President Ronald Reagan (left) offers youthful budget director David Stockman some jelly beans during a budget meeting in the 1980s. © Bettmann/Corbis.

Who just said: “I think the lesson of the last 25 years is that it doesn’t work …  Taxes are going to have to be raised. … The Republicans think their mission in life is to cut taxes. Sorry … game over. We’re now in the tax-raising business. And we’re going to be in the tax-raising business for the next decade”?

Give yourself a maple syrup snow cone if you said David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget for Ronald Reagan!

Stockman’s intelligence and intellectual honesty have always transcended knee-jerk ideological commitments. During his tenure at OMB he got into hot water with the White House for some frank remarks to the Atlantic Monthly. After he resigned from the Reagan administration in 1985, he published a book called  The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.

Similarly, after he left Washington, “Stockman, now 63 years old, enjoyed a successful career as an investment banker.” But: “In 2007 he was indicted for securities fraud in relationship to Collins & Aikman Inc., the now-defunct auto-parts supplier.” In the end, however, “the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan dropped all charges early last year.”

Stockman is currently at work on a book, that “will explore how crony capitalism reached a peak during the recent financial meltdown.” Whatever else, he cannot in any sense be described as a “socialist” — or a “liberal” or even just very vaguely on “the left.”

A 60-something David Stockman with his wife Jennifer at Aspen Art Museum dinner 2008. (Jennifer is also national co-chair of the Republican Majority for Choice, dedicated to preserving legal access to abortion.) Compliments New York Social Diary.

Stockman has also recently come out in favour of President Obama’s proposal to tax big US banks: “I would give the administration credit for trying to move us back to something that’s a lot saner than trillion-dollar banks being propped up by the taxpayers, which is exactly where we are today … The baleful reality is that the big banks … are dangerous institutions, deeply embedded in a bull market culture of entitlement and greed.”

In his earliest political incarnation David Stockman was a Republican congressman from Michigan (1977–1981). It would be a great boon to the State of the Union nowadays if there were a few Republican congressmen like him in the Washington of 2010.

You have to wonder as well if anyone in Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada is paying attention to David Stockman’s hard-earned public policy wisdom. Even in the somewhat more benign Canadian financial circumstances of today, he is surely just telling the plain truth: “we’re going to be in the tax-raising business for the next decade.”

Accounting student Chelsea Bokor, right, and Marketing student Ashley Dinh wear barely the clothes on their backs as they listen to University of Calgary Provost Alan Harrison defend the recent tuition increase announcements at the MacEwan Student Centre February 2. Photograph by: Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald.

More than 60 years ago Harold Innis, the almost-great Canadian historian (or economist, or economic historian, or communications theorist who inspired Marshall McLuhan, etc, etc), lamented the “futility of political discussion in Canada.” And it is sobering to think that in this respect at least not much has changed since the late 1940s.

Take, for instance, the current debate on Canadian Senate reform, which has been going on for more than a quarter of a century. By now it ought to have made clear that a reformed Senate with an equal number of seats for each province  — on the model of such other geographically vast federal systems as the United States and Australia — will not finally work in Canada.

Yet on February 2, 2010 we have the Telegraph-Journal in New Brunswick urging that the “more widespread Senate reform” some still see as latent in Stephen Harper’s latest batch of unelected appointments to the still unreformed Senate of Canada must ultimately include “an equal number of seats” for such places as “Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia” and New Brunswick (to say nothing of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island).

The hard political fact of life is that the modern Canadian federation is not quite like either the United States or Australia. A reformed Canadian Senate that better represents provincial interests in federal institutions may remain an important goal (and we believe it is indeed ourselves). But in Canada this goal cannot be achieved by anything quite like equal numbers of Senate seats for each province, regardless of the size or composition of provincial populations.

To start with, the federal systems of  the United States and Australia do not include anything like the Canadian province of Quebec. As the Canadian federal Parliament has now recognized, the Quebecois are a nation within a united Canada, and all that. In the end this has to mean Quebec is, whatever else, not a province quite like the others. Any realistic proposal for Canadian Senate reform must somehow recognize this deeply rooted fact of Canadian political life. (And one might even think that a newspaper in New Brunswick — Canada’s only officially bilingual province — would be more sensitive to this fact of life than other parts of the country.)

