{"id":1091,"date":"2012-10-18T12:06:06","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T16:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/?p=1091"},"modified":"2026-04-13T16:08:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:08:18","slug":"prorogation-legitimate-tool-or-abuse-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/2012\/prorogation-legitimate-tool-or-abuse-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Prorogation: legitimate tool or abuse of power?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        Prorogation: legitimate tool or abuse of power?\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<p>Departing Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty has&nbsp;asked the Lieutenant Governor to prorogue&nbsp;the provincial legislature.&nbsp; A justified&nbsp;gambit given a leaderless minority government, or an act of political cynicism?&nbsp; MPM graduand Nicholas MacDonald weighs in on the debate in the pages of today&#8217;s Ottawa Citizen.&nbsp; 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&#8217;s most recent performance &#8212; just as an 1873 prorogation failed to save the government of John A. Macdonald from the Pacific scandal &#8212; but that it is nonetheless a perfectly legitimate tool at the disposal of the first minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nicholas MacDonald and James W.J. Bowden are also the authors of &#8220;No Discretion: On Prorogation and the Governor General,&#8221; which appeared in the <em>Canadian Parliamentary Review, <\/em>Vol. 34, No. 1, 2011.&nbsp; Nicholas is now studying Law at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Departing Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty has&nbsp;asked the Lieutenant Governor to prorogue&nbsp;the provincial legislature.&nbsp; A justified&nbsp;gambit given a leaderless minority government, or an act of political cynicism?&nbsp; MPM graduand Nicholas MacDonald weighs in on the debate in the pages of today&#8217;s Ottawa Citizen.&nbsp; In an op-ed article co-authored with University of Ottawa M.A. candidate James W.J. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1557,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions\/1557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}