http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/01/11/prorogue-protest-professors.html
Industry Minister Tony Clement, in response to a letter written by several dozen university professors, wrote this:
I know it's a big issue with the Ottawa media elite and some of the elites in our country, but I got to tell you if reaction in my constituency is any indication, I've had maybe three dozen emails...
What buffoonery. If I was a Conservative Party member, I would be right pissed off at such a statement. Clement is committing the reductionist fallacy - something a person of his standing should know more than a little about. If he can't even grasp the error he committed in that statement, there's no way he's qualified to hold the office of Minister of Industry, or any other cabinet posting.
There's a reason why a national poll studies attitudes across the entire nation rather than studying the attitudes of a very small number of respondents within a very small region of Canada. Apparently that reason is lost on the man holding one of the most important positions in Canadian politics. Apparently also lost on him is the fact that 58% of Canadians are not "Ottawa media elite[s]".
His email address is: . Send him an email and tell him to stop embarrassing Canada.
Douchebag
Such lame rhetoric. They just keep copying fox news crap, "the elites," like many if not most of them wouldn't fall under their mocking term.
I will email but the only way he, and the Harper govt, could stop embarrassing Canada is to resign. Or stop being assholes. Neither seems likely. But it doesn't hurt to ask.
Dear sir:
Please stop being an asshole. It's embarrassing. If you feel that your assholery is such an inherent part of your personality that it can not be removed except through extreme means,* please do the decent thing and resign.
Sincerely,
People who can read, er, I mean "the elites."
Actually, that's insulting to the illiterate. Not everyone has the advantage of a good education.
Sincerely,
People who don't have their head shoved up their own ass.
* wouldn't want you to be turned over to people that might torture you or something
bring down the house!
Ohhh boy, I'm thinking we could be having an election shortly. I'm very pleased to see now the second poll showing that Canadians very clearly were dismayed by Harper's recent prorogation. They've all but obliterated every gain they had made in the past three years. This latest poll - a good sized one - shows the Cons in a statistical tie with the Liberals and well under majority numbers.
Harper claims that the prorogation is nothing out of the ordinary, but it really is. One in such an instance has only very rarely ever happened previously and although as he rightly points out that Chretien did it not long ago, he apparently forgot to remember that Chretien was roundly criticized for it.
Should be quite an exciting
Should be quite an exciting time when parliament opens up for business
Nothing out of the Ordinary
I agreed with this sentiment until recently. Please see this data concerning the number of times parliament has been prorogued based on data from parliament's website.
The data is highly informal and assumes that any session that ended not because of an election ended in prorogation. So, adjournments, holidays, and recesses are appropriately not included in the data. However, neither of us are aware of other ways to end a session besides proroguing and having an election.
The current (previous, now) session is shown in blue.
The histograms
So, it seems that there is nothing particularly unusual about this prorogation viewed from this angle.
If there is something unusual about it, one needs to argue that the context is unusual. I think the context of the previous prorogation was unusual in that there was a motion for a vote of non-confidence that was avoided. There is nothing as clear cut here as there was there. There is the afghan detainee controversy, but its not clear that this prorogation is in any way useful for avoiding that controversy. At the very least, prorogation has become an even bigger controversy than the detainee stuff.
So, it seems to me that the opposition has made a mountain out of a molehill here and the media helped them out. Finding information about how and why previous sessions were prorogued would be highly helpful for forming an opinion on the matter, but no one did it. You can't find that info in the media, you have to go onto parliament's website and make inferences and analyse data.
I think the media has done a terrible job here. They quoted the opposition, quoted the Conservatives, dusted off their hands and declared the job finished.
-Dan
[edit: I meant to point out that the previous prorogation being controversial helped the opposition out in claiming this one was too.]
a bit of confusion...
Not entirely following this here so I've got a few questions.
My confusion here is over the emphasised; the second sentence directly contradicts the first. If the data assumed any session not ended by an election was ended with prorogation, then it does include recesses and otherwise. Was this a mis-type?