As a practical matter, the problem doesn’t end with Quebec either. A provincially equal Senate would give a majority of seats to the six least populous Canadian  provinces (including New Brunswick), which taken together account for less than 14% of the total Canada-wide population. A reformed Senate which was also “elected” and “effective” as well as “equal” (on the old so-called Alberta “Triple E” model) could wind up giving less than 14% of the Canada-wide democracy (“one person one vote” and all that) at least some decisive control over the lives of the remaining more than 86% of the Canadian people!

It is true enough that even in the United States today the 26 least populous “equal” states which constitute  a majority in the Senate at Washington account for only somewhat more than 17% of the total US population. But this is a less obvious practical political problem in a federal system of 50 states than it would be in one of 10 provinces. In the more comparable case of Australia — a federal system of only six states — the four least populous equal states which constitute a majority in the Australian Senate account for some 40% of the total Australian population.

Madi Wozny comes to the forum with barely the clothes on her back as University of Calgary Provost Alan Harrison drew of crowd of hundreds to address students in council chambers as well as in a simulcast in the MacEwan Student Centre on tuition increases February 2. She is a Music Education student. Photograph by: Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald.

You can of course say that this is just a lot of abstract theorizing, in the selfish interests of people who live in what the Telegraph-Journal calls the “larger powerhouses” of the Canadian federation today. But it does have at least one decisive practical implication for, e.g., the provincial interests of the Alberta where the concept of the Triple E Senate first arose in the 1980s. And there is some evidence that this implication is starting to sink in — in Alberta itself (and even in the neighbouring newly resource-dynamic provincial economy of Saskatchewan).

Not to put too fine a point on the argument, the greatest unintended consequence of a provincially equal reformed Senate in Canada could be a plot by the “small” provinces of the federation  — representing increasingly much, much less than a majority of the Canada-wide democracy —  to divide up the oil and gas resource revenues of Alberta in the interests of “have-not” Canada, in a way that would make the ill-fated National Energy Policy of the early 1980s look like child’s play. And this may be yet another reason why it’s the cause of lower university tuition fees that has recently prompted the youth of Calgary to take off their clothes at public demonstrations — and not the once grand old cause of Bert Brown’s Triple E Senate!

According to the latest polls the Harper Conservatives are losing ground in Canada’s most populous province. And they aren’t likely to make much of it up by the appointment of old eastern Ontario provincial Tory Bob “Mad Dog” Runciman to the unreformed Senate of Canada.

You of course hear nothing about Canadian politics via the ordinary media in Florida, where I spent the counterweights late January prorogue. And I didn’t take a laptop computer with me. On the theory that a week is a long time in politics, one of my first tasks on returning to the northern deep freeze was to catch up on the Ottawa scene.

To start with, two opinion polls from last Thursday suggest a week may not always be all that long in politics. With a Canada-wide sample of “1,005 adults,” January 25–26, Angus Reid reported Conservatives 33%, Liberals 29%, New Democrats 19%, Bloc Quebecois 10%, Green Party 7% — all under the headline “With Parliament Prorogued, Liberals Get Closer to Conservatives.” More provocatively, with a Canada-wide sample of “3,206 Canadians aged 18 and over,” January 20–26, EKOS reported Liberals 31.6%, Conservatives 31.1%, New Democrats 14.6%, Green Party 11.0%, Bloc Quebecois 9.1%, and Other 2.6%.  Plugging these numbers into its parliamentary seat-projection model, the same poll had the “Liberals winning 119 [seats] compared to 110 for the Tories if an election were held today. The NDP would win 30 seats, the Bloc could garner 46 and Elizabeth May’s Green Party would win one seat — in Ontario — with two more going to ‘other’ parties or independents.” [UPDATE: A new Harris-Decima poll released today, with a sample of 2,000, January 21-31, tends to confirm the trend here:  It "suggests a dead heat between the two parties, at 32 per cent each. The NDP was at 15 per cent, the Bloc Quebecois at 10, and the Greens at nine."]

