LLC proceeds while Parliament postpones

Posted by admin on Jan 19, 2010 in News | 1 comment

The Laurentian Leadership Centre was set to begin its spring semester on Monday, Jan. 4. However, on December 30, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Governor General Michaelle Jean to prorogue parliament until March.

Prorogation is a parliamentary tactic that ends the legislative session without leading to an election. Parliamentary committees are dissolved, their work is shelved, and all government bills that are still in process die.

For the 18 Trinity Western University students taking part in the LLC this term, it means that parliament will not be sitting for the first two months they are in Ottawa. For students whose placements are with NGOs or government agencies, little has changed.

For students placed with MPs who are also members of Cabinet, there remains a great deal to do. “Ministers offices are continuing full speed ahead,” said Melody Holmes, a fourth-year linguistics student working in the office of Jason Kenney, the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration and MP for Calgary Southeast.

For Dr. Janet Buckingham, director of the LLC, the first question when parliament was prorogued was whether internship supervisors would be able to provide students with enough work. “All of them were,” she said, “but some supervisors struggled to find enough work.”

This is especially the case for placements with opposition and backbench MPs. “I’ll be doing a lot more office stuff,” observed Danny Coburn, a third-year political studies major, interning with Siobhán Coady (Liberal), MP for Newfoundland’s St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

Because parliament was prorogued both during the holidays, and a matter of days before the LLC term was set to begin, some students were seriously concerned about how they would be affected. Only two of 18 internship placements have had to be changed as a result of parliament being prorogued.

“Students are getting a period of time to understand parliamentary process, without getting the hectic pace that comes with it,” said Buckingham.

Buckingham described the advantage of this period of adjustment: “instead of going one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, [for now] they’re going seventy.”

While parliament has been postponed, the LLC proceeds– albeit a little more slowly.