The histograms are also confusing. The counts/20 days are not consistent across the different charts for the same prorogation (the indicated one). A single prorogation cannot both be on the order of 20 days and 40 days simultaneously. Is this an error in the chart or am I reading it wrong? If it is, then it shows that there is a significant mistake in the most important column. How can we be sure there are not more errors without seeing the data and its source? If it is not an error, then why does the count value change when the numeric value it indicates has not?
As you point out, finding reasons for previous prorogations would greatly increase the relevance of this data. I would take it further though, because without direct reference, without knowing where and how the data was collected, and without knowing the reasons for previous prorogations, there really is no relevance here at all. None. Data of this type isn't useful if we don't know where it came from and how it came to be.
Back to my statement about why it is unusual. I based that opinion on what I have read in news reports covering this recent instance, and conversations with some people far better versed in the topic than myself. What I have learned (second-hand+) is that prorogations used to happen fairly frequently back when transportation to and from Ottawa was a serious issue for MPs, and when it was customary to prorogue parliament on the death of an MP. In modern times, there have been very very few prorogations because transportation is no longer an issue and the aforementioned custom fell out of favour. Those few that have occurred were mostly controversial, such as the most recent ones by the Liberals which the Conservatives were quick to pounce upon at the time.
So while this data might potentially be useful, it really isn't until we know more about it. It's just a bunch of context-less graphs that may have been created with a specific agenda - to support the claim that this is not unusual - rather than an honest and objective discussion of prorogation (though I doubt this is the case because you vaguely suggest you had a hand in creating it - am I correct?). I must stand by my claim that this is unusual until quality evidence is presented against.
All that said, I totally agree that the media completely did a hack job of this issue. It feels like nobody does their homework at all anymore, so all Canadians are able to do is form non-fact-based opinions on so many issues. I also agree that the opposition hasn't done a good job here. The detainee issue is, imo, one of the most serious failings of recent governments and is far better evidence of totalitarian behaviour.
Data
Recesses, adjournments, and holidays do not end a session. They end a sitting, but parliament remains in session. Bills, and motions are not expunged on adjournment or recess. So, I think I wrote what I wrote correctly.
according to parliament:
The data, as I said above, is from Parliament's website. Specifically, here.
I had nothing to do with the creation of the graphs. They were created by a friend of mine. He is a trained scientist and I think he prepared the data in a well intentioned way. I'm not sure of his political affiliations.
The Counts/20 days refers to the bin size of the histogram. So, if you see a bar that goes up to 10 counts/20 days, that means that 10 sessions ended within 10 days to either side of the middle of that bar. Bin sizes can influence the distribution you perceive, and it would be more convincing to see it binned in several ways. But, I don't think the bin size of the histogram is a huge factor in addressing the question "is this normal or not".
Here you are dangerously close to the argument from ignorance. It is not fair to stand by your claim because of a lack of evidence from the other side. Moreover, in law "the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges." That's you! If you claim that the Conservatives have done something wrong, the onus is on YOU to demonstrate it, not the other way around.
The reasons for proroguing parliament are not recorded, and wouldn't necessarily be trustworthy records if they were.
-Dan
on claims
I'm separating my responses in case this further differentiates into separate themes. First, on grounds for claims.
The way I see it, I am no closer to an argument from ignorance than you are for claiming it is not unusual.
Both of us did not present specific sourced evidence one way or the other, but I DO personally have information and conversations that lead me to opine in one direction as opposed to the other. Given that I personally have only witnessed a few prorogations in my lifetime - all of which were controversial - then that lends further support to my position. So I am perfectly justified in openly stating my opinion. I will happily change my position if reasonable evidence is provided to show me why all of those people I talked to were wrong, why all those newspaper stories were wrong, and why my personal experience is wrong. But no evidence of such was provided at that point. I'm not going to change my opinion just because someone else changed their opinion, I want evidence.
