Was Nathan Cirillo A Hero?

As I noted on this blog previously, it is always a tragedy when a young person loses his or her life, whether to accident, disease, or mayhem. The lost potential is incalculable. Like me, however, I suspect many found the mythologizing of Nathan Cirillo's murder, his passage on the Highway of Heroes, and what amounted to a state funeral, attended by an array of dignitaries, including the Prime Minister, a little much. And as a cynical observer of the political landscape, I cannot escape the notion that all of the ceremony will prove to be of great benefit to the Harper regime's propaganda machine and its ongoing efforts to reduce our civil liberties.

This morning, a friend of mine alerted me to a piece by the Hamilton Spectator's Andrew Dreschel. It is a frank and honest assessment of this past week's spectacle. It is also brave, as I suspect it will earn him a barrage of hate mail.

While in no way detracting from the loss of this young man, Dreschel offers an unsentimental assessment of what happened:

The 24-year-old Hamilton reservist was murdered in cold blood by a homeless crack addict with terrorist notions while he was ceremonially guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

Cirillo's death was tragic and senseless, but in no way was it heroic.

Dreschel then goes on to talk about what constitutes heroism: those who display remarkable courage,

by performing brave deeds and daring feats — risking or sacrificing your life to save others, valiantly defending a position, boldly destroying the enemy.

But Cirillo never got the chance to show the stuff of which he was made:

He died unprepared and unarmed, the unlucky victim of a seemingly deranged killer who was himself gunned down after storming Parliament.

All of the subsequent coverage gave this tragedy a life of its own, culminating in what the writer describes as secular canonization.

Dreschel ends on this note:

Through no action of his own, the accidental victim had become an accidental hero. But sadly, like all accident victims, he just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Unsentimental and accurate, the column raises some disturbing issues that we should all be honest enough and brave enough to confront. Of course, it is right to feel grief and empathy in tragic situations; obviously it is part of what makes us human. But we should also be keenly aware that those very human responses can work to our detriment if they are not leavened by the knowledge that those in positions of trust with far darker motives may try to exploit them to their own advantage.

Pay No Attention To This Video

Please regard this only as a rare anomaly of nature, totally unrelated to the propaganda about climate change being promulgated by enemies of your goverment.
- The Harper Regime.

Cheap Rhetoric Versus Practical Questions

With regard to the ISIS threat, here is what Prime Minister Harper had to say in the House:

“These are necessary actions, they are noble actions” .... “When we think that something is necessary and noble, we don’t sit back and say that only other people should do it. The Canadian way is that you do your part.”

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, on the other hand,

asked a series of questions on the matter, including the length of the planned mission, the exit strategy and the exact demands of the United States for a Canadian military contribution.

While Harper is content to wrap himself in the flag, one wonders how ordinary Canadians will react once that flag is draped around coffins coming back from the Middle East.

Warning! Pay No Attention To This Seditious Suggestion

A CRA Audit-Free Zone


Okay boys and girls. Please resist the impulse to manipulate the Fraser Institute's data. Really, don't do it. I mean it. There will be consequences. ;)

The Big Mac VS The Whopper

Clearly, based upon the shameful falsehoods she uttered at yesterday's U.N. climate summit about Canada being a “global clean energy leader” doing “its part” to cut carbon emissions that warm the earth, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq's preference is clear.

On The Further Debasement Of Parliamentary Debates

In which Parliamentary Secretary Paul Calandra, a loyal Harper soldier, does his utmost to discourage Canadians from watching the misnamed debates.

Tory Hot Air Worsens Climate Change

Watch this video and you'll know what I mean:

Denial And Outrage

During my teaching career, it was occasionally my unpleasant task to confront a student with evidence of his or her cheating; most situations revolved around plagiarizing essays or having skipped a test. The student's responses when confronted were invariably the same; indeed, they tended to parallel Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief.

I won't bore you with the details, but common initial reactions were denial that any offence had occurred, ("I have no idea what you are talking about"), and when that failed, anger that I would harbour such unfounded and unworthy suspicions ("I am really hurt that you would accuse me of such a thing"). Invariably, they were guilty as charged.

There seems to be an analogous system at work in politics.

Let's start with the Harper regime's upcoming campaign against marijuana use, the one that the three main groups representing doctors, Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada have refused to be part of because they "... do not, support or endorse any political messaging or political advertising on this issue".

The accusation that the campaign has become a political football aimed at discrediting Justin Trudeau, who favours legalization of pot, has been hotly denied by Health Minister Rona Ambrose:

“Telling kids to not smoke pot is not a partisan attack on Justin Trudeau by Health Canada,” Ambrose told a news conference Monday on the sidelines of the annual Canadian Medical Association meeting.

