More on Harperland - Intolerance of Dissenting Opinion and Misuse of the RCMP

While I am a reasonably fast reader, especially when it comes to fiction, I sometimes have to slow down and digest small chunks of non-fiction that deal with the political arena, lest I do grievous harm to my blood pressure or mental state. Such was the case as I made my way through Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, dealing as it did with how the right wing exploits natural or human-made disasters to advance the cause of free-market economics, despite the damage that system can do to those upon whom it is imposed.

I am exercising similar caution with Lawrence Martin's fine political analysis, Harperland, which, as I mentioned in an earlier post, confirms our worst fears and suspicions about the Harper regime. This morning I read a couple of parts that reflect both Harper's contempt for opposing viewpoints and his authoritarian bent:

Michael Biels, a history professor at the University of Ottawa, wrote a newspaper piece opposing Harper's decision to confer nation status on Quebec. Senator Marjory Lebreton, a former Mulroney loyalist who was named Senate leader for switching her fealty to Harper, contacted the university and demanded that Biels be disciplined and forced to issue an apology. Fortunately the university resisted her demands, saying that freedom of speech is a mainstay of academic institutions. Since the implications of this incident are obvious, no further comment from me is needed.

Many will recall the next example, which occurred when the Conservatives had a caucus meeting in Charlottetown in 2007. As was the tradition P.H. (Pre-Harper), journalists gathered in the lobby of the hotel to talk to caucus members as they passed by. The Prime Minister's Office, with its Harper-directed mandate to keep media contact to a minimum, ordered the RCMP to remove the reporters from the hotel. Besides this wholly inappropriate and probably illegal use of our federal police force for political purposes, this incident made me wonder anew exactly what role Harper played in another political misuse of police authority, the widespread violation of Charter Rights that occurred during the G20 Summit in Toronto last June.

While I strongly encourage everyone to read this fine book by Lawrence Martin, I do have to post this warning: CONSUMPTION OF ITS CONTENTS MAY POSE RISKS TO YOUR PHYSICAL OR EMOTIONAL HEALTH