So if I am treading dangerously close to an argument from ignorance simply because I formed a flexible opinion based on personal experience, numerous personal conversations, and statements from wide-ranging news sources, then so are you by forming your opinion from numeric data that you readily admitted lacks a shred of contextual meta-information. I mean you said yourself, you changed your opinion based on some numbers with absolutely no historical context, no explanation of why each data point occurred, nothing at all! That's all it took to change your mind. So be careful when you start slingin accusations of logical fallacies around that you aren't guilty of the same thing.
Standards of evidence
What standard of evidence do you expect will sort this out?
I steadfastly disagree that number of people who believe something, things the media reports, and your personal experiences are meaningful standards of evidence at all. If there's some specific evidence that the media reported on, or specific evidence that people told you, THAT's what we should be discussing here.
We should indeed be critical of the graphs that I posted. They were only ever meant to be informal. There are a great deal of problems with them. I like your idea of showing a drift effect in the data to suggest that things are changing with time toward less prorogation. That would be interesting. Also, as I said in my previous post, knowing that prorogation is normally voted on, but now its not is useful and hadn't been brought up here before.
But we simply aren't going to find high quality evidence for either side here. So, I don't necessarily think its fair to pick a side based on bad standards of evidence (or standards not yet shared with us) and then expect to see good standards of evidence from the other side. What would you want to see?
-Dan
standards of evidence cont'd
You're not looking at this from a point of view other than your own, which I'm finding very odd coming from you because that's usually an area where you excel, and I can't help but wonder if perhaps you thought you had included a lot more information in your first comment than you actually did. Either that, or you are grossly misunderstanding my words, perhaps because I have been very unclear? - I can't know, so let's flip the situation so that you can see where I'm coming from here, and hopefully there will be some resolution.
Invented scenario:
You are at UBC and I imagine you have a rough idea of how many visible minorities are on campus. Let's say you've also seen a dozen or so campus newspaper articles discussing the various percentages of visible minorities over the course of time you've been there, and what they have read agrees entirely with your experience of being at that University. You've even taken a course on minorities in Vancouver that briefly discussed the UBC campus, and again, that information was in-line with what you see. Everything you have learned, experienced, and read, while not explicitly quantified in a peer-reviewed journal, is entirely internally cohesive.
Now let's say I come along and show you a single article written on the visible minority population at UBC that runs completely counter to all that you have seen and read. There is no author on the article, and while there are lots of numbers, there is not one single citation. Nor does it discuss when or how the data was collected, and admits that there were methodological errors.
In this scenario, you wouldn't likely "believe" that there is any particular number of visible minorities, but given that everything up to the presentation of this article was internally cohesive, you would likely be more positively inclined towards your experience, would you not? So when I present this article to you with no author, no data source, admitted methodological errors; would you not also be inclined to severely question the article to the point of completely disregarding it? Would you be satisfied in having the article called "evidence"?
So let's return to the case at hand.
So do I. It's anecdotal at best. But anecdotal evidence is superior to unreferenced data from an unknown source and compiled by someone who ignored all reasons why each data point came to exist. Neither are strictly evidence, but that does not mean no position must be taken, which is why I continue to lean towards the statement that this prorogation is indeed unusual.
Again... while we may not find "evidence" as such, there's a wealth of information out there about why things were done the way they were done, and how that explains that this prorogation is unusual. It's not catalogued "evidence" but there's books written on it, including documents from the government itself of practices and procedures. I'll believe a book on parliamentary procedure over unverifiable data on a chart of unknown origin any day.
On Sittings, Sessions, Prorogation
I am very glad you supplied the link to Parliament's website containing the data. Have you looked at this data yourself? The data supports my claim.
First, some terminology because I think there may be some confusion roaming about. A "parliament" is the term of an individual formation of a government. Each parliament can hold multiple "sessions" during each of which there are many "sittings". A "prorogation" is an act which terminates a parliamentary session - and only by extension any current sitting of the legislature.
