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You all remember this amusing little 30 second skit put on by Rick Mercer a week or 2 ago: Well, I guess Prince Albert Conservative MP Randy Hoback thought Rick was being serious about that, since MP Hoback has decided to take advantage of Harper’s prorogue and vacation in California. I bet his trip wasn’t on the PMO’s list of ministers/MP’s supposedly hard at work that they handed out to the press yesterday.  The hinted at reforms to curtailing the prorogation power of the Prime Minister was released by the Liberal Party and Michael Ignatieff at Ottawa today. Here’s an excerpt of the news-release with the proposals they’ve put forth: To prevent future abuses of prorogation, the Liberal Party of Canada will seek to amend the Standing Orders of the House of Commons to: • Require at least 10 days written notice from the Prime Minister of his intention to seek to prorogue, together with his specific reasons for doing so; • Require the Prime Minister to bring the issue of prorogation before the House of Commons for a full debate; • [...] ..such as CFRB 1010′s John Moore who has liked to team up with Globe blogger Dan Cook in scoffing at the CAPP Facebook group, perhaps you and they will believe the polls show that anger – and yet another one released this evening confirms a drop for the Conservatives and a jump for the Liberals caused by – you’d never guess – public anger at prorogation: The Conservative Party is holding a small lead over the Liberals in the latest survey from Ipsos Ried. In a telephone poll of 1,000 adult Canadians was carried out between January 19th to 21st, 34% said they would vote for the Conservatives if [...] Just a brief Sunday observation: I see the CAPP facebook group has gotten a bit of a membership boost today; up to 214 295 members as of now – a boost of 3000 from yesterday morning when I last looked at it. Not surprising, given the good publicity and generally favourable media coverage the group has gotten with the # of protests and the amount of protesters willing to come out to make their voices heard. The next phase of what to do now to keep that momentum going/keep pressure on the Harper government/get the opposition parties to introduce democratic reforms is taking place here at the “CAPP: A [...] ..from an attendance standpoint, if that’s your litmus test (and as I said last blogpost, it isn’t necessarily for me and others) and the total numbers from every protest centre haven’t trickled in yet. However, from what we’ve seen from some reporter and organizer accounts on Twitter and Facebook, we’re getting reports/estimates from between 7000 – 15 000 at Toronto’s rally, an estimate by the RCMP of 3500 at Parliament Hill, 1000 or so in Montreal, and several hundred to 1000 elsewhere from Waterloo, London, Guelph, Kitchener, etc. The best report I’ve seen so far; Simcoe County’s Conservative MP reportedly predicted they’d only get 10 CAPP protesters at [...] Many people have asked whether the tremendous success and growth of the Facebook group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament (now at just under 211 000 members as of this AM) would translate over to the street in the form of today’s protests that are being held. That seems to be the question more then a few media pundits, politicians and pro-Conservative Harper folks are asking, and they are asserting that the CAPP movement will be judged a failure if massive amounts of people don’t show up at the rally (as an aside, most of these folks I’ve read haven’t put out a number of people showing up for them to [...] In brief, the NDP are the first to come out with a proposal on what they’d do to prevent the abuse of the prorogation power. Steve V over at Far and Wide is a bit ticked that the NDP beat the Liberals to the punch, even as he acknowledges that this proposal from the NDP isn’t exactly earth-shattering in its scope. Personally, as long as the Liberals release something that would be a substantial plank in their platform and more then just an afterthought statement, I don’t mind they come out 2nd in releasing statements. I just hope it’s soon, and that it has meat on its bones that [...] This is another innovative way to register your protest to Harper’s unnecessary proroguing of Parliament; by text message: …we’ve launched a real-time text-messaging system that will also work across Canada for all of the CAPP rallies. The idea is to have rally participants (and even those at home) take out their cellphones and text their thoughts about prorogation to 347-614-2765. The software I’ve written will immediately publish the incoming text-messages to Twitter (@noproroguewall) and will also reply to them with a website URL so they can “keep in touch” after they get home. Go ahead and try it now – send any text message to 347-614-2765. You’ll get a [...] One of the organizers of this event asked me if I’d consider posting this announcement, and I’m happy to oblige, since I have a fair # of Toronto and area readers. (Remember, check No Prorogue’s website for Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament closest rallies nearest to you if you want to attend one): ———- NO to prorogation! YES to democracy! Canadians against Proroguing Parliament (Toronto) has organized a rally and march for Saturday, January 23 at 1:00pm at Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto. And we urgently need your help to promote it. Here’s how you can help spread the word: Download promotional materials. Everything is available online - posters, leaflets, stickers, petitions, [...] There’s a great article by Professor Michael Geist on the explosive growth on the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group and how critics of the group have missed the point of social advocacy today in the Toronto Star. Geist, as he mentions in his article, has had his own facebook group, Fair Copyright For Canada, as a barometer to measure against CAPP, and sees similarities. I won’t say much more about this other then I highly recommend reading the article, and I thought his closing paragraph was the best summary he could give: Skeptics have pointed to rallies planned for this week as the litmus test for the effectiveness [...] |
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