Last Thursday as well minority Prime Minister Harper finally got around to making the five new Senate appointments he once said he would never make — to put the Conservatives ahead of the Liberals in that “relic of the 19th century” (another memorable early Harperism) that remains the unreformed Senate of Canada. Three of the five were outright Conservative provincial politicians (Elizabeth Marshall from the Rock, Rose-May Poirier from New Brunswick, and Bob Runciman from Ontario). Two others had some pretence of more high-minded motivations: Vim Kochhar, who was born in India and became a Canadian citizen in 1974, and has founded both the Vimal Group of Companies in Toronto and the Canadian Foundation for Physically Disabled Persons; and  Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, a former Quebec public servant who founded the Murdered or Missing Persons’ Families Association, after his daughter was murdered in 2002.

Three recent columns by Chantal Hébert have also caught my eye: “Cash, votes and toxic politics”; “That political wake-up call? Quebec is sleeping through it”; and “After 7 years, power still eludes Jack Layton.” The last of these (published just today in fact) ends with a proposition I profoundly agree with myself: “Over the weekend, the NDP’s national council met to discuss what was billed as a strategy to win the next campaign. But despite those brave words, Layton’s best hope to continue to move his party closer to power is infinitely more likely to lie in a more constructive parliamentary relationship with the Liberals than in the ballot box.”

I was equally impressed by a column this past Saturday by Ralph Surette in the Halifax Chronicle Herald (and not really at all because my fellow Florida vacationers last week included some Haligonians). This piece was entitled “Democracy under assault: time to wake up.” And here is just a taste: “In Canada, Stephen Harper unilaterally shuts down Parliament with an astounding rationale: Parliament is just a bother, an impediment to doing real work, and people don’t care if it’s shut down …  In the US, the picture is even more mind-boggling. Despite the unprecedented havoc wreaked by the Bush-Cheney Republicans — two lost wars, a near-depression, unprecedented deficits, the constitution and due process grievously undermined, the hurricane Katrina bungle, America’s reputation as a world leader and the ultimate can-do nation badly bruised — and despite being decisively routed in the last presidential election, the dregs of this party are still having their way.”

Finally, last Wednesday the American writer J.D. Salinger died at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire, at the venerable age of 91. And this I certainly did hear about even via the ordinary media in Florida.

J.D. Salinger, 63, with actress Elaine Joyce at the Alhambra Dinner Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, 1982. This was their first in-person meeting after a “romance via telephone and mail.” Ms. Joyce discovered: “He wasn’t a very nice man.” GENE SWEENEY JR./The Times-Union.

I was one of the millions upon millions who were (and apparently still are) enormously impressed in high school by the sad-rebel legend of Holden Caulfield, in Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. I went on to try to read other Salinger books: Franny and Zooey; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction; and Nine Stories.   But they just seemed depressing to me — as opposed to the strange combination of depressing and energizing that marks the Caulfield adventures. The teenage Caulfield might have become politicized in his young adulthood, and many of those who were inspired by him did in the 1960s. The characters in the other books were too self-obsessed to reach out to the larger community. In 1953, in the wake of the sudden great success of Catcher in the Rye, Salinger himself retreated to his splendid isolation in New Hampshire. He published nothing after 1965 (although there are now fresh rumours of manuscripts waiting to be found).

Yet, whatever else, Salinger showed that he really did know something about something by living into his early 90s (unlike, say, Hemingway or Fitzgerald). And even many who don’t like his other books still think that Holden Caulfied remains one of the great creations of American literature. J.D. Salinger was his literary father, and like millions upon millions again, I was suitably sad to hear of his passing last week.

As a sign of sympathy with the No Prorogue protests right across Canada yesterday the management has decided  to prorogue counterweights for one full week. We will return on Monday, February 1, 2010.

Some demonstrators in Toronto were so young they could not even spell “prorogue.” Photo WMW.

Just after noon yesterday I set out with a few of the hardier counterweights editors to join our local area demonstration against minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s prorogation (or “suspension” or even just “shutdown”) of the Parliament of Canada until March 3.

Our local area happens to be the most hated city in the country, Toronto. (And this would embarrass more Torontonians than it does nowadays, if it weren’t that so many of them have not yet been in the country long enough to realize that they are so hated by other Canadians — in a friendly way of course.)

