Why it matters

Following up on my earlier posts commenting on Michaelle Jean's decision-making process in granting Stephen Harper the opportunity to avoid democratic accountability for his government's actions, let's note briefly why the issue still matters now.

For one, the effect of Jean's decision was primarily only to kick the can down the road. In granting prorogation, she only delayed any confrontation between a Prime Minister bent on keeping power and the combined force of a majority planning to vote him down - and the Libs' subsequent decision to keep the Cons in power hasn't changed the issues at play. And indeed, many of the developments since then - from the Cons' blatant executive power grabs to the popular outcry over prorogation in 2009 - can be traced directly to the same underlying conflict.

That might only leave the general debate to be dealt with at some undefined point in the future...if not for the fact that the Cons see their destructive mood of December 2008 as establishing exactly the political environment that's most beneficial for their electoral prospects.

By now, it should be clear that Harper and company are doing everything in their power to try to recreate that exact dynamic. And anybody wanting to stop Harper in that effort will need to recognize exactly what happened and why in 2008, as well as how best to counter it.

Now, the Cons' strategy has plenty of dangerous implications that I'll deal with in a future post. But for now, suffice it to say that anybody who thinks it's safe to relegate the events of December 2008 to the distant past is missing the boat - and we'll need all hands on deck to get Canada moving in the right direction.