Roman comic Terence said, “So many men, so many opinions.”
Last week, I commented about the prorogation by Stephen Harper. I wrote, “Certainly, the Liberals have a good reason for getting upset; they never thought to do the same thing when they held power.” Had I done a little research, I would have learned that they have done it often. Two things bring about the end of a session: prorogation or dissolution. Prorogation is a temporary suspension of parliament; dissolution triggers an election. I did a rough count on a government website. Parliament has faced dissolution about 40 times and prorogation roughly 120 times.
After filing last week, I found the blogsite of a friend, Andrew Lunau Smith, clarified the issue. I asked permission to reproduce most of it in this column. Andrew, who with his wife and daughter served at a school for the deaf in Puerto Rico for two years, now works with the School of Urban Biblical Studies in Toronto.
Andrew wrote: “Wow, people sure do have their shirts in knots concerning the prorogation of Canada’s Parliament. Or do they? It’s hard to know whether it’s just the media that have got themselves into a froth, or if they are reporting public concerns accurately (unlikely) or if their reporting is what births and elevates so called “concerns” and the cycle simply grows. I [Andrew] trained as a journalist and it’s a big game. Really. There’s not much integrity in reporting; it’s all spun and sold.
“Back to Canadian politics. Mainstream media also suffer from the delusion that they are smarter than the people they write for. So recently newspapers had headlines alleging Canadians don’t support the proroguing of parliament, based on a poll the media themselves commissioned and paid for. EKOS and Ipsos and Angus and their ilk are plagues on thinking people.
“They ask leading questions and manufacture statistics to make bold headlines and attract readers. Do people actually believe the media hype? I don’t. Are people as dumb as the media think? I don’t think so. But perhaps if the mainstream media reported real facts rather than serve as outlets for polling companies, we’d instead be reminded that proroguing parliament is in fact a commonly done parliamentary practice (at this point Lunau Smith proves his point by directing readers to a government website that lists the dates of prorogation). It happens. Instead, the media quote the EKOS president (whom they paid) and he seems to think it is from the realm of “dusty constitutional law texts.”
It would seem the president of the polling company doesn’t even know how parliament works, or he too thinks people won’t see through his self serving comments.
“Now to rephrase a controversial bus poster … ‘There’s no news, so stop worrying and enjoy the Olympics.’ ”
Thank you Professor Andrew Lunau Smith for that fresh and enlightened look at the spin, or political marketing, or BS (Blatant Skulduggery) that too often passes for news. You can read his blog yourself, by going on line to: http://lunausmith.blogspot.com/.