According to no less than the CanWest News Service, the Toronto event attracted “a crowd estimated by police to be close to 7,000 people.” This “appeared to be the largest rally of the day” — among the apparently more than 60 such gatherings across Canada (and even in a few cases in the UK, US, and Central America). Since Toronto is the country’s largest metropolitan region, it no doubt makes sense that it would also have the largest anti-prorogation rally.

Rally on Art Gallery grounds in Downtown Vancouver as part of national day of protest over decision to prorogue parliament. Jon Murray, PNG.

The Toronto event started at “Dundas Square, across Yonge Street from the Eaton Centre,” in the heart of the old downtown. On our way there we were checking out early reports on twitter. (Thanks to the younger members of our party, I should make clear.)  It seemed that there may not be a very big crowd at Dundas Square yet. But by the time we arrived, just after 1 pm, there were already a few thousand demonstrators of all shapes and sizes etc. And already there was the kind of energy in the crowd that made clear the whole thing was going to be a pretty big success.

Read the rest of this page »

President Obama, center, with basketball team at Punahou School, Hawaii, 1977.

“History has many cunning passages,” T.S. Eliot from St. Louis, Missouri said about 90 years ago (by which time he was already living in London, England). But having a Republican like Scott Brown deal “a devastating blow to President Obama’s domestic agenda Tuesday night by capturing the Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy” must be close to the worst way imaginable for President Obama to celebrate the anniversary of his first year in office.

The best or at least most constructive view of all this probably is that, in the end, it will prove a blessing in disguise for the Obama Democrats. After a year of immense challenges in office (most not of their own making, of course), they almost certainly do need to reconnect with the mood of anguish down on the populist ground. And now they have a harsh political necessity that could be the mother of invention they need.

The first problem is what to do about health care reform. The easiest and conceivably most effective way of clearing this nagging priority off the desk (to make room for more urgent attention on the once-again crucial it’s-the-economy-stupid issue?) has already been tidily articulated by the brilliant Ezra Klein at the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post has focused on the largest missing piece. And Jonathan Capeheart has pushed Dionne’s logic to its conclusion: “E.J. Dionne hits on why … the electorate likes the man but is troubled by what he’s doing. ‘[T]he truth that liberals and Obama must grapple with is that they have failed so far to dent the right’s narrative,’ he writes …  Let me go a step further … If Obama and his allies want to dent the right’s narrative, they have to devise a coherent, cohesive and concise narrative of their own.”

There is likely some compelling parallel message for the various forces of progress up in the true north in the year 2010 as well. This past Sunday the ancient Canadian left-wing guru James Laxer wrote in the Toronto Star: “One year into Barack Obama’s term of office, two remarkable things stand out: how little he has achieved on the core issues on his agenda and how potent the right wing has grown during his watch … It’s too early to make a prediction, but this has the feel of a one-term presidency.”

I’m often a great admirer of James Laxer. His argument here, however, finally seems to me just a counsel of weakness that need not be. And besides Mr. Laxer like the rest of us almost certainly ought to be worrying more about how potent the right wing has grown on our own patch of populist ground in the northern wilderness — and just what should be done about that!

President Obama, at work in the Oval Office at the White House, Washington, DC, 2009.

Back in the USA today, watching the grim returns from the Massachusetts special election last night with Keith and Chris and Rachel and their friends on MSNBC was at least vaguely reassuring. President Obama still has almost three years left in his first term in office. He remains impressive in many ways — and the current Great Recession stateside has not turned into another  Great Depression. The Democrats still have rather healthy democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House. The 2010 mid term elections are still many months down the road.

The Democrats no doubt have much improving to do over these months. But according to the latest CBS poll, only 50% of all Americans approve of President Obama, but only 40% disapprove. Only 44% view Congressional Democrats favorably and 48% unfavorably. But only 34% view Congressional Republicans favorably and 56% unfavorably! These remain challenging times, and that is not about to change any time soon. But there are still more than a few good reasons to, as Jesse Jackson used to say, “keep hope alive.” (And, after drowning my sorrows briefly tonight, that’s exactly what I intend to do.)

Stephen Harper showing his truest colours in an earlier phase of his political career? (He does have a sense of humour after all?)

