Proroguing parliament to avoid facing a non-confidence vote (2008)

On December 4, 2008, the Governor General of Canada prorogued the 40th session of Parliament at Stephen Harper's request -- just six weeks after a general election.

Prorogation is normally reserved for times when the government has completed most of the work on its agenda and needs to pause briefly and bring in a new agenda when Parliament resumes. At the time that Mr. Harper requested this prorogation, Parliament had just begun its new session. Mr. Harper had presented a fiscal update to the House of Commons, and, given recent news of a potential global economic crisis, the opposition parties found several of its provisions unacceptable.

The Liberals and the New Democrats, with support from the Bloc Québécois, announced their intention to bring down the Conservative government in a vote of non-confidence, and to form a coalition government. Harper prorogued parliament to prevent this from happening.

Stephen Harper shut down Parliament to evade a vote against his government by the majority of the people's elected representatives. This is in direct contravention of the principle of our parliamentary democracy that the government must always be prepared to face the House and to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons.

Here's what Rick Mercer said in the Globe and Mail at the time:

"[Mr. Harper] took to the airwaves saying that having him lose a vote would amount to a coup d'état. He knows this isn't true, but he said it anyway. Then his ministers fanned out and told everyone who would listen that an election was being stolen. They shouted from the rooftops that, as a nation, we elected Stephen Harper to lead us, that the 308 members of Parliament actually had no say in the matter."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/article726205.ece

Incidentally, Mr. Harper hasn't always thought coalitions were bad:

A trip down minority government memory lane, Kady O’Malley, macleans.ca

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