Ten More Conservative Misdeeds for TGIF

As promised, ten more. I can't really put more than that on a single blog posting, but have decided to sort them and upload them to my website, so they can be referenced by those working against neoconservatism next election.

I'm so pumped.

I've got my Army of US's, I'm working on videos, doing my blog. I slept last Tuesday. I'm good to go.

10. Conservative MP David Sweet is the founder of the Canadian branch of the male-dominated Promise Keepers. According to the National Organization for Women, the Promise Keepers are a threat to women's rights:

The group encourages inequality within marriages and teaches a doctrine of male superiority. According to Amy Schindler, "the discourse of masculinity found within conservative religious movements, such as the Promise Keepers and the Victorian era movement 'muscular Christianity,' is inherently political. Any masculinity project aimed at restoring or reclaiming a 'traditional' male role for privileged white, heterosexual males has a political impact within the tapestry of class, race, and gender power."

He won the election by keeping quiet about this, only saying that he once ran a non-profit group. According to EGALE:

This election, Mr. Sweet has erased all evidence of his past affiliation with Promise Keepers. There is no mention of them on his campaign website. The Promise Keepers Canada website has also been scrubbed clean of Mr. Sweet. Even the Christian Week website has been scrubbed.“It seems that Mr. Sweet has gone to great trouble to hide his past,” said Laurie Arron, Egale’s Director of Advocacy. “For example, he’s said that women are natural followers.

It wasn’t easy to track this down. An article in Christian Week in which he said this was removed from that website. Luckily, Google has cached a copy of it.”Promise Keepers do not encourage a relationship of equals in a marriage. Rather, they call for men to “take” their role as the leader in the family. Promise Keeper Tony Evans stated “I am not suggesting that you ask for your role back, I am urging you to take it back. There can be no compromise here.” .

He should not be allowed to vote on anything pertaining to women's issues and yet he does.

9. When the Harper government sponsored an event in the Northwest Territories to announce job creation (myth), the N.W.T. labour leader was banned.

A Yellowknife-based union leader said military police barred her from attending Prime Minister Stephen Harper's announcement of new northern labour agreements Thursday afternoon.Mary Lou Cherwaty, president of the N.W.T. Federation of Labour, said she was not invited to Harper's announcement, which he made in the N.W.T. capital about 5 p.m. MT Thursday.

"I believe it's a slap in the face to workers," Cherwaty told CBC News on Friday. "Any amount of money that they'll decide to throw towards the training and [the] developments that they're talking about in the North is going to be for the benefit of business and corporations and not for the benefit of workers, obviously."

Of course it is, and we already know it was to allow drilling in protected areas.

8. First Public Works Scandal: When the affair between Maxime Bernier and Julie Couillard was unfolding, it was learned that she had also been involved in a questionable contract given by Michael Fortier. Fortier was the party fundraiser that Harper fast tracked to a senate seat and then given a cabinet posting, despite the fact that he never faced the electorate. He eventually did and lost.

The Quebec media have reported in recent days that Couillard's first brush with the Conservative party would have taken place in March or April of 2007 – around the same time Investissements immobiliers Kevlar, a subsidiary of Groupe Kevlar, began the preliminary stages of a bidding process for a multi-million dollar contract to build a 200,000-square-foot federal office building in downtown Quebec City.According to sources, Couillard was first registered as a Kevlar affiliate agent in early April 2007 – around the time she dated Côté [Fortier's special assistant] and shortly before she met Bernier.

7. Has given huge military contracts to a company with a well known reputation for corruption. SNC Lavelin and it's affiliate, General Dynamics Corp, is providing private security, and communications.

The Canadian unit of General Dynamics Corp., the world's biggest defence contractor, said Monday it will supply a fully digital communications system to the Canadian Army, ensuring troops will continue to have access to critical communications services in combat zones. The contract, awarded by the Department of Public Works and Government Services Canada, is worth $341 million over the five initial years and can be extended for up to five more years, bringing the total tab to $682 million.

When a group Homes not Bombs protested outside their offices in Toronto, they were given the usual response.

But SNC-Lavalin management would have none of it, preferring to treat Homes not Bombs as a security threat. In their largest display of force yet, some three dozen Metro Police, eight wearing riot visors and riding horses -- backed up with two police wagons ready to cart folks away -- were on hand early today at the Etobicoke offices of the firm, which has been the site of two prior, peaceful protests.All this for a group of ten people with placards and flyers calling for an end to the profits being made from war crimes.

Dissent is not allowed.