“The Conservatives,” John Ivison at the National Post wrote this past Friday, “think an election is probably at least a year away and are trusting in the public’s political amnesia … They believe the only question that will matter by then is: Who do you trust to lead the country through a period of fiscal restraint? If they can contain themselves from doing anything too rash between now and then, prorogation will fade into political antiquity.”

Meanwhile: “Canada steps up aid as Haiti faces chaos.” And in the face of the harsh tragedy suddenly unfolding in the birthplace of Canada’s Governor General, that is a very good thing. At the same time, Joan Bryden at the Canadian Press is no doubt also on to something when she writes: “In the space of a few days, Parliament Hill has morphed from being a symbol of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s high-handed contempt for democracy into an emblem of his compassion and concern for the people of Haiti.”

Under the circumstances, all you can say is if it works for the beleaguered people of Haiti that’s just fine. At the same time again, our resident Ontario historian Randall White has finally completed his deep-background investigation into the great Canadian prorogation debate, that has lately done so much to polish popular perceptions of Prime Minister Harper’s “high-handed contempt for democracy.” CLICK HERE if you still have the stamina to pursue this subject, or see “If there is a deepening debate about ‘prorogation’ and democracy in Canada what does it mean?”,  under the Ottawa Scene category to the right of this page.

Poster for January 23rd “No/Non Prorogue”rally in Kelowna, BC.

In an interview very early this morning, a bleary-eyed Dr. White said he was too exhausted from his labours to offer any succinct summary of his research findings. But he did report that he certainly will be attending the “No Prorogue” rally this coming Saturday, January 23 in his local area. And he claimed that his decision to do this is a better practical summary of what he has learned in his deep background investigation than “still more words.” He went on: “Who can say at this point how things will turn out on the 23rd … I can only definitively predict that I’ll be there myself.” He is nonetheless impressed  that so far rallies are planned in 50 different Canadian centres — and even for expats in London (England), New York City, and Dallas, Texas. “It’s at least a protest against political amnesia,” Dr. White shrugged, as he walked out the office door. (Btw as well as being very long, Dr. White’s article in this case has no illustrations at all: he says the subject is just too serious.)

Karen Alloy aka spricket24: “Hi my name is Karen and I make stupid videos and post them on YouTube to the SHAME of all my friends and family!”

Dr. Randall White’s deep-background (and apparently appallingly detailed and lengthy) investigation of the current great Canadian prorogation debate is now said to be almost complete. It will be posted without fail at some point this coming weekend — probably just before midnight, Sunday, January 17.

Meanwhile, others among us are starting to wonder whether the somewhat surprising prorogation protest among we the great unwashed Canadian people has already peaked. See, eg, Jane Taber’s Globe and Mail blog: In the end recent evidence that “Prorogation hammers Conservative support in polls” may be “not so bad for the Prime Minister and his team.” The latest EKOS poll “was taken over several days —  from Jan. 6 to Jan. 12 —  and Tory fortunes were rebounding in the last few days … On Jan. 6, the Conservatives were at 28.3% compared to 34% per cent by Jan. 12. Averaged all together, however, the Tories emerge with 30.9%. The Liberals, meanwhile, began on the first day of the poll with 23.6% and ended with 26.6%. Their global total for the poll period was 29.3% … The EKOS analysis says this suggests ‘it may be difficult for the opposition to sustain public attention on the issue of prorogation.’”

O well. The apparently populist “anti-prorogue rallies” scheduled for “40+” centres across the country next Saturday, January 23 should provide another kind of evidence, for better or worse. Chantal Hébert notes in today’s Toronto Star that: “So far, the controversy has had the most impact on Conservative fortunes in Ontario, ground zero of the media backlash over the move.”  A report on January 23 protest preparations in NOW magazine in Toronto notes that there is another planning meeting in that city today. (A similar meeting last Friday attracted so many people it had to be moved to more spacious quarters.) Incidentally, the same report ends rather provocatively with “at least we know the Bloc and NDP won’t prop up this government come a new budget in March.” Do we really know this? Has anyone told Jack Layton?

This would seem to be Karen in a rare tender and non-satirical moment with her child. But of course who really knows?

