographic against another, all in the contradictory goal of “uniting Canadians”.

Is it any wonder Canadians are cynical? The fact is that the last thing we need to do is “restore” funding of special interest groups and lobbies, whether they be feminist, pro-union, or pro-Israeli. There is no way that our government can continue to function with the death by a thousand paper cuts we face in funding thousands of groups during one of the worst fiscal deficits in Canadian history. We are facing a structural deficit of 1% of GDP by 2013-14, unless moves are made to drastically curtail spending.

That the Liberals know this, yet continue to make spending promises to woo voters, puts the party out of touch with the fiscal realities facing this nation. The Liberals also proposed a $270-million “youth employment” package to spur on hiring of young people.

“We’ve identified unemployment as the key problem in 2010,” Mr. Ignatieff said. “We think it’s appropriate for a government to help hard-pressed employers … so they can hire Canadians, especially young Canadians.”

Yes, actually, unemployment is a key problem facing all Canadians in 2010, and not just the ones the Liberals would like to retain as voters. Stats Canada today revised their previously optimistic job numbers from November, showing that Non-farm payroll employment fell by 33,800 jobs that month.

Peter Donolo is a Liberal strategist who is familiar with using polling data to direct the party in ways that will strengthen its appeal to specific voters. It’s important to keep that in mind when the Liberals are lecturing the nation on how opportunistic the Conservative government is.

It’s bad enough the Liberal leader seems to need to hold national tours every few semesters in order to receive ideas to supplement his nonexistent party policies. But to plagiarize Jack Layton’s own call for a bill to limit the powers of the executive to request prorogation of the Governor-General? Why, how very unconstitutional of you, Michael.

Yes, this little bit of news fluff would indicate that it’s day one of the official prorogation of Parliament, since today would have been the day that the government finished their extended Christmas vacation and headed back to work. And since there’s no opportunity to distract the House from the important business of how many shoes went up side the head of the Taliban, this will have to suffice.

Mr.Ignatieff is calling for 10 days written notice be given the opposition prior to any time the Prime Minister decides to go ‘rogue and shut down the country.

“We think it is appropriate now to set down clearly limits on the power of prorogation. We are dealing with a Prime Minister who has shown that he doesn’t have the political character to respect our institutions, so in our view a change of the rules is needed,” Michael Ignatieff told reporters.

Any prorogation would have to brought before the House for a debate, to ensure that it isn’t being called strictly for political opportunism. And, if the opposition doesn’t find any political opportunity in opposing the move, they could accede to the request. Of course, it kind of gives the official opposition the power of the Governor-General, but so what? It isn’t as if Canadians really care about the boring technicalities of our blasé little constitutional monarchy anyway.

But to cut right to chase here, if Stephen Harper’s reason for prorogation was a politically-motivated escape from the detainee committee which was hearing about Richard Colvin’s hard luck stories from the third world, then this recent Liberal-NDP treatise is certainly as politically-motivated. Mr.Ignatieff would have any committee hearings to continue through to the start of the new session, which would include, of course, the Afghan committee.

As Norman Spector observes, this is coming from a man who said just last week that he doesn’t mind prorogation, as long as it isn’t abused. Or to be more precise, abused by Stephen Harper.

The Liberals want to tie the hands of the Prime Minister, and in turn the Governor-General, by limiting the powers of prorogation by any government in the first year of their mandate. Indeed, the first year of a government is the period in which the Governor-General is most likely to oppose the Prime Minister’s request for an election. This short-sightedness is based entirely on the immediate urgency of limiting the powers of Stephen Harper, and has nothing to do with limiting the powers of the Prime Minister.

The power of the opposition continues to rest within their majority vote to end the government when it reconvenes in March. But of course waiting until then wouldn’t do much for the day-to-day manufacturing plants of Liberal and NDP outrage. And we wouldn’t want to put any of these people out of work, just as the economy is rebounding.

Protesters in Toronto for the anti-prorogation demonstration. Photo: Impolitical

Demonstrations are underway all across Canada today, as the thousands of Canadians who oppose the prorogation of Parliament march in protest that it will not reconvene on Monday. This may be the most digital demonstration yet, as hundreds of people are either live-blogging, or tweeting as they attend the rallies. CBC’s political junkie and resident workaholic Kady O’Malley has her liveblog up in Ottawa, although it’s been interrupted by trips to the CBC truck to warm up. Her early estimates put 3,500 on Parliament Hill.

From the various pictures being snapped by cell phones and posted to blogs and Twitter, it would appear that this rally is about more than just a “non-partisan” anger over prorogation. There are the unions out in force, the anti-war movement with signs from the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, the marijuana legalization crowd, and of course the ubiquitous greenpeace “tar sands” global warming-is-going-to-end-the-world people under 30.

The turnout proves that the social media activists are also capable of taking their digital rage to the streets. But the numbers certainly don’t appear to be as grand as they were on the famous Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook page. Bloggers who attended rallies in the big cities like Toronto and Ottawa estimated numbers ranging as high as 7,000, and as low as 2,000. When you consider that the Toronto rally took place on a Saturday in downtown Toronto at Dundas and Yonge, you can assume an average of 1,000 people are likely to be in that location on any given Saturday, with or without a demonstration going on.

I don’t mean to downplay the protests which, I’m sure, were very sincerely based on a common raw rage and hatred of Stephen Harper and his contempt for Democracy. And that’s actually a very important part of understanding much of this “non-partisan” anti-prorogation rage.

As Paul Adams of Ekos told the Globe and Mail, the depth of the anger about prorogation caught just about everybody by surprise. But it wasn’t just prorogation that caused the backlash.

“The prorogation story crystallized sentiments that people had begun to develop about the government over a long term,” Mr. Adams told the Globe. The Conservative decline began back in October, when they reached their polling high of 41%. The reason for the tumble, according to Brian Lilley, is that the Conservatives always spike when the Liberals threaten to defeat the government. When those threats ended, support gradually began to glide back to the more normal resting places for both parties.

But the Conservatives definitely overestimated the apathy of the Canadian people. Or to quote Rick Mercer:

“See, this is what I love about Canada. Yes, we are apathetic, but the minute anybody tries to use our apathy against us, suddenly we start to care big time.”

In my mind the prorogation of Parliament was simply a naked partisan move to control the Senate, and I wasn’t going to concern myself much with it beyond that. They can call it a “recalibration” if it makes them feel better. But my advice would be to take a page from the former Liberal government and begin radio silence on this issue from here on in.

After all, having Jason Kenney write the opposition’s attack ads by saying stupid things like, “I often get more done when the House is not in session” or Helena Guergis trying to convince us that people are “pleased” about prorogation, really isn’t helping their cause.