“It is a sound public health policy backed by science. Whether pot is legal or illegal, the health risks of marijuana to youth remain the same, and we should all be concerned about them.”

She added that Trudeau “made this a political issue.”

Denial and shifting the blame, both time-honoured tactics of my former wayward students.

Next, the anger:

This morning's Star reports the following:

The federal New Democrats are hoping to put the Canada Revenue Agency under the microscope Tuesday after recalling a House of Commons committee to examine a wave of audits against registered charities.

NDP MP and revenue critic Murray Rankin (Victoria) has questioned whether the audits were politically motivated actions against those advocating for environmental causes and other issues clashing with the Harper government’s policies.

However, Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay rejects the allegations, and with great umbrage:

“Your baseless allegation that I have used my office to blatantly misappropriate CRA resources to target and intimidate charities that don’t agree with our government’s policies is absolutely reprehensible,” wrote Findlay in a letter to Rankin, dated Aug. 5.

“As an honourable parliamentarian, I find your unwarranted attacks on the integrity of the CRA and my office shameful and plunges parliamentary discourses to new lows.”

To quote from my favourite Shakespearean play, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Such indignation may play well to the party's base, but critical thinkers may wonder at the rhetorical flourishes employed by Ms. Findlay here.

The final stage in the five stages of grief is acceptance. For the Harper regime, I suspect that will only come after the results of the next election.

Our Poisoned Political Culture

Whether true or not, Canadians can, I think, be forgiven for wondering, quite seriously, whether the Harper cabal was somehow involved in the ominous break-in at Justin Trudeau's home while his family was asleep. A destabilizing and disturbing crime for anyone who has experienced such a violation, it is clearly weighing heavily on the Liberal leader, who must be away from his family for extended periods of time. That may be the intended effect.

Perhaps Harper and his acolytes had nothing to do with it, but entertaining such suspicions is surely not unwarranted owing to the pernicious and poisonous political culture that has been so avidly cultivated by a Prime Minister whose only purpose seems to be the perpetuation of his party's power. Assaulting character, instilling fear in critics of his neoliberal agenda, presenting the world in absolutist terms are all of a piece in a scorched earth policy that amply demonstrates Harper's unfitness for public office.

Unfortunately, we all become the victims when public policy is designed only to benefit a select few.

Writing yesterday in The Edmonton Journal, Michael Den Tandt offered this headline:

Reaction to Justin Trudeau break-in a symptom of debased debate

Den Tandt observes that the Twitter reaction to the break-in was often cruel and insensitive:

On Twitter – home to all important Canadian political debate now that Question Period in the Commons has become a set piece – some revelled in the news. Hug-a-terrorist Justin Trudeau, targeted by home-invading thugs; what fun! There were Tweets mockingly tying the break-in to Trudeau’s stance on marijuana. Maybe the burglars were after pot! Ho ho. Others tried, clumsily and with the hackneyed spelling so common in Twitter’s nether parts, to be sardonic.

And to be fair, the writer also castigates the Harper-haters for their own frequent vileness which, he says, neither the Liberal nor the NDP Party has done anything to quell.

Yet he lays the primary responsibility for the devolution in political discourse squarely at Harper's feet:

The Conservative party has since April of 2013 indulged in organized mockery and vilification, aimed at Trudeau personally. The intent of this messaging is to belittle and demean. That is not something the Conservative party can disavow. Nor can they deny that their attack ads – against Trudeau, and predecessors Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion — have contributed to a debasing of Canadian political dialogue. Debasement is the whole point of the ads.

Den Tandt offers some remedial suggestions:

To begin, the prime minister, to whom all Canadians look for leadership, could ditch the stupidest of his party’s attack ads and begin speaking positively, regularly and publicly about how he hopes to build a better country.

[A]ll the parties, their MPs and officials could aggressively block their own partisans who engage in personal debasement in social media. The standard should be the law against defamation.

[O]nline anonymity, in social media and news comment streams, should be abolished. That is a step that publishers can take.

These are all good suggestion, but given the extent of the rot that has set in and accelerated in recent years, I think we can realistically expect nothing to change.

A Public Service Announcement From The Conservative Party Of Canada

Given the Harper regime's new-found zeal for warning all of us about the dangers of marijuana, and, coincidentally, the equally dangerous potential of a Justin Trudeau-led government, perhaps the following will help them to bring home the dangers of both:



H/t Patrick Clarke

For The Naive, This Sounds Impressive

For the seasoned political observer, it is Harper propaganda of the the worst kind.

