Apologize, You Sleazy Bastard

The Geneva-based, International Commision of Jurists, has issued a written demand that Sideshow Steve Harper and his supposed justice minister, Peter MacKay, apologize to Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin for the drive-by smear job they tried to pull on her following the failure of their bid to seat Marc Nadon on the Supreme Court of Canada.

Not only was there no wrongdoing on the part of Justice McLachlin, they opined, but the Harper-MacKay tag team was an assault on the independence of our highest court.

“The ICJ considers that the criticism was not well-founded and amounted to an encroachment upon the independence of the judiciary and integrity of the Chief Justice,” the commission said in a letter from its headquarters in Geneva to Gerald Heckman, a University of Manitoba law professor who spearheaded the complaint.

It accepted Chief Justice McLachlin’s explanation, as expressed in a public reply from her office to the allegations of impropriety first made in April by the Prime Minister’s Office, that she had spoken to Mr. MacKay and her office had spoken to the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Ray Novak, only to alert them to a potential legal issue.

Unfortunately, the ICJ's stinging rebuke arrived in the midst of Canada's national nap time, the middle of the summer recess. Of course with a regime that regularly places itself above or at least outside the law the independence of the judiciary and integrity of the Chief Justice are of no great moment. Besides in the dark recesses of Harper’s mind, what actually happened is what he believes to have happened, not some foreigners’ opinions.


MoS, the Disaffected Lib

Signs

While I have never been one to use the term fascist profligately, the creeping authoritarianism that has been the hallmark of the Harper regime gives pause for reconsideration. As the above graphic shows, and as any well-informed citizen knows, the cabal has been intent for many years on tearing down confidence in some institutions while exalting others. The nuances, variety and diversity of a healthy society are discouraged, even suppressed. Cultivating a black-and-white mentality within the population makes it easier to maintain and further control.

Perhaps the most recent and egregious examples of institutional attack has been Harper's attempt to undermine the integrity of the Supreme Court, the court of final arbitration and justice, by questioning and assailing the integrity and motives of Canada's Chief Justice, Beverly McLachlin. While much has been written as to his motives in this attack, it does conform to the above-described pattern.

The road to fascism is made easier by a compliant and docile population. Fortunately, not all dissent has yet been quelled in Harperland. Two former prime ministers, Joe Clark and Paul Martin, are speaking out:

In interviews with the Star, former prime ministers Paul Martin (Liberal) and Joe Clark (Progressive Conservative) and the top aide to former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien delivered scathing reviews of Harper’s comments.

Martin — Harper’s immediate predecessor — offered an unequivocal defence of Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin’s recent actions in flagging a potential legal issue with a Supreme Court appointment.

“The chief justice acted perfectly appropriately. The prime minister has not,” said Martin, who named two judges to the top court during his tenure.

Clark, who appointed one judge to the high court during his brief time in the prime minister’s seat, said: “My gut (reaction) and my considered reaction was it’s very inappropriate.”

Said former Chretien chief of staff, Eddie Goldenberg:

“I actually find it despicable”... “I can disagree with a lot of his policies or agree with some of them but this is just an attack on institutions — I’m trying to think of a word — to try to ‘swift boat’ the chief justice. We’ve never seen this in Canadian history.”

While Harper and his minions have been trying to undermine McLachlin by saying that her attempt to call the prime minister was “inappropriate and inadvisable,”

the two former prime ministers and Goldenberg all said McLachlin had a duty to flag a potential legal question about a judicial candidate’s eligibility under the act that governs such appointments.

Martin said it is a long-standing tradition for a government to welcome a chief judge’s input. He said during the search that ultimately led to two Ontario appointments on the same day — Rosalie Abella and Louise Charron ... [Irwin] Cotler consulted McLachlin twice.

Former prime minister Joe Clark sees a distubring pattern in Harper's behaviour, citing

how Harper has dealt with a litany of institutions, starting with the Commons and the Senate, landing repeated omnibus bills on the agenda, diminishing the role of private members, making Senate appointments “some of which were good and some clearly bad … it did not indicate a respect for the role and the rules of the Senate."

And Clark observes what is the most insidious aspect of this bad behaviour:

“Institutions have statutory lives of their own, but they depend upon legitimacy, and if public opinion and the legitimacy of our most basic institutions is gradually narrowed by whatever source, that’s a danger for democracy. And when the source is the prime minister himself, I find that quite alarming.”

It is reassuring that these former top politicians are sounding the alarm. We can only hope that the message will have reached a large segment of the electorate by 2015.

Is Dear Leader Trending Downward?

I certainly hope so:

UPDATED: Unfit To Govern

I have to admit that even though I am now in my sixties, I have never before witnessed the kind of behaviour on the part of a Canadian government as I have of the Harper regime. Contemptuous of opposing views, ready to vilify opponents at every turn, the regime has taken even me, an inveterate cynic, by surprise in its latest salvo. In a word, Harper's the attack on the Supreme Court is unprecedented in a healthy democracy.

To say that Stephen Harper is mentally unhealthy is to state the obvious. To say that his twisted psyche sees enemies everywhere is not news. What may not be so obvious to the casual observer is the contempt he holds for Canada itself, given his most recent attack on Beverley McLachlin. As other observers have already noted, to call into question, out of mere spite, the probity of the Supreme Court's Chief Justice is to undermine Canadian's faith in our judiciary.

And of course, this follows a long Harper pattern of sowing doubt and disaffection among Canadians toward so many of our country's institutional underpinnings. Harper's disdain for Parliament is legendary, from his marginalizing the opposition to proroguing the House to avoid defeat. The robocall scandal attests to how much the notion of fair elections offends him. The 'Fair' Elections Act is itself a giant middle finger directed at democracy.

In his latest column entitled PM’s enemies list? Here comes the judge, The Globe's Lawrence Martin reflects on the strangeness of Harper's Supreme Court attack:

This is Stephen Harper’s court. He appointed a majority of the justices on it. He named five of the eight, with one more pending. Another, Beverley McLachlin, was named to the court by Tory Brian Mulroney. The Harper appointments, as could be expected, have been more conservative in their orientation than liberal.

Yet these facts have not prevented the Prime Minister from his full frontal assault on the court.

Says Martin:

The Prime Minister’s enemies list, which includes Mr. Cotler and so many others, keeps growing – and reaching higher levels. Must everyone submit to Mr. Harper’s will or face retaliation? Do we have, as his former adviser Tom Flanagan maintains, a predator as prime minister? Does he not think there will be a reckoning?

Harper's much vaunted and exaggerated strategic 'genius' does not seem to be the motivating force here, either. Martin recalls,

... interviewing David Emerson, who had a unique perspective because he served in both the cabinets of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. There were things he preferred about the Harper operation. But one difference that alarmed Mr. Emerson was the degree of visceral contempt he saw from Mr. Harper and his top lieutenants toward those opposed to their beliefs. He’d never seen anything like it. How could they harbour, he wondered, so much venom?

What goes on in the Prime Minister's head is not realy my concern. All I know is that Stephen Harper and all of his acolytes have betrayed what should have been a sacred trust, the leadership of our country. The country I know and love cannot survive another term of his hateful, divisive and destructive rule.

UPDATE: It would seem that even Conservatives are beginning to see the truth about Mr. Harper: