But then – far more belittlingly – by our own Government when Prime Minister Stephen Harper single-handedly shut down Parliament on 30 December through a process known as proroguing. Ministers were to resume parliamentary proceedings on 25 January – now they will have to wait until 3 March.

The almost indisputable reason (certainly as speculated by every single newspaper in the country): because the Government wishes to evade allegations by Canadian diplomats of a cover-up of collusion in the torture of Afghan detainees. A topic the Government has been avoiding since November – and certainly not one they want tainting Canada’s international brand image while Vancouver plays host to the Olympics in February.

Proroguing, a constitutional measure that suspends proceedings in the House of Commons (and scuttles all bills under consideration), can be done at the whim of the Prime Minister without being put to a vote by the House (or even his own party). All that is required is that he kindly ask the Governor General for permission – and in this case, he did not even do so in person, phoning in the request instead.

And all this when the Conservative Party of Canada holds a minority government, and by a man elected by only 34 per cent of Canadians voters.

This strange artifact of the Canadian constitutional system has been wielded many times in the past, usually when all pending legislation has been dealt with and the Government has little to do. Harper claims to have prorogued Parliament in order to “focus on the economy” and thus described his motion as a “fairly standard procedure”. But absolutely nobody is convinced, from all the opposition political parties, to academic theorists across the country, to every single news outlet (including the right-wing press that has traditionally supported him).

The fact that the prorogue was announced the day before New Years Eve, while even the most media-attentive Canadians were taking a rest, and on the same day as the men’s Olympic hockey team squad was announced, has not gone unnoticed. Green Party leader Elizabeth May described it as a “mastery in political calculation”. The Globe and Mail has labelled this “an insult to Parliament”. The Economist calls it “little more than naked self interest”. Even the Calgary Herald – traditionally Harper’s most staunch supporter (and the site of his own riding) – calls it a “cynical political play”.

To add insult to injury, this is the second time PM Harper has prorogued parliament in just over a year – the last time was in October 2008, when opposition parties were set to hold a vote of no confidence, likely forcing a new election and possibly the defeat of the Conservatives.

Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff criticizes “the arrogance of a regime that thinks it can get away with just about anything”. The Conservatives, curiously, make no mention of the prorogue on their own website – but do “highlight Canada’s upcoming leadership of major international events in 2010, including the Olympic and Paralympic Games as well as the G-8 and G-20 Summits … we plan to use these two summits to continue playing a leadership role on issues of importance to Canadians”.

In Harper’s view, clearly, the Olympics are important to Canadians. And torture is not.

“This is a slimy, dishonest way to avoid criticism on such an important issue – it’s also a waste of our taxpayer money and our legislative time,” says Justin Arjoon, a Toronto university student who is co-organizing a rally to be held on the 23 January to demand that MPs return to work on 25 January. Other demonstrations will be held across the country, largely orchestrated through a Facebook group – now with more than 150,000 members.

“This makes me embarrassed – almost slightly ashamed to be Canadian,” says Arlene Decker, a Canadian living in London, England, who is trying to organize a rally on the same day for Canadian ex-pats in Britain.

Especially embarrassing, she says, after Canada was labelled the “Colossal Fossil” and cleverly pranked by the Yes Men in Copenhagen last month for coming to the negotiations with the weakest emission reduction plan of any nation.

“By any measure the performance of our federal government compared with other governments was miserable,”says Rick Smith, Executive Director of the Environmental Defence in Canada, who “felt schizophrenic” in Copenhagen.

Despite the failings of the Harper Government, he says, “I was really proud of many of our provinces and cities,”such as the Province of Ontario for the Green Energy Act and the City of Montreal for its public transport plans, which the Environmental Defence recognized with a gala event on 16 December in the Danish city. “Our point was to highlight the tremendous progress being made at the municipal level in Canada – progress that is being undermined by a federal government that is intent on doing as little as possible.”

“There were over 300 protests in Canada during Copenhagen and leading up to it, including the high-profile sit-ins at Ministerial offices – this was the most impressive display I’ve seen in my 30 years as an activist,” adds John Bennet, executive director of the Sierra Club, who was also in Copenhagen and was also “disappointed in a federal government that is not expending one iota of political pressure on this issue”.

But despite that show of activism, Canadians are still led by a Prime Minister (remember, elected by barely a third of the population) who can represent them at international negotiations with globally denounced proposals – and then shut down Parliament at whim whenever challenged.

“The media says that Canadians don’t care about climate change, or about our democratic process, that we suffer from an ingrained apathy – but I don’t think that’s actually true,” says Arjoon, one of the organizers of the Toronto rally. “It’s time we really started shaking down that assumption.”

At the vast Bella centre where the talks were held, sleep-deprived, jargon-fatigued, confused, and frequently demoralized politicians and reporters slogged late into the morning hours to forge a piece of paper that from the start had been labelled both as humanity’s last chance to save itself and a political sham. Working so hard on something potentially so meaningless must have been a strange experience.

For me the most surreal, unforgettable moment came not when the accord was signed, but when it wasn’t. I didn’t learn something eye-opening about climate change or about global politics, but about the most powerful news organization in the world and their endorsement of the political equivalent of a napkin to the entire world.