Setting The Record Straight

Is the oleaginous Pierre Poilivre really the best the Harper regime can do in its propaganda efforts?




h/t Press Progress

The Right Wing Instructs Us On Our Errors In Thinking

Benighted soul that I am, I did not realize the myriad errors of thinking I have fallen prey to. Happily, University of Toronto geography professor Pierre Desrochers has set me straight on a few things:

New Enemies, New Misdirections

Last week I wrote a post about the fraught fund-raising letter sent out by Conservative Party director of political operations Fred DeLorey. The letter stressed the need to build a substantial war chest because a cabal of leftist media (essentially all of them - media concentration at its worst, eh?) is preventing the regime from getting out its message of good, sober, and responsible government.

In today's Globe and Mail, Lawrence Martin, one of the few journalists left at the once mighty paper worth his salt, offers his perspective on this extraordinary and ludicrous claim:

The point about concentrated media power will raise eyebrows. Is Mr. Harper looking to break them up?

And the notion that media conglomerates are doing the bidding of the liberal left? That would be news to the likes of Postmedia, Sun Media, Shaw Communications, Rogers and Bell: Their headquarters aren’t exactly overrun by Noam Chomsky disciples. And more than 90 per cent of Canadian newspapers endorsed the Conservatives in the last election.

But like a growing number of our system’s institutional checks and balances, the fourth estate is on Mr. Harper’s hit list. The CBC has been there a long time; it would be gone if the PM had his druthers. If he wins the next election, it very well might be, as the fundraising letter’s line of questioning suggests.

While Harper's hatred for the CBC is well-known, representing as it does central Canadian liberalism, elitism and big-government values, the fact that our mad prime minister has turned his sights on the broader media suggests someone who has lost both his balance and his perspective (if he indeed was ever in possession of such), blaming everyone except himself for his spate of recent misfortunes:

When it comes to coverage, Mr. Harper has, in fact, been getting a rough media going over in recent months. He might wish to consider that perhaps the Senate scandal, the elections bill blundering and the Supreme Court debacle have something to with it.

The Prime Minister isn’t trending well with journalists. Years ago, there were a few scribes who took exception to his excessive controls and billy-club style of democracy. Now the majority of pundits are of that view – left, right and centre.

Martin concludes his column on an ominous note, reminding me once again of the disturbing Nixonian rage and paranoia that seem to define Mr. Harper's mental state:

We’ve seen how Mr. Harper reacts when challenged. Going forward, we can probably expect more than just fundraising letters.

Reveling In Ignorance

It is perhaps the supreme irony of our age; for the first time in history we have access to a world of information and data literally at our fingertips; it is an era when profound ignorance should be quickly receding into the status of historical artifact; yet we are led by a federal government that revels in and promotes profound ignorance. This is not the way the twenty-first century should be.

In today's Star, Carol Goar begins her article with some damning facts about the Harper regime's relentless campaign of disinformation:

For the past year, Canadians have laboured under the misapprehension that thousands of jobs go begging because no one in this country has the skills to fill them. It turned out the government was using faulty online data.

For two years, people struggled to figure out how Ottawa could close prisons while ordering judges to impose more jail sentences. The auditor general solved that riddle last week: it couldn’t. Canada’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded.

For eight years, the government has been cracking down on lawlessness, despite a steady drop in the crime rate. Former cabinet minister Stockwell Day insisted “unreported crime” was rising.

Through three federal elections, Stephen Harper has campaigned as the prime minister who brought fiscal discipline to the nation’s capital. In fact, federal spending ballooned on his watch. He burned his way through the $13-billion surplus left by the previous government, leaving no rainy-day fund when the 2008 recession hit.

One of the key reasons the cabal has gotten away with these lies and carefully crafted pieces of propaganda is the downsizing of Statistics Canada, an agency that was once the envy of the world:

Half of the agency’s workforce is gone. Hundreds of its programs have been dropped. The mandatory long-form census has given way to a voluntary household survey. It would cost tens of millions of dollars to reverse these changes...

Auditor general Michael Ferguson's annual report offers some sobering insights into the costs incurred from the Stats Can decimation:

His most troubling finding is that StatsCan’s job vacancy survey is vague and unreliable. “It is not possible to determine where in a province or territory job vacancies are located,”...

Regarding the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census, whose response rate dropped to 69 per cent from 94 per cent in 2006, Ferguson says,

In parts of the country, so few households filled out the questionnaire that StatsCan could not produce reliable data. So it withheld the results in those areas, leaving municipalities, school boards, urban planners, developers, businesses and social agencies in 25 per cent of Canada without up-to-date information.