This is quite true, however it's only relevant to modern times. Scroll down to the bottom half of that page and watch the number of days per session as you do so. You will see that the days per session decline as you go back in time. Why? - well it's exactly as I said; in the past, legislative sessions were commonly prorogued so that MPs could return periodically to their constituencies, which historically took a good deal longer than it does now with modern transportation.
The data very clearly shows that as transportation speeds increased, there were fewer sessions per parliament - meaning that there were fewer and fewer prorogations over time - and the length of these sessions increased because a recess or short adjournment was sufficient for MPs to perform their elected constituency duties.
Prorogations were historically voted on by parliament. I emphasize this because it's very important. In a majority parliament, prorogations need not have the support of the other parties to pass, but they were voted on anyway as a gesture of respect. In a minority situation, a prorogation would normally still be voted on. This is why the opposition is upset, and it is why the Conservatives) were upset a few years back when the Liberals prorogued without bothering to ask anyone else - and that was in a majority situation. This is why it is further evidence of authoritarianism by the Conservatives.
So I must really thank you for digging up that website, because it very clearly shows that the opposition is NOT making a mountain out of a molehill here, they are right to criticize the government on this, such prorogations really are highly unusual in modern times. And now I am much more confident in my claim.
Transportation
Here is the data so that the readers don't have to plot histograms in their head.
From this, I see that you might interpret the fall from the 50s to the 60s as an effect from greater ease of travel. But the rise from the 1900s to the 1950s seems to undermine this idea. If you plotted a trend line through all of the data, it would have a small negative slope (indicating fewer prorogations as time increases). But, I think the validity of the transportation argument is hardly "clear" from this data.
The average beginning after the fall (in 1960) is about 4.4 prorogations per decade. In the 2000s, we had 4. So, this plot also fails to render the current prorogation as unique in any way, even on a shorter, more appropriate time scale.
It seems to me that the most urgent argument left to evaluate toward making the prorogation seem unique is if we can see the number of sessions that ended with a vote, and the number that were ended without a vote. Does anyone know if that data is available?
-Dan
A classic mistake
You're making a classic mistake here. It's actually the exact mistake that my present sociology class discusses in great detail. It's a very lengthy story (it's a steep class aimed at grad students and assumes a lot more than I can assume here) so I'll be brief.
When you start studying theory and practise in the social sciences, you quickly learn that people have some very different approaches to study, and that they frequently disagree with each other vehemently on basic fundamental levels - ontological and epistemological levels to be more specific; this is not something that happens in the natural sciences. Superficially, we know this difference as qualitative vs quantitative practises. This disagreement has arisen because of the complex nature of the social sciences (they are far more multivariate than just about anything you'll ever see in the "natural" sciences), which lead to the dichotomy very early on.
When social science was just beginning, the basic premise behind it was "let's apply the same tactics employed by natural science towards the social world". This was a great revolutionary idea, but it unfortunately played on a collection of human weaknesses. Early social scientists figured that they could just quantify everything and explanations would just pop out, using the reductionist principle that if you reduce anything to it's basic constituents and quantify it and understand those constituents, then you can understand the whole. This is called the Positivist approach, or naive positivism, or methodological positivism, and has a few other names as well. It mostly works great in the natural sciences, so social scientists thought it would be the same for their work (I have a LOT to say about that... but that's a story for another post).
Eventually people started realizing that the heavily quantified explanations were frequently contradictory, especially when attempting to extrapolate broader meaning from them - the old axiom about being able to prove anything with statistics. Early positivists (and many still today) thought they just didn't have enough data yet to form a good theory, so they quantified more and more and more, which only succeeded in making the problem worse and worse!
The real problem was/is that leaping on the first thing we can quantify is not synonymous with reducing something to its basic constituents. In the hard sciences they usually coincide, so it was an easy to mistake to make when we tried to make the social sciences in the image of hard science. In the social sciences, they almost never coincide. This is why i've been stressing that numbers are meaningless in the absence of context. Thus the rise of the qualitative approach (and other adapted versions of positivism, and eventually critical theory, none of which I'm going to get into here) which was largely an attempt to add meaning to numbers.
