[LINK] "The throbbing heart of democracy beats loudly"

[rfmcdonald]

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald's Stephen Maher is one of many commentators to report on the very good news that Canada's speaker of Parliament, Peter Milliken, has forced the Harper government to release documents regarding the possible torture of Afghan detainees to MPs. Thus, Canada's trend to centralize government in the executive has been at least slowed down.

By tradition, in Canada, when a Speaker is elected and first takes his throne, the prime minister and the opposition leader drag him to the throne while he pretends to struggle, a reminder that kings used to behead Speakers.

On Tuesday, Speaker Peter Milliken, like Lenthall before him, asserted the power of Parliament in the face of the power of the Crown, embodied by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Milliken ruled that the House, having voted, has the right to demand that MPs be allowed to look at secret documents relating to the treatment of Afghan detainees, although Harper and his ministers have refused to show them.

It is an assertion of the ancient privileges of Parliament, won at the cost of many heads.

"In a system of responsible government, the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for its actions is an indisputable privilege, and in fact an obligation," Milliken said.

"Embedded in our Constitution, parliamentary law and even our standing orders, it is the source of our parliamentary system from which other processes and principles necessarily flow."

The particulars of this showdown do not matter as much as the principle that was reasserted against the efforts of the Crown.

Opposition MPs had asked the government to compromise, to establish a security system so they could look at the information.

The government refused, citing national security, and hired retired Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci to decide which documents to release.

Milliken said, though, that this reasonable-sounding measure is flawed, because Iacobucci’s master would be the government, not Parliament.