How Stephen Harper Turned me Into a Spy

Though the Conservatives sold the notion of their Kingston rally as trying to drum up support for local candidate Alicia Gordon, a woman so out of touch with the needs of Kingstonians, that she believes a for profit super prison is good for the area as a "job creator".

I was told that part of the prison renovation is a state of the art monitoring system, one of the most invasive in a democratic country. And as such, there will be few new guards, only non-union, low pay positions, watching monitor screens.

Under any other government I would dismiss it, but it certainly fits in with Harper's corporate agenda.

But this drumming up of support, was nothing more than a pandering to Harper's ego. Our local news stated that there were 300 people present, but they brought in 3 busloads and about 6 or 7 SUVs. Also Patrick Brown, the Conservative MP from Barrie showed up with his own bus load of admirers. So perhaps 100 or so were actually local.

To get the photo above I had to hide in the bushes, feeling like a spy. That was as close as they'd let us get to him.



There was a lot of horn honking showing support for our protest, and I said that every horn honk was a vote not going to Alicia Gordon.

I went to the grocery store on Saturday and there on the front page of the local paper, was an enormous photo-op with Steve and Alicia Gordon. I thought how incredibly telling. I was at the rally and the closest I got to Stephen Harper was in line at the grocery store the day after.

This is not what democracy looks like.