Okay, now back to the point.
I hope I have illustrated this well so that you can see why I've been stressing all along that you can't simply throw some graphs on a website and prove this kind of stuff. You must know the history of each datum. If you don't, then you're not actually increasing the information, you're just drawing lines and playing with numbers, just as the (naive) positivist social scientists have been doing for 150 years plus.
With respect to the data you've re-represented, what else was going on during the times of those columns? What important events were occurring in those decades which could have affected the length of time they could maintain a session of parliament? What customs were changing? What were the economies going through in those times? There is a huge spike in the 40s and 50s, what world events might be occurring that could have contributed? Your task in investigating this is not to throw numbers on a page, it's to answer all of those questions. If you haven't yet sought answers to those questions, then once again, none of this is really evidence of anything.
Discussion summary
I think there's a great deal of misunderstanding as to what my stance on this issue is. Perhaps I haven't been clear enough about it, so I would like to recap the discussion so far from my perspective, using Russel's Teapot as an parallel for illustration.
I think this is a good parallel because, like the absence of a teapot, a claim to normalcy can't be verified by any standard of evidence. If I tell you that I have a metal that's normal, I could show you a thousand different measurements that produce normal results, and you could claim that its extraordinary because of a 1001st measurement that I haven't done yet. But, it would only take you a single measurement to demonstrate that the metal is extraordinary: the one that actually shows its extraordinary. This is why I claim that the burden of proof is entirely on the shoulders of the people claiming that something extraordinary happened. Falsification only goes in one direction here, so the burden only goes in one direction.
You made a claim that something unusual happened in Parliament. i.e. you claimed to have seen a teapot in orbit, hiding behind the moon.
I went to look for the teapot (perhaps in too naive a way), and didn't see it. I showed you a null result showing that there was no teapot, at least under the most naive picture of what a teapot hiding behind the moon would look like.
Instead of pointing my gaze in the direction of the teapot, you tried instead to discredit my binoculars. "Where did you get those binoculars? Who made them? Do you understand the cultural context in which those binoculars were produced? What's wrong with them that you can't see the teapot? I can't believe you would even show up here with those shitty binoculars." You said my inability to see them was probably a ruse to support my agenda of proving there was no teapot. You said you would not believe there was no teapot until you saw some evidence that there was no teapot.
Thousands of people claim they can see the teapot. They are protesting in large numbers over the existence of this teapot. But, you seem to be telling me that seeing the teapot is so subtle that I need a great deal of historical context, and a sociology degree to see it. Perhaps it depends on a very small time effect which you have to squint quite hard at the data to even see and something about transportation efficiency. I don't know.
Maybe its true that I'm lacking in the educational background to see the teapot. So, I guess we can conclude that most of the people protesting the prorogation have no idea what they are doing and are protesting because they think they understand something they don't. Probably very few of them have the historical context and sociology degree which you assure me is required to see this teapot.
Personally, I thought you were talking about a huge teapot that would be obvious once I looked up into the sky, probably on fire or shooting lasers or something. So, I'm sorry for that misunderstanding. I'm not sure I really care about teapots that are so subtle I'll never be able to see them.
You have accused me several times now of espousing a position that the prorogation is not unusual. However, my position is logically different than this. I'm not a "there's no teapot" guy, I'm a teapot sceptic. So, while its true I currently do not believe that the prorogation was unusual, that's different than me believing that the prorogation was normal. All I'm saying is that I can't see that anything unusual has happened. I don't know how to look at it to see the unusual aspect of it.
You have given me one good lead that I'm still looking into: That the prorogation is unusual because they are usually voted on, and this one was not. I tried to verify this by searching on Google and Parliament's website. But, I did not find any mention of parliament ever voting on prorogations. Can you tell me where to learn about the history of these votes?
