The government on strike?

I heard that Stephen Harper has decided to prorogue parliament. Many things came to mind: what does prorogued mean to start with?

Prorogued: to postpone or discontinue with a specific reference to parliament.

The fact that there is even a term to make sense of this bizarre situation seems really strange to me. How can a leader just shrug off all of Canada's issues? It seems to me he is just saying: 'Hey! I'll deal with it later. Come back when the war in Afghanistan and the recession is over and the climate is healthy again.'

An article in the Globe and Mail, 'Thousands protest prorogued parliament,' described a protest in which a young child accompanying his mother wore a sign asking if could prorogue cleaning his room. Another scene described protesters in black marching a coffin with a poster of parliament inside saying "democracy is dead."

What does this mean for us?

And because there is a facebook group for everything here is Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament. So far it has 200,000+ member but the Canadians Against 'Canadians Proroguing Parliament' only has 43 members. If social media really is the future, the country has spoken.