6. When former RCMP watchdog, Paul Kennedy revealed that the Harper government had not acted on any recommendations made to clean up the police force, Conservative MP Blake Richards went on the attack, "... equating the work of his "bureaucrats and paper pushers" with that of RCMP officers who risk their lives on the street."

Kennedy would later be forced out for his role in investigating the Afghan Detainee issue.

5. While publicly rebuking Lybia's Mohammar Gadhafi for protecting a known terrorist, it was learned that Harper personally approved the leader's stopover in Canada. An outright lie.

OTTAWA — A new document shows Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally approved Moammar Gadhafi's planned stopover in Newfoundland last fall. The green light came even as the Harper government was rebuking the Libyan leader for supporting a convicted terrorist.

Gadhafi eventually cancelled his planned Canadian stop in St. John's, Newfoundland, after the Prime Minister's Office said he would be scolded for throwing a party for a man jailed in the Lockerbie bombing. But internal emails
obtained by The Canadian Press reveal it was Harper himself who gave Gadhafi's
visit the go-ahead.

4. Ezra Levant and the Anne Coulter Fiasco: After blaming the University of Ottawa for cancelling the appearance of the controversial right-winger Anne Coulter, it was learned that the whole thing was nothing more than a publicity stunt. The Conservative government set up the whole thing in yet another attack on Muslims.

Before the Ottawa event, a $250.00 a plate dinner was held for Conservative supporters, sponsored by the Ottawa Campus Conservatives and arranged by Ashley Scorpio, who is listed in the government's electronic directory, as a "... staffer working in the office of Conservative MP Gerald Keddy. She has also worked for Ontario Conservative MP Patrick Brown and was once an administrative assistant in the Harper PMO".

Coulter cancelled the event herself:

First, contrary to what Coulter seems to suggest in a brief phone interview with Macleans.ca scribe Colby Cosh, it was not the police who "shut it down." I spoke with Ottawa Police Services media relations officer Alain Boucher this morning, and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was her security team that made the decision to call off the event. "We gave her options" -- including, he said, to "find a bigger venue" -- but "they opted to cancel ... It's not up to the Ottawa police to make that decision."

Ties to International Free Press Society, a right-wing Danish group responsible for publishing the Danish cartoons, who wrote:

It is interesting to see the aftermath of Canada’s Ottawa University after an unruly crowd of leftist and Islamic protesters through threats vandalism and intimidation, shut down a planned speech by Ann Coulter.

Same old, same old.

3. In 2005 as leader of the opposition, Stephen Harper protested Bill C-38 (same-sex marriage) by suggesting that if would mean that religious schools couldn't fire gay teachers.

... the comments brought back memories of Mr. Harper’s voting record as an MP. Back in 1996, Mr. Harper voted against amending the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The effect of that law was to make it illegal, among other things, to fire someone because they’re gay or lesbian. Mr. Harper voted to allow continued workplace discrimination.

2. The Canadian Defense Department vandalized Wikipedia on behalf of Peter MacKay and his F-35s:

The mystery of who at the Defence Department has been vandalizing information on a Wikipedia website critical of the Conservative government’s decision to spend billions on a new stealth jet is now centred on the busiest fighter base in the country. Defence Department information technology specialists haven’t yet been able to determine where the computers being used to alter the Wikipedia site are located, according to department officials in Ottawa. But using a readily available search engine on the Internet, the Citizen has tracked the locations of the three computers to CFB Cold Lake, Alta. The base is expected to be a major centre for the Joint Strike Fighter (or JSF) the Harper government wants to buy.

Our tax dollars at work

1. Secretly tearing down public healthcare: In 2005 Stephen Harper was publicly promising to abolish public healthcare.

[May 8th, 2005, Stephen Harper] promised that if he was elected Prime Minister of Canada, one of the first things on his agenda would be to privatize the Canadian Healthcare System. Harper believes his party, the newly united Conservative Party made up of remnants of the old PC and Canadian Alliance Party is destined to win a possible upcoming election. And he is being rather smug about it.

Belinda Stronach, has defected to the Liberal Party, saying she disagrees with Stephen Harper on the issue of healthcare & the budget and that she would rather join the Liberals than "help Harper destroy the best healthcare system in the world". The current Liberal Budget designates a moderate increase to healthcare spending, whereas Harper favours a decrease in spending.

And the Canadian Medical Association believes that he already has. He just forgot to run it by us:

Does Canada still have a federal health minister? And, more important, does it have a government with the slightest interest in maintaining the national health-insurance program called medicare? For all practical purposes, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding “No.” Leona Aglukkaq, who holds the title of Minister of Health, was glaringly absent this week from the Canadian Medical Association gathering in Niagara Falls, Ont.

So until tomorrow, chow for now.