With 1.6 million Canadians still out of work, Stephen Harper has decided that Members of Parliament shouldn’t work either.

While it’s clear that Conservatives don’t think MPs should be doing their jobs in Ottawa, what they still haven’t explained is why. Since Harper’s announcement in December, Conservatives have offered over half a dozen outlandish excuses for shutting down the House of Commons for the next five weeks.

As a public service, New Democrats offer Stephen Harper’s excuse of the day for padlocking parliament.

The “Just wait till the markets have a chance to get used to this democracy-thing” excuse …

"As soon as parliament comes back, we're in a minority Parliament situation and the first thing that happens is a vote of confidence and there will be votes of confidence and election speculation for every single week after that for the rest of the year … That's the kind of instability I think that markets are actually worried about.” – Stephen Harper, Vancouver Sun, 11 January 2010

That’s how the Harper Conservatives think they should be able to run Canada: without having to provide a good answer for anything they do.