Meanwhile again, discussions earlier this week with one group of counterweights consultants, at a heritage tavern in Anytown, Southern Ontario, reminded us of Frank Bunting’s allusion last September to the incisive YouTube report on “2012: The End of the World,” by the semi-beautiful stateside redhead Karen Alloy, aka spricket 24. (“To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail.”) If you like Ms. Malloy’s work here, you might also appreciate her other YouTube reports on such subjects as “Swine Flu,” “Get Fatter America,” “Red Hair,” and “Ugly People.” Still more to the point, what the world really needs right now is a Karen Alloy report on the great Canadian prorogation debate. As an (almost) American Beauty (of sorts), she no doubt does not have time for such things. And we will have to content ourselves with Dr. White’s forthcoming more-than-anyone-ever-wanted-to-know-about-prorogation essay. With popular enthusiasm for the subject having perhaps already peaked, we have made clear to him that his report must be posted no later than midnight January 17 — or we will stop payment on the cheque, foolishly sent in advance. (It won’t happen again!)

La rédaction du Devoir, rue Notre-Dame — in the early days, when founder Henri Bourassa (precursor of both the Parti Québécois and Pierre Trudeau?) was still in his prime.

The dead of winter always makes you a bit crazy in a northern country. Our resident Ontario historian Randall White’s deep-background investigation of the current great Canadian prorogation debate is apparently still a work in progress — with a new “almost firm” deadline of January 13 or 14 (or even 15?).

Meanwhile, we counterweights editors want to collectively offer congratulations to three quite different admirable enterprises in the increasingly unusual country of Canada today. The first is the Montreal French-language publication Le Devoir, which celebrated its 100th birthday this past weekend. It was founded in 1910 by Henri Bourassa (1868–1952), who in the opinion of some was “the distant predecessor to today’s Parti Québécois.” At the same time (as others see the universe), it was Pierre Trudeau and his Constitution Act 1982 that finally “delivered what had been the fondest hope of Henri Bourassa … French education from coast to coast.”

Say what you like: French culture is more “intellectual” and all that than the more philistine strains of English culture. And that is just one thing which makes many among we anglophone Canadians determined to keep the francophone majority in Quebec secure and happy (enough) inside the present confederation of 1867. On some similar plane of being, one thing English-speaking Canada almost desperately needs right now is a newspaper like Le Devoir.

As good as it may be in other ways, the Toronto Globe and Mail still does not qualify. On the other hand, even local English language papers across this vast and rugged geography that have fallen into the laps of failing journalistic empires still sometimes manage to stand up for what is best and most hopeful in the true north, strong and free.

In this context we want to commend the Saskatoon Star Phoenix for its January 11, 2010 editorial “Cynical politics killing possibility of Senate reform.”

We were especially struck by: “It is one thing to achieve one’s aims as prime minister by manipulating the levers of office, abusing the reputation of underlings, using party funds to unfairly denigrate one’s opponents, removing from office watchdogs and bureaucrats who point out weaknesses, ducking responsibility by proroguing Parliament and stretching the limits of one’s power … It’s quite another, however, to achieve laudable ends by actually leading the nation to those goals. Mr. Harper, although incredibly successful as a politician and tactician, has failed to lead Canada on almost every file.”

Michael Bublé and Argentinean actress Luisana Loreley Lopilato de la Torre reportedly have their sights set on a walk down the aisle.

Finally, on Canada’s Pacific coast, our congratulations as well to the early 21st century crooner Michael Bublé, on his engagement to Argentinean actress Luisana Loreley Lopilato de la Torre. As another local Canadian newspaper has explained: “Vancouver’s Michael Bublé is feeling some Crazy Love — for his new fiancée.”

(And “Crazy Love” of course “released in 2009, is Canadian vocalist Michael Bublé’s fourth studio album. After only three days of sales, the album opened atop the Billboard 200 chart with 132,000 copies …  giving the singer his second No. 1 album. Spending the first full week at the top, the album increased in sales to 203,000 copies, staying again with the number one spot on its second week. The album [has now] sold 3,338,000 copies since it’s release.” No wonder Ms. Lopilato de la Torre from Argentina is impressed.)

Our resident Ontario historian, on a research trip to the island of Rhodes.

Our resident Ontario historian Randall White had a first swing at the Stephen Harper minority government’s latest prorogation of the Parliament of Canada last week.

