Departing Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty has asked the Lieutenant Governor to prorogue the provincial legislature. A justified gambit given a leaderless minority government, or an act of political cynicism? MPM graduand Nicholas MacDonald weighs in on the debate in the pages of today’s Ottawa Citizen. In an op-ed article co-authored with University of Ottawa M.A. candidate James W.J. Bowden, he argues that the prorogation may only have the effect of delaying the inevitable opposition attacks on the Liberal government’s most recent performance — just as an 1873 prorogation failed to save the government of John A. Macdonald from the Pacific scandal — but that it is nonetheless a perfectly legitimate tool at the disposal of the first minister.
Nicholas MacDonald and James W.J. Bowden are also the authors of “No Discretion: On Prorogation and the Governor General,” which appeared in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2011. Nicholas is now studying Law at the University of Ottawa.