Transcript: Christine Van Geyn

My interview with the litigation director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation

This week on the Lean Out podcast, we continue our coverage of a chaotic time in Canadian politics. As many of you know, in the wake of Justin Trudeau’s resignation, the Prime Minister asked our Governor General to prorogue Parliament until March 24, as the Liberal Party conducts its leadership race. This move has sparked a legal challenge, and over the weekend a judge agreed to expediate the court’s hearing. My guest on the program this week is a Canadian lawyer and bestselling author who has insights to share on this issue.

Christine Van Geyn is litigation director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and the host of the TV show, Canadian Justice.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview for free here.

This episode mentions the WE Charity scandal. You can read background on that here.

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TH: It's wonderful to have you on the program. We had your colleague, Joanna Baron on the show, when you two published your book about the Covid era, Pandemic Panic. So, it's nice to have you on now. I wanted to speak with you today about prorogation. We are seeing some legal challenges, which we'll get into in a moment. But first, as our listeners will know, when Justin Trudeau stepped down as leader of the Liberal Party and announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister, once a new leader was in place, he also prorogued Parliament. The reasoning given was to reset Parliament in an age of polarization and to give his party the time to hold a leadership race. So, for listeners who are not aware, or may be outside of this country, walk us through what prorogation of Parliament is — and how it works.

CVG: It's very simple, actually. It's a crown prerogative. It breaks up sessions of Parliament. So, Parliament sits for a set amount of time — for four years — and prorogation can be used to break up those sessions. Very simply put: Once Parliament is prorogued, that session of Parliament ends. There is a break of a certain number of weeks or months and then a new session resumes and the bills that were working their way through the previous Parliament start afresh. There are some procedural things that can be done to bring them back, but that's very simply what it is. It is not a new thing. We saw a prorogation in 2020 during the WE scandal. There was a prorogation in 2010 in the Harper government, during the Afghan detainee scandal. There was a prorogation, perhaps most famously, in 2008/2009. We can talk about all of these different prorogations. It's not something that is necessarily a nefarious thing. It's just a Crown prerogative to end a session of Parliament.

TH: The way that it works is the prime minister goes to the governor general, who is a representative of the King, and asks for Parliament to be prorogued. As you mentioned, there is a lot of history on this. I think the one I want to focus on today is Stephen Harper's prorogation in 2008/2009. A lot of people are saying this set the precedent for this particular case, and made it harder for the governor general to make a different decision. Is that a fair analysis of what's going on?