—I will temporarily, and for the purposes of this discussion, accept his premise and say that even if Stephen Harper were no angel, he nevertheless respected the practice that we don't change the Standing Orders without widespread consent.
Looking back further, we had another angel in human form, Jean Chrétien, in office, and he, too, respected this practice. But this government has been different. We've seen this twice with the Standing Orders, this time, and with motion number six, a year ago. Both times the government said, “We're going to change these without consent. We don't care. We don't care about what the practice was in the past, or alternatively, we are not aware of what the practice was in the past.” I'm not sure which of the two it is.
I say “the government”. I do not mean to suggest that there aren't people in the government who are aware. There are some very smart procedural people in the government. But the government acted on the whole as a single corporate individual, and is either unaware or uncaring about the way in which these things have worked, in the same way that its proposals on electoral reform turned out to be a matter of, “Well, if we don't get what want, we won't move forward. If we do get what we want, we can move forward, but not otherwise.” These are departures from practice in the past, where the governments had been more reticent, more cautious.
I would argue, looking at the Prime Minister, that the changes he's made to the Liberal Party constitution.... Although in that case he was working with a willing audience, one that was willing to accept his changes, they also moved in the same direction of wanting to get rid of the intermediating institutions and rules that permit others to slow down the government's implementation of what it wishes to do, which, to be clear, always means pushing aside other individuals. Ultimately, it is the individuals who exercise powers under the rules that exist at that point in time. Ultimately, he's trying to concentrate power in his own hands.
I do not believe this is because he wants to be our dictator, but I do think he has a vision of his role that is profoundly at odds with the political culture that has been deeply internalized by most of his recent predecessors, and I suspect most of his more distant predecessors in this office. It's the idea that you are inheriting a mantle of office in a great system, a great machine, that is, from a political point of view, greater than you, the individual; and you serve it and make it better.