The Harper regime has, by stealth, changed the function of Stats Can, thereby eliminating the tremendous value it offered a wide array of people:

It has curtailed its consultations with entrepreneurs, academics and non-government organizations. It has narrowed its focus. “We found the agency primarily consults with the federal, provincial and territorial governments”

I suppose none of this should come as a shock to any of us. The greatest enemy of a regime intent on ruling through lies, fear and propaganda is truth. The Harper cabal is well on its way to eliminating that pesky problem.

Barely A Parody

If you have ever watched the Stephen Harper propaganda channel, you will have a hard time distinguishing it from the following parody:



H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Stephen Harper

What Stephen Harper, Tim Hudak And The Rest of The Neocons Really Think

We're Not Paying You To Tell Us Something We Don't Want To Know

That would seem to be the mentality behind the Harper regime's chopping of $1.2 million from the federal Justice Department's research budget.

As reported by the CBC, the cut, which represents 20% of the department's research budget and will result in the termination of eight very experienced legal researchers, seems to have been prompted by its penchant for uncovering some inconvenient truths that run counter to the regime's simplistic law-and-order agenda:

Previous legal research in the department sometimes caught senior officials "off-guard ... and may even have run contrary to government direction," says an internal report for deputy minister William Pentney.

What was the nature of that research? The internal memo, obtained by the Canadian Press under an Access to Information request, doesn't offer specifics, but observes that past projects have "at times left the impression that research is undermining government decisions."

The fact of the Harper cabal's fondness for fostering ignorance over knowledge is suggested by a department report last year on public confidence in the justice system [that] appeared to be at odds with the Conservative government's agenda.

Researcher Charlotte Fraser found many Canadians lacked confidence in the courts and prison system, but suggested it was the result of misunderstanding rather than any failures in the system, and that education could rectify the problem.

Critics said the finding was contrary to the government's approach, which is to pass tougher laws and impose harsher penalties rather than to cultivate a better-informed public.

Other research also offered refutation of the Harper Hammer of Justice approach so favoured by the red-meat set:

Another 2011 study, on the sentencing of drunk drivers, found that harsher terms for first offenders had little bearing on whether they re-offended — a finding critics held to be contrary to the government's agenda of tougher sentencing through mandatory minimums and other measures.

It is often said that good help is hard to find. And of course good help in Harperland consists of those who follow Dear Leader's imperatives without question. So the regime has sent out a powerful message to those who would enter public service under its aegis: Those with integrity need not apply.

And Now, A Brief Message From PROPCON

Regurgitation warning: if you have just finished eating, wait at least 30 minutes before watching this latest episode of 24/seven, brought to you by PROPCON, the Harper regime's official channel of indoctrination.

I have to admit this is the first episode I have watched; it made me nostalgic for the old Soviet cult-of-personality newsreels. It also gave me increased empathy for what the North Korean people have had to endure under their Dear Leader:




Come to think of it, perhaps our Dear Leader took some instruction from this fellow:

Another Harper Lie Exposed

Despite assurances last year that the TFW (Temporary Foreign Workers) program was being reformed because of a myriad of reported abuses, those assurances, like so many other pronouncements and assertions coming from the Harper regime, appear to be false.

Business continues to abuse the program, with what one can only assume is the tacit permission of Employment Minister Jason Kenney. The latest offenders, as reported by CBC, are three McDonald's outlets in Victoria, British Columbia, which are currently employing 25 temporary foreign workers.

"The pattern is that the temporary foreign workers are getting more shifts and that the Canadians are getting less,” said employee Kalen Christ, a McDonald’s "team leader" who has worked at the Victoria location for four years.

And unlike the usual excuse used by business that they cannot find Canadian workers willing to do the job, McDonald's has been caught red-handed, with numerous attestations of Canadian applicants being denied jobs:

Tim Turcot is a 21-year-old local resident who said he applied to work there during the same period. He wasn’t hired, despite his four years of restaurant experience.

“I don’t know why they didn’t hire me. I told them I am available 24/7 and just never got the job,” said Turcot.

As well, those Canadians 'lucky' enough to have a position with the house that Ronald built are seeing their hours slashed, hours taken up by the temporary foreign workers, according to team leader Christ, who himself has seen his job dropped from 40 a week to 36 then 32.

Another employee, who didn’t want to be named, also said hours have been cut and people fear losing health benefits next, because they need full-time hours to qualify.

“There’s a guy with a kid who works here who is getting his hours cut. In a minimum-wage job. That isn’t right.”

Now that the problem has been exposed, the office of Jason Kenney has predictably gone into damage control. You can read it here, should you have an especial interest in Harper regime propaganda.