Rally Letter to the Editor - alas!

I was reading the Tuesday edition of the Era-Banner this morning and enjoying their excellent coverage of the pro-democracy rally on Saturday when I started to notice some interesting facts being tossed about on page 10. 'Facts' about session lengths and prorogue frequencies. Stuff like that.

Disagreeing with the numbers, I sat down and wrote a very nice Letter to the Editor setting out my version of the facts.

Unfortunately, I received a note from the Editor, Ted McFadden, that it is their policy to *not* publish letters from political party candidates.

Since I'm the new Green candidate I have no voice - even though I believe my letter was fairly non-partisan.

So there you have it. And now you'll have my letter, because I'm posting it here. Gotta love the Net.

Dear Editor,

Thank you for the excellent coverage of the pro-democracy rally this past weekend in Newmarket. It was very exciting to be part of the event and an honour to be one of the speakers. John Taylor made what I think is a very important point: that the loss of democracy is always preceded by seemingly minor or technical incursions and silence on the part of the people. So it was with great pride that I joined the other demonstrators.

Contrary to Ms. Brown's statement, I do not think it was the appropriate time to end the session. There were 37 pieces of the government's own legislation still in consideration that were killed and their mandate had in no way been fulfilled.

I was a little surprised by what I perceived as inaccurate statements in your article regarding the last session of Parliament and proroguing in general. The last session was only 128 days, not 228, this can easily be confirmed by examining the parliamentary calendar for 2009. As well, the average is not 2 prorogues per year - there have only been 105 prorogues since Confederation. Finally, the average number of sitting days in a session since 1982 when the parliamentary calendar was introduced has been 183, not 128.

If the Conservative government could come up with a viable reason to prorogue Parliament, there would not be an issue, but the cynicism and arrogance with which our current Prime Minister has called not one, but two, prorogues in an attempt to avoid scrutiny is an affront that the people of Canada are not prepared to accept. Thank goodness and thank you again for your coverage.

Sincerely,
Vanessa Long
Newmarket-Aurora Green Candidate

(Here are the sources I used to get my information: You can count the sitting days here: Parliamentary Calendar and the Liberals have an interesting article on session length and the history of prorogation.