Another lead that I'm looking into is that this prorogation is unusual because of the number of important bills that were not addressed when parliament is prorogued. The story goes that normally prorogation only happens when ALL of the major bills laid out in the speech to the throne have been addressed and therefore Government business has been concluded. Therefore, it would be interesting to find a list of important, unresolved bills at the end of each session. But, I have not yet found this information either.
Should I keep looking for the teapot? Or do you really think I don't have suitable preparation?
-Dan
ahhh the teapot
That was an enjoyable read as the teapot always is, but unfortunately this time I had to reject its premise from the second paragraph. It did however give me an opening; by you making your position more explicit, I am hopefully more able to demonstrate what I'm saying in a way that will connect. We really are discussing different things here, and I need to get that across somehow.
That's just not quite correct. The first time X happens, it can reasonably be viewed as abnormal by default. At this point, it would be up to the person claiming it were normal to show why this was so. The second time as well. But if X continues to occur, then observers would change tunes and reasonably conclude that X is normal within certain parameters, but that viewed with other parameters, they may be considered abnormal as well.
Both claims (abnormalcy and normalcy) can simultaneously be correct because they are subjective claims not of the data itself, but of what the boundaries of normalcy are - which is another way of saying the context of their occurrence. Observers can agree upon definite boundaries of normalcy and abnormalcy, recognizing that such boundaries are purely arbitrary human constructions. If observers cannot agree on those boundaries, then there will always be disagreements. That is the nature of any subjective claim.
I am making a subjective claim. I'm not specifically claiming that this prorogation is abnormal, I'm claiming that there are conditions of normal for separate but poorly defined (fuzzy boundaries) periods of time, and that it so happens that this prorogation is outside of those boundaries. The boundaries are not my own, they are generally agreed upon by most observers, and no education is required other than knowing what those boundaries are, at which point objective claims can be made about the positioning of this prorogation wrt those boundaries. Neither of us can make that objective claim until the boundaries are agreed upon, and you and I have not done this yet.
You seem to not agree with those boundaries or you are not aware of them, and so you claimed that the prorogation is not unusual. My entire response has been an effort to try to either get you to accept the commonly accepted boundaries, or to explain why you feel those boundaries are not valid. You appear to be focused on the data points themselves, whereas I am discussing the boundaries of what should be considered normal vs abnormal. It seems to me that the fact we are discussing different things is where the problem is.
Just to bring it back to the teapot to conclude, the teapot is exceptional because it's way out in space. It is made unusual and unbelievable only because every reasonable person already agrees that the subjective boundaries of believability are considerably lower than where the data point lies. To borrow from another analogy, the teapot is universally unbelievable because it is specifically positioned beyond everyone's bar of believability.
I hope that this illustrates why this is not a matter of scepticism at all. It's nothing except a subjective discussion of the boundaries of normalcy.
..
The rest of your response seemed pretty defensive. Hopefully I'm just reading things into it that aren't there, but I assure you I am not attacking you, your integrity as a researcher, as a logically thinking person, or your knowledge. There is nothing wrong with not having the background to discuss certain things, but it doesn't take a lot of work to get that background either, but let's make sure we're both discussing the same thing first before any more time is spent.
And yes, a great deal of those who are protesting against the prorogation no doubt lack any background to actually understand it, just as most people who vote lack any understanding of the policy direction of the people they are voting for. Some of them will be deferring to those they feel do have the background, others will protest it for no other reason than it's the Conservatives, and many others still will be in my boat, with a general basic understanding of parliamentary procedure and history and a little bit of historical experience that suggests to us that this is not at all appropriate for a government of a modern democracy.
Back on Track
I'm sorry for getting defensive. I regretted getting snarky shortly after posting that.
The reason that I'm getting frustrated is that you seem to me to be avoiding all of my requests for you to clarify or defend your position, or to help me verify any of your claims. Instead, most of your responses have focused on discrediting my ideas. Not only is this strategy frustrating for others involved in the discussion (i.e. me), it prevents the discussion from moving forward by removing the focus from the things that are actually true.
