Reform/Canadian Alliance Tail That is Wagging the Conservative Dog.

Haroon Siddiqui has another excellent column in the Star: PM's Gang of Seven provides a glimpse of Reform politics

Mr. Siddiqui keeps the tragedy at Rights and Democracy in the news, in the same way that the late James Travers spoke of our crumbling democracy and the RCMP interference in the 2006 election.

National treasures.

We learn of the hand picked members of a board that is supposed to be arms length of the government, and their destructive agenda.

"A tragic development," says William Schabas, a Canadian who is director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway, and a former adviser to the Montreal agency. A respected institution is being destroyed, he told me. "It was politically independent. That's a difficult reputation to acquire when the government funds you and the government appoints your board but it's easy to lose. They are in the course of losing it."

What's happening is also very American: extremely partisan and highly divisive. "It isn't very Canadian. It's the kind of thing that I, as a Canadian living abroad, am very conscious of."

And if Harper wins this election he will be able to control the Supreme Court. Frightening isn't it?