Disclaimer: I have no particular affinity for any one political party over another. Frankly, I find Canadian politics somewhat boring. When’s the last time we had a Prime Minister caught in an affair with an intern?

So, I was driving on my way to a student the other morning. After having listened to Miley Cyrus play for the 3rd time in a span of what was probably about 23 minutes, I noticed the radio station abruptly switched to an ominous piece of background music. This was going to be serious.

“Cover up. A description far more familiar to other countries. Until now. When questions arose about what he and his government knew about torture in Afghanistan, Stephen Harper shut down parliament. Why doesn’t he want to face parliament? What is he covering up? What does Stephen Harper know that he doesn’t want other Canadians to know? For more, go to Liberal.ca.”

http://www.liberal.ca/en/newsroom/liberal-tv/fyU_Y52ro_c~cover-up

You can probably imagine what my first reaction to this happened to be:

“Who’s Stephen Harper, and why is he interrupting precious radio airtime that could otherwise be productively used for playing songs about partying in the USA?”

Once I got past my irritation with the radio station’s misplaced priorities however,  I naturally got to thinking about the questionable reasoning employed here. Because that’s what us LSAT folks enjoy doing.

Now, the conclusion that the advertisement is heavily implying here is that Stephen Harper shut down parliament in order to cover up involvement in, or knowledge of, torture in Afghanistan. On the basis of what?  The apparent fact that the shutdown was timed with when questions began to arise regarding the matter. But, we know better than that, don’t we?

The only real pieces of evidence the argument established here are that there was a particular correlation between two events (questions arising, and Stephen shutting parliament down), and that the former event could arguably cause the latter. This is essentially the most basic of causal flaws. A correlation between two things does not mean causation. There could be any number of reasons that Stephen decided to shut down parliament — the fact that this happened to coincide in terms of timing provides pretty shaky grounding for such a strong implication.

Perhaps he was trying to cover up an affair with an intern?

– Yoni