We should be cheering for our athletes in Vancouver, but we shouldn't forget about the looming crisis in Stephen Harper's Ottawa.

I must confess that I have got caught up in the Olympic spirit. It came when I bought my family Olympic apparel at the airport so that we could cheer on my husband as he carried the torch in Sechelt, B.C. If you live in Vancouver you’ll know how easy it is to be swept away by the Olympic tidal wave that has engulfed this city. From the myriad artists showing their works in make-shift galleries on Cordova Street, to the floor that makes electricity when you dance on it, to the bands playing at LiveCity Yaletown – wherever you look, there is something free and interesting to enjoy.

But despite all of these distractions, I haven’t been so swept away that I’ve forgotten that our Parliament is closed – prorogued by Stephen Harper until March 3. I know that our Prime Minister had hoped that all of this Olympic mayhem would distract us from the fact that he prorogued Parliament, but it didn’t.

I’m sure many Canadians were unfamiliar with the term "proroguing Parliament" until recently. Some probably thought, “who cares if MPs don’t go back to work until March, they don’t do anything anyway.” It is so easy to take our democracy for granted when our lives are so good. When I was 18, in Bolivia, I had my first crash course in life without democracy. On at least two occasions I had a gun pointed at my head, and my passport confiscated, for no particular reason. In those days, 12-year-old Bolivians walked around with machine guns.

Following Bolivia came Ecuador, where I saw the police being paid to haul striking road workers away – workers who hadn’t been paid for months and could no longer feed their families.

Studying in Cuba was like visiting a golden cage – a country where your basic needs were met, as long as you towed the party line and went where the central government told you to go.

In Sri Lanka, I watched friends go underground, moving from house to house when government officials publicly accused them as traitors. They were journalists and NGO leaders who advocated for peace, reconciliation, and the rule of law.

More recently in Afghanistan, female colleagues were harassed, beaten, and in two cases killed for trying to fairly and accurately report stories within their communities.

I could go on, but like many immigrants and refugees who have come to Canada from countries where democracy does not exist, I can’t take our democracy for granted. And after 25 years of working internationally, it’s easy to see the signs of a democracy in peril. Some of the early warning indicators are:

• •   Limits on the media and the erosion of free speech
• •   The development of policy without consultation
• •   The centralization of power
• •   Limits placed on the activities of public servants
• •   Quelling or squashing dissent

The early warning signs are often followed by serious infringements:

• •   The shutting down of non-state broadcast and print media
• •   Control and surveillance of internet server providers
• •   Limitations on the freedom of association
• •   Imprisonment of protesters
• •   Corruption of the police and the judicial system

It doesn’t take long for a healthy democracy to shift into an autocratic state, with a strong centralized power passing laws that are in the interest of a very narrow group of people, leaving the majority to accept the new reality or face persecution for speaking out against the abuses of power.

Thankfully, Canada is still a democracy and up until recently, I would have characterized our country as having a healthy democracy. But this is quickly changing. Our prime minister, even though he is the head of a minority government, has used every lever of power at his disposal to centralize his power, silence his detractors, and render the Parliamentary process ineffective.