- 'Ding-Dong the wicked witch is dead' . . . oh, sorry, must have been dreaming.

Submitted: 7:40am, PDT, 28 Apr.'10, CBC News
Afghan records denial is privilege breach: Speaker
Milliken gives government 2 weeks to find compromise over document release
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/04/27/afghan-detainee-documents-speaker-milliken-privilege-ruling.html#socialcomments-submit



Now all we have to do is get Harper to stop Proroguing Parliament . . . and dissolving Parliament to save his political skin (which may happen sooner rather than later) and generally doing everything for political purposes and Canada as a nation and Canadians be damned, and answering questions with vicious personal attacks instead of serious and informative response, and obscuring and obstructing the access to information, and inflicting Harper's personal religious beliefs on all of Canadians, and dismantling Federalism, and abdicating responsibilities creating a void of national coordinated action requiring the Provinces to fill (e.g. global warming and environment), and introducing superficial ad hoc and disjointed 'micro' provisions touting them as important general policies (e.g. 'getting tough on crime') and depleting the Federal coffers by bogus tax reduction policies designed for their appeal as opposed to what is fiscally sound (e.g. reducing the GST), disenfranchising a whole segment of the Canadian population (e.g Quebec) and governing for the benefit of a small segment of the population (extreme right wingers, esp. Alberta), insidiously insinuation of Harper's extreme right wing ideology in Canadian society through countless and widely disbursed political appointments, shunning Canadians duty to its youth, its poor, its elderly, . . .


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Submitted: 7:53am, 28 Apr.'10, CBC News

Nicholson: "The government will not knowingly break the laws that were written and passed by Parliament"

Wrong Nicholson,

Parliament is supreme and the government must oblige its request. As Milliken pointed out, Parliament power is not impinged upon by general provisions of legislation of the nature Harper, MacKay, Nicholson, Day are referring to to shield them from the possible political liability of letting the truth be known.

If Harper, MacKay, Hawn, O'Connor, are not using national security to save their skins then they will easily be able to come to some arrangement for obeying Parliament request and preserving national security. If they are using it to save their skins then we all better get ready for an election. The only things that could save their skins in that case is a majority.

Of course, one big problem is knowing whether documents are being withheld from any Parliament representative. Anyone who thinks this is not a real possibility may be in for a rude awakening.

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Submitted: 7:56am, 28 Apr.'10 CBC News

The 'dark side' of the Milliken ruling is the possibility of Parliament restricting its authority through legislation. Harper only needs a majority to pass such legislation, transfer powers to the PM and plunge Canada into a 'dictatorial democracy'.

I disagree with this aspect of his ruling. In Canadian Democracy there is legislation, Constitution (and Charter) and tradition. Parliament's supremacy is derived from tradition, that is what Milliken means by
"Furthermore, it risks diminishing the inherent privileges of the House and its members, which have been earned and must be safeguarded."

"Earned" of course refers to hundreds of years of struggle and civil war until our current parliamentary system was established with Parliament supreme. Legislation can not impinge on this nor can an amendment to the Constitution. The only thing that can alter this is the complete re-alignment of our political and social system the likes of which one sees from civil war.

This is one reason why tradition is not 'encapsulated', the process used to encapsulating it can also be used to change it. It is the common threat that runs from generation to generation which we as temporary inhabitants may not alter. Harper may rack up crippling debt, refuse to act on global warming, infuse extreme right wing ideology into our society that will adversely affect our children and our children's children for generations, but he can not make us a dictatorship without civil war.

Lloyd MacILquham cicblog.com/comments.html