I have chronicled several examples of scholarly inconsistency between how some academics cover and write about Harper versus Trudeau, The four most notable examples come down to the following: tactical prorogation, contempt of parliament, the caretaker convention and the appointment of Supreme Court Justices just before the writ, and, finally, on calling snap elections when the House of Commons has not first withdrawn its confidence from the government. I documented last year how the same scholars who launched incessant vituperations over Harper’s tactical prorogations in 2008 and 2009 remained silent or became far more measured and reasonable in response to Trudeau’s tactical prorogation in 2020. Some of the disparity in the coverage of Trudeau’s prorogation versus Harper’s and the House of Commons declaring the Trudeau government in contempt of parliament in 2021 versus the House of Commons declaring the Harper government in contempt of parliament in 2011 undoubtedly does stem from our collective fatigue over the pandemic. I myself have largely tuned out of much of the news, and I quit Twitter around 12 months ago. This calculus might even factor into some of the coverage of the upcoming early election in 2021 versus that of 2008. However, this factor most certainly does not apply to the control group in our sample: the hyperventilating over the Caretaker Convention and the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court in 2015 versus in 2019 occurred half a year before the pandemic disrupted all our lives.
With an early dissolution and general election bearing down on us in 2021, I find revisiting the similar early election of 2008 and comparing the press coverage then and now instructive and intriguing. Here I will use one particular and overt about-face as an example to illustrate the perils when partisan or ideological thinking replaces a neutral and reasonable examination of the facts, in the form of Errol Mendes, Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa.
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