Demonstrating why my ideas are bad has its place in the discussion. But it should eventually lead into you telling me why your ideas are good. I'm not going to understand the situation by eliminating all possible bad ideas I might have about it.
So, I think the most productive way to proceed forward is to reduce our focus on discrediting the large set of things that are not true, and try to get our focus on figuring out the relatively small number of things that ARE true. We'll save all kinds of time that way. :P
At this point, I think you believe that while prorogation is not inherently unusual, this particular one was different from the rest. So, the thing you need to make clear is the smallest, easiest to verify, set of things that make this prorogation different. This set of things that you specify would be a fine definition of what is meant by 'different' or 'outside of the boundaries' for this discussion.
Then, I will know what you mean by 'out of the ordinary' and if there are EVEN MORE things different about it we can build up from there.
I would be satisfied with a document that verifies that this prorogation is the first (or one of a small few) that was not voted on. I would be more than satisfied with that definition of 'different'.
-Dan
Some stuff
Reading back and considering the thread, I can see reason for your frustration; I can see how it would look like I've been dodging the presentation of information. I suppose it is because I was not convinced that we were talking about the same thing yet, but that's not a very good reason.
There's a lot of seemingly irrelevant things to sift through when trying to find information on prorogation. Most information I am finding is not capable of explicitly answering the question of normalcy of this particular prorogation (it's very recent afterall - perhaps in a year some articles will be out detailing this). So you have to build a general idea of the sense of previous prorogations. Consider some of the following links, and I'm reasonably satisfied you will find the information that has more or less formed the basis of opinion for those speaking out the loudest over this situation (ie, political scientists, policy wonks, and of course the Opposition).
Parliament's article outlining the function of prorogation:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/MarleauMontpetit/DocumentViewer.aspx?Sec=Ch08&Seq=7&Lang=E
The good bits in here are the Prorogation in Practice section, and particularly some of the footnote comments in that section. Many prorogations were really just formalities and conveniences. Also note the number of 1-day prorogations in the 40's, which more or less explains the spike in that decade seen on one of your graphs. They were mostly 1-day prorogations of little consequence.
While the source is clearly biased, this is a pretty good summary of past prorogations:
http://www.liberal.ca/en/newsroom/media-releases/17265_just-the-facts-a-history-of-prorogation
A little bit of history here, but not terribly well referenced. Still, it is generally reflecting the same sentiment of other sources:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Prorogation:+a+powerful+tool+forged+by+history.-a0212034244
Here's a lengthy article by a guy who appears to have the same goal as we do here... to really get at some semblance of truth from the lay perspective.
http://www.counterweights.ca/2010/01/if-there-is-a-deepening-debate-about-%E2%80%9Cprorogation%E2%80%9D-and-democracy-in-canada-what-does-it-mean/
Part of the reason that it is hard to find a lot of really good information is actually because prorogation in the past just hasn't been very interesting. There are only a couple particular historical events (King-Byng, and also the Macdonald situation in 1873) that stand out because they are unusual. The vast majority of other prorogations were not controversial because they were just a part of the normal function of parliament. If the sitting government wanted to set a new agenda and have a throne speech, this could ONLY happen if parliament was first prorogued - which is why there's so many 1-day or less prorogations right after an adjournment.
But why did those few stand out? If you read up on the Macdonald 1873 prorogation, it is markedly similar to the latest prorogation of Harper's, just as the King-Byng affair was rather similar to Harper's first prorogation. Harper has a 100% record in repeating controversial prorogations. It took from 1867 to 2006 to have two unusual prorogations, and then from 2006 to 2010 to have two more.
Good links
I especially enjoyed reading the information from the last one.
On Motivations
Thanks a lot for the links. In particular, I found the last one useful because it basically covers everything you would want to know.
I certainly haven't seen any 'gotcha' moments while reading through these articles.
The author reviews prorogation and I think his conclusion about the situation is that there is nothing unusual about using prorogation, but that...
The problem, according to the author, is that Harper seems to be...