Sitting at the internet-equipped press table at the alternate Klimaforum09, I was thrashing out a piece on the tar sands while a gypsy folk band played in the main hall and people danced and drank the last night of the fortnight away.

Grumpy, tired, and focusing on an issue that can easily leave you feeling overwhelmed and depressed, I tried to shut out the sounds of the party. Its very existence utterly baffled me: what is there to celebrate? The deal hasn’t been signed, and even if it had, it is highly unlikely to satisfy anyone serious about tackling climate change in a socially just way. The juxtaposition between the gloomy news threads reporting continual deadlock at the Bella, the devastating images of the tar sands on my computer screen, and the uproarious music and cheers from downstairs was truly surreal.

My gloom was broken suddenly by shouting and cheers from a group of American members of NGOs sitting next to me: “There it is, there it is!”

“There’s what?”

“The deal – they signed the deal. This is fantastic, just fantastic Check out the New York Times.”

There it was, a New York Times piece: “President Obama announced here on Friday night that five major nations, including the United States, had together forged a climate deal.”

It seemed utterly improbable. How could something have been signed this early? Sceptical, I checked the news sites of several other main news organizations. Nothing. No pieces criticizing the “deal”, examining it – or even reporting its existence.

“It’s not perfect, but he did it, Obama broke the deadlock,” said one of the Americans, smiling broadly, and cheerfully scrolling through the piece. “We did it! This is so much better than I had hoped for. Just shows what perseverance can come to.” Two others high-fived.

As the deal was not the concern of the article I needed to finish, I decided to focus on my own work; I skimmed the piece, but kept several other mainstream news sites open and waited for their coverage. Curiously, nothing appeared on any of the websites I trust – most notably The Guardian’s – by the time I shut off my computer several hours later.

Published the next day, The Guardian’s first piece on the accord makes for an interesting comparison: “Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure” reads the headline.

Describing the “deal” that prompted such elation in my American neighbours the previous evening, The Guardian notes that the “weak outline of a global agreement” was only signed by five countries, would continue to be scrutinized and debated through the night, and “it was unclear whether it would be adopted by all 192 countries in the full plenary session.”

The final piece describing the accord in The Guardian – published a day later after more details (meagre as they were) had been worked out and more countries (few as there were) had signed – is headlined: “Copenhagen closes with weak deal that poor threaten to reject.”

The first sentence – the most important sentence in any piece, and the only one that very many readers will bother to read – from the main article in the Times of London, is markedly unoptimistic in comparison to the New York Times: “The United Nations climate change summit ended last night without setting any emission reduction targets.”

So what had happened? Why the publication in the New York Times so many hours before any other major news outlet – and why the optimism?

In short: negotiations were deadlocked. Obama came to the conference on the last day and selected four key countries – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa – for a conference. They agreed to a preliminary accord that featured no emission reduction targets, no specific details on finance, but merely a simple recognition of the fact that global temperature rise needs to be kept to 2C.

This “deal” was the political equivalent of a napkin. The napkin would then need to be debated, negotiated and signed by 190 other nations, and could change throughout.

Obama’s media team then held a press conference about this napkin, which the New York Times quickly noted would still be subject to scrutiny by the rest of the UN, but “might not need ratification by the entire conference.”

Analyses of the final “Copenhagen Accord” in The Guardian, the New York Times, and elsewhere all note that the treaty is non-legally binding, sets no specific emission reduction targets or timelines, is shady at best on financial details of transfer of technology and funds to developing countries, and dropped many of the most important clauses necessary to avoid “runaway” climate change, such as an 80 per cent overall drop in emissions by 2050. There is little reason to describe the conference and its conclusions as a success, and a thorough diary and analysis of COP15 in this publication as “appalling – not worth the paper it was hastily photocopied on.”

What I found fascinating from my last night in Copenhagen was not the length of the talks, nor the “weak” and “unfair” nature of the “accord.” It was that the most powerful and influential news organization in the world, in the race to be the first past the gate to publish (an unfortunate by-product of the transition to online publishing), reported on a napkin deemed by others to be too premature to be worth reporting.

And that they did so based first and foremost on a press conference held by the White House, rather than waiting to see how the rest of the world would respond.

And that this article – by the most powerful news organization in the world – conveyed an overriding sense of achievement, optimism, and American leadership. A typical reader, without the time or desire to read through an entire piece, could easily come away with the general impression that the deal was signed, that America had brokered it, and that it had been a success.

Granted, those sitting near me – and around the world, reading the most powerful news organization in the world – who were most excited by the initial accord may have waned in their enthusiasm over the coming days as the analyses showed the weakness of this document. But only those interested in taking the time to read through the sticky, mathematical and legal details.

But the fast and Whitehouse-friendly publication is interesting indeed. And it reminds me of other fast and Whitehouse-friendly publications: the premature assertion of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I’m definitely not an a fan or advocate of conspiracy theories – I’m definitely not implying deliberate collusion or an attempt at confusion.

But I do find this interesting.