Since then the issue has been gathering more steam (in at least some old transcontinental railway towns, across our vast treasure-chest of natural and human resources, etc, etc). And Dr. White has been hard at work on a deeper investigative report, delving into some of the complexities that have arisen in an increasingly complex debate.

In particular, Dr. White is looking into the long history of prorogation in the present Canadian confederation that began in 1867 — in deference to the urgings of, eg,  Brian Lilley,  Ottawa Bureau Chief for the Toronto radio station Newstalk 1010 (CFRB), and conservative (and Conservative) guru/pundit etc Tim Powers, from Newfoundland and Labrador.

What an earlier era in Canada called the “Mother of Parliaments” at Westminster in London, England: where the concept of “prorogation” was born, many long years ago.

Dr. White is also undertaking a quick and dirty exploration of how this long Canadian prorogation experience compares with related experience in three other members of the present-day Commonwealth of Nations: Australia, India, and the United Kingdom.

We are told that Dr. White will be reporting on his deeper prorogation research for interested counterweights readers at some point over the next few days (Monday, January 11 at the latest, or at worst not very much later?). Meanwhile, the debate continues to deepen and rage on — at least in its current principal forum at the Toronto Globe and Mail.

No one will be surprised to hear that Globe columnist Lawrence Martin thinks Stephen Harper, with “his prorogation move” has “given the opposition two months of free target practice.” It is at least a bit unusual, however (even on the same self-proclaimed national newspaper’s website) to see an item by former Brian Mulroney chief of staff Norman Spector headlined “The beginning of the end for Stephen Harper.”

Some counterweights editors discuss Senate reform in Canada, at a conference in Venice, Italy.

We should say as well that a quick survey of today’s online editions of the Vancouver Sun and Calgary Herald have revealed no obvious ongoing interest in the prorogation issue at all. Le Devoir has “Prorogation de la session — Sans peur,” and in the Halifax Chronicle Herald we just find: “MPs say they’ll focus on constituency work … Most representatives plan to use prorogation to work in their ridings.”

On the other hand, a new “Angus Reid Public Opinion poll conducted in partnership with the Toronto Star” finds that 53% Canada-wide “disagree with the decision to prorogue Parliament,” while only 19% agree and 28% are “Not sure.” Regionally, those who disagree range from 61% in Atlantic Canada to 59% in Ontario, 52% in BC, 50% in Alberta, 48% in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and 46% in Quebec. (It’s not that so many agree with the Harper minority government in Quebec — but just that as many as 53% there “have not followed this story at all.”) A new EKOS poll for the period January 4–5, 2010 also shows Mr. Harper’s Conservatives at a mere 33.1% support Canada-wide, down from 35.9% for December 9–15, 2009.

(Oh, and btw, the venerable Economist magazine in the former Mother of Parliaments across the seas has just “published a critical story about the [Canadian] Conservative prime minister’s suspension of Parliament and a scathing editorial under the headline, ‘Harper goes prorogue’.”)

Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, whose province has already made provisions to elect potential Senators, now seems to be backtracking on the project — just as Prime Minister Harper seems ready for yet another college try.

Meanwhile again, in an apparent effort to seize some kind of fresh high ground, the Harper minority government is talking about electing Senators and giving them term limits again, even as Mr. Harper prepares to appoint five new Conservative Senators in the good old-fashioned way, at last giving the Conservatives more seats in the unreformed Senate of Canada than the Liberals.

In an interview very early this morning our resident Ontario historian Dr. White told us he still supports the prime minister’s current Senate reform plans, if nothing and in spite of everything else. Others among us are acquiring fresh doubts.

If you feel you absolutely must pursue this (sort-of) newest bloody rag of Harperana, try: “Harper to revive Senate reform plan … Decision to prorogue Parliament could give minority government enough power to force a high-stakes vote on changes” [Globe and Mail] ; “Wall raises doubts about Senate elections” [CBC Saskatchewan]; “Senate reform: Two questions” [Toronto Star]; “Senate reform plan sparks standoff with provinces” (Globe and Mail]; “Heading to a Senate crisis” [Victoria Times Colonist]; and “Don’t elect the Senate” [Toronto Star].