So, seeing the unusualness in this prorogation relies on us believing that Harper has different motivations than the motivations he claims to has.
Now, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was revealed somehow that Harper's motivations were different than what he claimed. Of course, sometimes people lie, and there were awkward situations that were delayed due to the prorogation, so the story holds together, but it takes more than just holding together for me to actually buy into it. Especially since there are several stories that he has told which also hold together and which don't seem nearly as sinister. It seems pretty reasonable to me that he may just want to go watch the Olympics and then come back without having to deal with Liberal over-representation (relative to representation in the House) on senate committees that vote down bills that were already passed in the House. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, and I can't necessarily tell you its not the real story.
Humans are very good at making up stories that are flexible enough to fit any imaginable data, and then assuming the story they made up is true. "Harper lies and is evil" is a pretty flexible story, and when you view any of his actions through that lens, you will find all kinds of evidence to confirm it. We have talked about this effect before, but I can't find the post.
So, we need to establish whether we can make a solid link between any stories about his motivations and reality. Are there reasons that his stated motivations can't be true? Even better, are there reasons why the more sinister story about his motivations must be true?
If we can't answer those questions, we are on a bit of a witch hunt.
I want to point out this great quotation that was used in the article. Whether or not Harper is a sinister leader, he's certainly not a very inspiring one:
-Dan
Data
Not so very long ago, you claimed this data "very clearly shows that ... such prorogations really are highly unusual in modern times." Is that withdrawn now?
comments on comments
Hopefully my last comment makes it clear why I have no need to withdraw those previous statements, as they were statements about the boundaries of normalcy. The data on the website most definitely supports the boundary of normalcy as I had previously defined it. The context provides multiple dimensions for comparison which are not available when binning the data based on a single parameter.
Fish
What you just did there is called a red herring. This is a government website run by pretty much impartial civil servants. Archivists and historians.
So yes, they wouldn't necessarily be trustworthy in the same sense that your bank balance history at the ATM is not necessarily trustworthy, or that you might not trust a social studies text book that WWI happened. Strictly speaking, it is good to not completely trust anything. But practically speaking? The reasons for parliamentary events are broadly discussed in a variety of political venues. It doesn't take a lot of work to corroborate any claims that might be made by the hard-working folks at our public archives even if you do feel they aren't to be trusted.
Come on, this is a distraction designed to support the opinion you are presently espousing.
This session
If the reason for the prorogation of this session were recorded, the record would show that parliament was prorogued so that the MPs would have a chance to discuss economics with the public.
It would take a great deal of effort and perhaps a number of logical leaps and conspiracy theorizing to really tell if there were controversy surrounding any of the other session endings. It is much easier to measure the amount of money in a bank account than it is to measure the uniqueness of a session ending.
It is in that sense that I claim a short note describing the context would not be trustworthy. But having an expert in the contexts of a variety of prorogations to talk to would be very useful. Unfortunately, you have me at a disadvantage because you have one and I don't. Would he post here?
I'm also not espousing anything. I'm frustrated by a lack of information. I'm certainly not convinced of anything in particular. The graphs merely changed my opinion from believing something highly unusual had happened, to no longer being convinced that something unusual had happened. I'm not espousing that things are perfectly normal and we shouldn't look into it any further, if that's what you are suggesting. I'm showing some evidence that seems to suggest that things were not so abnormal. The analysis contains a number of assumptions, and I'm not familiar with parliamentry procedure to be steadfastly committed to any particular position.
If the prorogations are normally voted on and this one was not, that is very useful to know. Thanks for pointing that out.
-Dan
explanations
Well actually, the reason was recorded. Stephen Harper told CBC News that he was proroguing parliament for the Olympics. Nobody believed him because of the suspicious timing of it, which allowed him to appoint senators without contention.
a little follow up
Motion to limit PM's prorogation power passes
The title is far more impressive than the details, FYI
agreed
Yep. Nothing like a strongly worded motion that doesn't actually do anything.