Can Stephen Harper be trusted with another term in office?

[Oscar]

Can Stephen Harper be trusted with another term in office?

[ http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/gerry-c ... erm-office ]

By Gerry Caplan | July 28, 2015

EXCERPT:

In a real sense, the entire history of Mr. Harper's almost 10 years in office has revolved explicitly around trust. Time after time, his government pushed initiatives that were harshly criticized by experts in the field. Each time, we had to ask ourselves: Do I believe what the government is telling me or do I go with the scientists, academics, health experts, constitutional maven and all the other specialists who have attacked so many of the government's initiatives?

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For many, Mr. Harper's omnibus budget bills are among the best reason to mistrust him. John Ralston Saul neatly describes them as "a thick jungle hiding dozens of dangerous traps." Mr. Harper has dropped eight such traps on the House of Commons, some with over 400 pages covering issues that are wholly unrelated to each other. How could MPs even know all they contained? This newspaper editorialized that such bills reflect the Harper government's "contempt for parliament." Pretty straightforward on this one, then.

Any Canadian who has followed the practices of our government over the past decade will have her own examples of its integrity: The way they vilify and smear their opponents, perhaps; their contempt for democracy as well as Parliament; their foreign policy based on electoral considerations; their seeming indifference to Aboriginal peoples. At bottom, all of these are issues that tell us how our government thinks and operates. They tell us whether the Prime Minister and his team can be trusted. Or as Chico asked Groucho, "Who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?" Gotta love those Marxists.

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Gerald Caplan is an Africa scholar, former NDP national director and regular panelist on CBC's Power and Politics.