What Do Harper's Tactics Reveal About the Man?

If we really stop to think about them, the overwhelmingly negative nature of Prime Minister Harper's government and his campaign tactics reveal something that should deeply concern everyone. It occurs to me that all of the contempt his government has shown for Parliamentary democracy, all of the corrosive hatred and fear-mongering infesting his attack ads and his poisonous public pronouncements that so far substitute for a platform, are predicated on a core philosophy: that the people of Canada are stupid and easily manipulated, that power is to be won at any cost, and that collateral damage, i.e., the moral and psychological health of the nation, is of no consequence.

Is this really the man we want to be leading our nation?

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

Catherine Porter on KAIROS

In today's Star, Catherine Porter has an interesting column that helps us to understand the Harper Government's antipathy toward KAIROS. Amongst its 'sins' are its opposition to the Alberta tar sands and its concerns over the free trade agreement with Columbia due to the latter's poor human rights' record. Very insightfully, Porter also explores similarities in the Harper Government's underhanded tactics, (lying, forging and altering documents, going after perceived enemies) and those of the repressive regimes that KAIROS has traditionally fought against.

The Tory Propensity for Secrecy

John ibbitson has a thought-provoking column in today's on-line Globe entitled, Harper keeps Canada in dark at own peril.

In it, he discusses how Scott Brison asked House Speaker Peter Miliken on Friday to rule the Haper Government in contempt of Parliament for its refusal to turn over estimates regarding projected corporate income from 2010 to 2015, and the costs of building those new prisons that will house such dangerous offenders as those who grow as few as six marijuana plants.

While it is probably understandable as to why the chronically spiritually-constipated Conservatives would fear an outbreak of mellowness across the country, what isn't understandable by either parliamentary history and custom or basic democracy is how they can withhold from us and our elected representatives the costs involved in their paranoid follies.

I eagerly await the next development in this unfolding saga of repression and suppression.

The Conservatives Strike Again

A disturbing but not really surprising story appears in today's Star detailing how two well-known academic critics of the Conservative Party of Canada are being targeted, apparently for their outspokenness.

The two University of Ottawa professors, "Errol Mendes and Amir Attaran, frequently castigated as Liberal sympathizers by the Conservatives, were notified in recent weeks of two unusually massive freedom-of-information requests at the University of Ottawa, demanding details of the professors’ employment, expenses and teaching records."

While the names of requesters under Freedom of Information rules are kept anonymous, a logical inference is that it is Conservative operatives who are behind the request, given their leader's well-known propensity for targeting those who have the temerity to disagree with his stances and edicts. Even in the highly unlikely event that the Harperites have nothing to do with this intimidation tactic, Harper and his crew have only themselves to blame for being the prime suspects, having so poisoned the political landscape by their divisive and obnoxious rhetoric that rational and reasoned dialogue has become almost impossible in Canada.

I can only hope that the University of Ottawa delays the release of the information requested for as long as the Harper Government has been known to, which in many cases has been several years.