So Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament - again.
He's done it before. In December 2008, faced with all three Opposition parties united against him threatening a coalition government, Harper "shut the doors" of the House get out of the jam.
Proroguing officially ends a session of Parliament - it's like hitting a governmental "reset" button. It lets the Prime Minister introduce a new direction, change committee members, and "start over."
Last time, the Conservatives returned a few weeks later after the coalition had self-destructed, to present a new budget featuring stimulus spending and a new-look, almost "liberal" attitude to boosting the economy.
This time, they'll come back in March with a new budget that most people will hardly notice in the post-Olympic glow, when the Afghan detainee "scandal" is mostly forgotten, and with a Senate stacked with Conservatives who will unquestioningly support government legislation.
It's a great strategy, and probably good political maneuvering - and after all, that's what running the country is really all about.
Should you even care?
Not many people will. There are much more important things than political machinations - Christmas, paying for Christmas, Canada's performance in the junior hockey championships, how much ice time Sydney Crosby will get at the Olympics.
In fact, that's what the Conservatives are counting on.
They dodged and weaved their way out of a crisis a year ago, and they're doing the same now.
They've managed to obscure the Afghan detainee issue with theatrics and backfilling, changing their message almost daily, and accusing people asking legitimate questions about the government with attacking the troops. Now, if all goes according to plan, without daily committee reports, Question Period, and Opposition bluster, it's all going to go away. Another bullet dodged.
By the time March comes around and the government gets back to doing its public work, Canada will (with any luck) have won lots of medals at the Olympics, the economy will be recovering nicely, the Liberals won't be any more inclined to court disaster in an election, and the Afghan detainee issue can be dismissed as muck-raking old news that's been long settled.
But the real issue isn't settled.
Coupled with recent government actions that include shutting down commissions and not reappointing watchdogs, the government is moving its supposedly "open and accountable" procedure further and further from public scrutiny.
It's become especially clear lately that the Conservatives' pledges to do things differently, to be transparent, to put an end to Liberal-style patronage and behind-the-scenes manipulations were only so much hot air designed to help get the party into power.
It's becoming more clear that people and groups who objectively critique government actions - especially if they find fault with what the government is doing - are not going to be tolerated. Apart from the usual negative harping by the opposition, we're going to get nothing other than the government's own rosy platitudes about its own performance.
So the government can say calls for a public enquiry over who knew what about Afghan prisoner transfers are just so much opposition hot air, and apart from a few political analysts relatively few people listen to, there won't be anyone around to hold them to account.
That's a dangerous course. As government becomes more secretive and its message becomes more controlled, it's harder and harder to get to the truth about what's going on. That takes politics even further into the realm of slogan-waving propaganda, away from informed debate.
