The Tragedy of Harper’s Canada

[Oscar]

The Tragedy of Harper’s Canada

[ http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/03/ ... rs-canada/ ]

by Michael Welton July 3, 2015

“This abuse of executive power is tilting toward totalitarian government and away from the foundations of democracy and the rule of law on which this country was founded.” - Errol Mendes, Professor of constitutional and international law (University of Ottawa)

The current Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper looks like a tattered and ragged old stuffed animal these days. You know–the ones with one button-eye missing and the other hanging by a single thread. Although he has survived endless scandals and sleazy acts over the past decade, Harper’s musical tune is now screeching and discordant.

Two of his top ministers (the obedient Peter McKay and the attack-dog, know-nothing John Baird) have decided to abandon politics. A third (Jim Prentice) left to run Alberta, but was soundly defeated by a resurgent New Democratic Party. Harper’s possible successor, Jason Kenney, now Minister of Defence, looks bewildered as he repeats NATO’s lies about Russian aggression and fumbles along in a totally incoherent foreign policy.

On the international scene, this mean autocrat has had the gall—if you can believe this—to point his finger at Vladimir Putin and tell him to get out of the Ukraine. This moronic demand bespoke of his ignorance of the Ukraine’s common history and culture with Russia. Harper has murky ties with right-wing Canadian Ukrainians and has adopted the fantastical narrative pushed by the US and its pliant allies in the EU and NATO. He thinks this may get him some votes. He sent 200 troops (disguised as trainers) into the Ukraine to help quell the rebellion in Eastern Ukraine.

The opposition parties are demanding that Stephen the Sneaky come clean regarding his support for the neo-Nazi gangs of thugs in the Ukraine armed forces (like the Azov battalion). He appears to love vilifying Putin. Recently Russian MP Aleksey Puskov (United Russia) stated that Canada is the “most anti-Russian state in the western alliance as a whole and definitely also in the G7 group.”

Indeed, for the past decade Stephen the Sleazy has been continually asked to tell us what he is really up to in the dark alleys. One thing for certain: the old peace-making Canada has been tossed out the window. Harper has raised no questions whatsoever about the criminal acts of the government of Kiev. He has leapt on the American military bandwagon. Canadians have little understanding of what Canada now stands for on the fraught geo-political scene. Canada can no longer think for itself. Our brain has been replaced by someone else’s.

This guy supports Netanyahu more than any western leader alive. He is a right-wing Christian Zionist who will not bat an eye at shouting “hate-speech” when anyone supports the Palestinian cause. No wonder Palestinians pelted Baird’s car when he made a zip trip to the West Bank.

Harper is also a leading opponent of doing anything about climate change. He withdrew from the Kyoto Accord. He despises scientifically-informed, evidence-based policy. He loathes public health care systems. Right-wing Canadian evangelicals make up his base. This support for Harper who cares not at all for the weak and oppressed is in itself a travesty of Christian ethics and understanding.

And he despises passionately any person, movement or association that dares to criticize his government. He does not permit debate within his own party or the parliament itself. He has used the egregious tactic of the giant omnibus bill to push through dubious policies without deliberation. It appears to many of us on the Canadian Left that the man who adopted Alberta Oil Country as his home base does not much like his own country and has contempt for its parliamentary traditions. His latest sickening move is Bill C-51, which criminalizes dissent and opens the door for more surveillance than Canadians have ever experienced.

He has prorogued the parliament four times; one occurring just in time to head off accusations that Canada participated in the rendition of detainees to places where they could be tortured. On the local front, the Harper Conservative government tried to interfere with Canadians voting by using robocalls to misdirect voters to non-existing poll stations in the 2011 election. The recent Fair Elections Act tried to disenfranchise students and people living on reserves. Harper used attack ads—learned from the amoral American Arthur Finkelstein—to smear the hapless Michael Ignatieff as “just visiting.” And three senators chosen by him to do Conservative partisan bidding—Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau—have all been accused of falsifying their expense accounts (the Duffy case is presently in the courts where he has been charged with one count of breach of trust and one for fraud).

Taking a page or two from George W. Bush’s playbook, Harper has systematically and stealthily sought to change a social democratic country into a neo-con satellite of the US Empire of chaos. For those still on the Canadian left who affirm the necessity of a vibrant and dynamic civil society where debate and dissent are supported by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Harper’s crushing, stifling and criminalizing of dissent has raised loud alarm bells. The recently published document (by Voices-voix, an organization of 200 civil society organizations and around 5,000 individual members), Dismantling Democracy: stifling debate and dissent in Canada (2015), is shocking reading even for those who know quite a bit about Harper’s tipping of Canada toward totalitarianism.

Perhaps for the first time, this exceptional document provides the analytical framework and empirical evidence which enables us to see the Big Pattern of Harper’s attempt to dismantle Canada’s democracy. It is as if the dots have all been connected. It’s all here, and what is striking about Dismantling Democracy is the outlining of the variety of devious tactics used by the Harper theo-cons to remove every possibility, legal and otherwise, of objecting to and blocking the complete capitulation of Canada to the triumphant rule of corporations (and America’s domination of the world) and its ultimate seepage into the US whirlpool.

The report is divided into two parts: Part A sets out the key elements of a vibrant democracy and Part B examines how Canadian democracy is undermined. The latter part has four sections: Silencing the public sector; Silencing knowledge; Silencing the voices of marginalized communities and Silencing voices through national security and foreign policy. Everybody on the global left should read Dismantling Democracy closely to learn more about how the enemy actually stifles debate and silences criticism (its nefarious playbook of assault on its citizenry). Many countries in the world have experienced similar sorts of things.

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The tragedy of Harper’s Canada is that it has slid considerably down the slippery slope of the end of politics. Once the bottom has been reached—totalitarian rule from above—it is not easy to roll participatory democracy back up the hill.

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Dr. Michael Welton is a professor at Athabasca University. He is the author of Designing the Just Learning Society: a Critical Inquiry.