In Harper's Canada, Parliament Dissolves You

[Oscar]

Dissolve Parliament? In Harper's Canada, Parliament Dissolves You

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/06/17/Di ... ign=170615 ]

In wake of TRC findings, the PM's lost confidence in Canadians.

By Ian Gill, June 17, 2015, TheTyee.ca

It is fewer than twenty weeks till the measure of Canadians' disdain for Prime Minister Stephen Harper is put to the test in an election where we'll have an opportunity to swap out a petro-puppet for, hopefully, a real leader of a real political party who actually seems to give a fig about the future of Canada, and its peoples.

For many Canadians bent on change, Election Day can't come fast enough.

But maybe it can't come fast enough for Stephen Harper, either.

Based on current form, it is clear that Harper's interest in the electorate has waned. As Bertolt Brecht once so slyly advanced, "The people have lost the confidence of the government; the government has decided to dissolve the people, and to appoint another one."

Harper would love nothing more than to dissolve us, the people, and to appoint another people in our place.

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E-day returns

Well, back to where we started, in that we still have recourse to an election in the not too distant future. And from Alberta, we have an example from the not too distant past of what happens when the "acquired arrogance of power," to quote former NDP strategist Robin V. Spears, curdles what was once political magnetism into what Spears calls a growing "magnetic repulsion."

Jim Prentice, a one-time Harper henchman who swaggered back into Alberta and got summarily thrown from his high horse, was in many ways a worthy avatar for the politics of arrogance that Harper has perfected, and that might well be his undoing, as it was Prentice's. The real lesson from the Prentice run in Alberta was less how he came into power or what he promised, than the nature of his leaving.

When Rachel Notley knackered him in plain view of the entire country, Prentice got one thing right: he resigned the Conservative party leadership forthwith. But with a characteristic lack of regard, right out of Stephen Harper's playbook, he quit his riding, too. People had elected Prentice, if not to be their premier, at least to be their MLA, but Prentice concluded even his own people weren't good enough for him. He just walked away. Electorally disrobed, what an ugly, hard-hearted little man he turned out to be -- all hat and no saddle. What a fittingly inelegant exit from public life.

Now, picture Harper, and ask yourself if he doesn't suffer the same revulsion for you, his people, that Prentice did for his. If the answer is yes, then a few months from now, surely, the answer is no. Dispatch Harper before he dissolves you once and for all