Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Heard, for being here today as well.
I read your article dated December 2008. In the middle of that article you make the statement that “...the advice to prorogue parliament is arguably quite unconstitutional”. Yet at the beginning of the article, you point out, “The Governor General has reached a very difficult and historic decision...”, and you go on to point out, “A difficult decision implies that there are good reasons to decide in either direction...”. You say that “...the Governor General has a duty to intervene in the political process as little as possible.”
Your second point reads as follows: ...the governor general is bound to normally act on any constitutional advice offered by a prime minister who commands the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons. Since the Conservative government won the confidence votes held on the speech from the throne in the last week of November, Mr. Harper could apparently address the governor general with authority.
In my opinion, those two thoughts from the middle of your article and the ones at the beginning are somewhat at opposite ends of the spectrum. This confirms what we've observed in the last number of weeks as we've tried to study this issue. We hear a wide variety of opinions from different experts from all across the country.
My question is this. If you were writing this article today, are there any positions that would be modified in light of what's happened since that prorogation? Or would it be 99% the same as what you wrote in 2008? I don't know if you get the gist of my question. It's a long question.