Prorogue????

Harper prorogued parliament. When I think about it I'm not surprised. He wants to start his government fresh and is willing to risk an election that he thinks he'd win anyway by having a new Throne Speech. I'm not sure how much emphasis on the environment this throne speech will have. The government says its Clean Air Act won’t be one of the killed pieces of legislation to be resurrected. However, the numerous justice bills that reached the Senate shortly before summer and thus could not be passed will be resurrected at the stage at which they were previously. I don’t know how this works. I can only assume that they have to renumber the bills the match the new parliamentary session. Apparently private members bills don’t die when parliament is prorogued. I was under the impression that ALL bills died, including private members bills. It must be different somehow at the federal level. Recently, I saw some articles referring to a private member’s bill to implement the Kyoto Protocol. These articles said that this was a private member’s bill and thus it would not die when parliament is prorogued. But that bill has already received Royal Assent, so not only does the bill not die, it is already law! I’m not sure where the misconception that this bill had not yet received Royal Assent came from. One of the articles I read said that there is a group (I forget what it was called) that is thrilled parliament was prorogued because doing so temporarily kills the age of consent bill. This group opposes this bill. One argument they make is that teenagers under the age of consent are less likely to speak out and seek health information regarding sexual relationships. Maybe that is true in many U.S. States, with their mishmash of age of consent laws. However, I’m hoping it would be different in Canada because 14 year olds under the new law are not prohibited from having sex. Having sex with someone as much as four years older than them is still legal. So as long as their sexual partner is of the right age there should be no disincentive to seek health information. If however, the partner is more than 4 years older than the 14 year old, then there may be a case of not seeking information in hopes of not being caught. This leads to the group’s other argument against the bill, it limits sexual freedom for young teenagers. Now this is true to a certain extent. The maximum limit of 4 years may have been too few. Any attempts by the Senate to change this, however, will be swiftly rejected by the government as the government is want to do. At least if this Bill is resurrected, it can also receive a fair examination in the Senate before being passed.

I have a bit of political humour. The NDP candidate in my riding of Markham—Unionville for the upcoming provincial election is Andy Arifin. But currently on the NDP website, I can get information on him only in French! Clearly that part of their site is a work in progress. Here is the humourous translation of Arifin’s blurb into English using the Google translator:

Andy Arifin is enthusiastic with the idea to insufflate a new energy with the Ontarian policy. Inspired by the optimistic vision of Howard Hampton of the future of Ontario, it is happy to represent the district of Markham-Unionville in the name of the team of the New democratic Party.Andy always lived in Markham. While it finishes a baccalaureat specialized in political sciences at the York University, it finds time to militate actively.As a student, Andy saw closely how the badly advised policies of Dalton McGuinty as regards education postsecondaire push a number growing of students to be involved in debt always more. Following the deregulation of the expenses of the professional training schemes, a measurement of the McGuinty government, certain students cannot consider higher education any more or to continue their program of studies.Andy impatiently waits the moment to represent the families of workers as new deputy of the district of Markham Unionville in Queen' S Park.

“New deputy” means new MPP. If Arifin wants to be the new MPP for Markham—Unionville, he has his work cut out for him. After all, I think that if the NDP were to win 106/107 seats in the province, Markham—Unionville would be the one seat that didn’t go NDP.