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This article was published 10/2/2009 (4249 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

What would the late Sen. Eugene Forsey have said about last December's parliamentary prorogation? It was a subversion of the Constitution and a flagrant contempt of Parliament.

Helen Forsey, the daughter of Canada's most respected constitutional and parliamentary authority, has answered the question parliamentary scholars have been asking one another ever since that controversial decision. She has done more. She has collected and annotated her father's published research on what she calls the "10 constitutional fairy tales" surrounding the so-called constitutional crisis and the much-reviled coalition between the Liberals and the New Democrats supported by the Bloc Quebecois.

"At no time in recent history has the need for my father's constitutional and historical expertise been more acute," Ms. Forsey writes in the introduction to her online essay for HistoryWire.ca, a new website created by the Historica Foundation of Canada. "In the 18 years since his death, ignorance of Canada's system of government has proven to be a growth industry, involving the media, various academics and many of the politicians themselves.

"The result is that much if not most of what passes for fact on the subject of Parliament, minority government, prorogation, elections and so on, is actually completely false. Worse yet, much of it is subversive of our Constitution and frankly dangerous to 'peace, order and good government.'"

Forsey recalls her father saying "I shall have to spend my declining years compiling and debunking a collection of constitutional fairy tales. And it will have to be loose-leaf, because there's a fresh one every day."

The late senator would have denounced Gov. Gen. Michäelle Jean's decision to grant Prime Minister Stephen Harper a two-month parliamentary prorogation to avoid his defeat on a non-confidence motion.

A governor general "cannot allow" a prime minister to stop the House of Commons from "performing its most essential function," he wrote. To permit a prime minister to do that would be "to subvert the Constitution."

Forsey went further. For a governor-general to grant a prime minister prorogation or an election to avoid defeat makes the Crown "an accomplice in a flagrant act of contempt for Parliament." In fact, he continued, a governor general faced with such a request should "if necessary, dismiss such government."

He mocked the view that a constitutional crisis is created and a new election is automatic every time a government faces defeat. "We shall certainly have to get rid of the notion that every defeat in the House means a fresh election... If a government knows it may be hanged in a fortnight, the knowledge may broaden its mind wonderfully. Having to get support from outside its own party may not only help a government do good and sensible things, but also prevent it from doing bad and foolish things."

He also mocked the idea that Parliament is "not working" and "dysfunctional" if the opposition actively opposes its program. "Opposition parties ... get money for research. Why? Because we want criticism, we want watchfulness, we want the possibility of an effective alternative government if we are displeased with the one we have."

Forsey rejected another popular notion that a change of government by majority vote in Parliament is undemocratic -- a "seizure of power", a "coup", in the prime minister's words. "Responsible cabinet government means government by a cabinet with a majority in the House of Commons... The only way to find out is by summoning Parliament and letting it vote. It is not for (the governor general) to decide who shall form the government. It is for the House of Commons."

The current accepted fact that the passage of three and a half months since the October 2008 election automatically entitles Harper to an election if he is defeated was also shot down by Forsey. "In a Parliament which is recently elected, if one government cannot carry on with the existing House, and an alternative government is possible... then the government... should resign and make way for one that can."

And he ridiculed the widespread conviction that "stability" and "efficiency" are the highest political values and since minority governments supposedly can't provide them, the sole purpose of elections is to produce majority governments. "The official theory has seemed to be that...electors have just done their sums wrong and must be made to do it over again until they get it right... We may have to learn to live with minority government... (I)t may turn out to give us quite tolerable or even very good legislation and administration..."

Based on her father's research, Ms. Forsey herself rejects another "truth", manufactured last fall, that no coalition can legitimately govern unless the parties explicitly campaigned as one in the election. "Representative government means we elect our representatives to make decisions about governing. If an election gives no party a majority and the existing cabinet does not have the confidence of the House of Commons, the democratically-elected opposition MPs should try to work together to transact public business with an alternative government..."

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg author and political writer.