Increased Silence and Secrecy: Are we Really Prepared for This?

It would be difficult to pinpoint a single word to describe the Harper government, but for me one of the most important words is 'secrecy'.

They have held onto information with such an iron grip, that you can spot a Conservative at 100 yards, because of their glowing white knuckles. I don't think I need to tell you how important a free flow of information is to a healthy democracy.

So maybe a little chronology of how they have been able to completely alter the way a government accounts to the people. First off, remember that the Accountability Act was a sham.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, advised the Civitas Society, the policy arm of the Harper government, that there were three things to focus on, that would lead to a majority: tax relief (courtesy of George Bush), accountability and hockey.

Because so long as they made those things the centre of their messaging, we would pay attention to little else. When I first heard that, I thought he had misread the Canadian people. Now I'm not so sure.

Shutting Down Our Access to Information. A Chronology

April 2006 - Time Magazine reports on Harper's secrecy: Controlling the Message "The capital's journalists, who view themselves as watchdogs against government abuse, expressed concerns about the Harper government."

Latraverse. "Canadians should be worried when they see the government trying to exert such an unprecedented level of control."

Peter Murdoch of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union says the new policy "smacks of totalitarianism."

Alasdair Roberts, a Syracuse University public-policy professor, asks, "How can the average Canadian make a judgment about whether their government is being well run if they don't have access to the information?"

October 2007 - In 2007, Tonda MacCharles in the Ottawa Bureau of the Toronto Star, unearthed secret plans for a special media centre, dubbed the "Shoe Store Project". At the time Harper's staff had been working quietly, to restore an old shoe store into a controlled environment for government messaging.

May 2008 - Bruce Campion-Smith writes a six part series on how tight the government's message control is. They also shut down an important database. I used that site all the time.

November 2009 - It was discovered that Harper now had his own team of taxpayer funded photographers travelling with him, to make sure that he was captured in the right light. The Globe asked: Is Stephen Harper going too far in trying to control his image?

November 2009 - We learn that this government is also completely controlling the messaging in Afghanistan. "Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office used a "6,000-mile screwdriver" to oversee the denial of reports of Afghan detainee abuse when the scandal first erupted in 2007, according to a former senior NATO public affairs official who was then based in Kabul. The former official, speaking on condition his name not be used, told the Toronto Star that Harper's office in Ottawa "scripted and fed" the precise wording NATO officials in Kabul used to repudiate allegations of abuse "at a time when it was privately and generally acknowledged in our office that the chances of good treatment at the hands of Afghan security forces were almost zero."It was highly unusual." And he claimed not to know?

December 2009 - Bruce Cheadle of the Canadian Press, revealed that "Taxpayers are being asked to pay an extra $1.7-million this fiscal year to help bolster Stephen Harper's communications support services – just as the Prime Minister's Office begins distributing government videos of Harper to the news media." The Harper government was now writing their own copy, taking their own photos, and creating their own video, for news stories.

May 2010 - Youths who participated in a question-and-answer session with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday say their questions were edited by the Prime Minister’s Office. Other youths had earlier explained that the questions were selected by Vision Internationale, a non-profit Christian group, and then edited by Harper’s office.

When Anna Fricker, a young ambassador for the group, discovered that her question on maternal health had been edited, she spoke out: Fricker was then interrupted by an organizer who would not identify herself except to say, "I’m supposed to be handling the media." "I would appreciate if you could just work with us so that we can keep this consistent message," she said. "I’m just supposed to keep this under control." (Chronicle Herald, May 18, 2010)

And So it Continues

The Canadian Association of Journalists in an open letter to Canadian journalists, sounded the alarm over the secrecy and silence.

Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the flow of information out of Ottawa has slowed to a trickle. Cabinet ministers and civil servants are muzzled. Access to Information requests are stalled and stymied by political interference. Genuine transparency is replaced by slick propaganda and spin designed to manipulate public opinion. The result is a citizenry with limited insight into the workings of their government and a diminished ability to hold it accountable. As journalists, we fear this will mean more government waste, more misuse of taxpayer dollars, more scandals Canadians won’t know about until it’s too late.

Harper is now signalling that he will raise the price of access to information requests from $5.00 to $25.00, making it even more difficult to learn what is happening behind closed doors.

The RCMP is also investigating a 'Purple File', used to tuck away requests that could prove embarrassing to Harper and his disciples.

And on the campaign trail he continues to limit questions and forces the media to stand well back of him. Not off to a good start.

My fear, and no doubt the fear of others, is that if we give this government another mandate, we will be giving them permission to operate in secrecy. Stephen Harper will continue to shut out the press, and thereby the Canadian people, and his propaganda team will only put larger bolts on the door.

The transformation to the 'Harper Government', a government of one, that does as it pleases, will be complete.

Are we really prepared for this?

Harper's Campaign Strategy Goes up in Smoke as Most Canadians Prefer a Coalition to a Harper Majority

I believe that Stephen Harper was trying to recreate the uproar over the 2008 coalition, when his successful campaign worked and boosted his popularity. He hadn't counted on the media digging in to his own coalition in 2004, that as his then campaign manager, Tom Flanagan confirmed, included the full support of the Bloc.

They were even able to unearth an old Mike Duffy program where he speaks of Stephen Harper becoming prime minister in 2004, though he lost at the polls. And his bold move was at the throne speech.

Now a recent poll has revealed that the majority of Canadians prefer an NDP-Liberal coalition over a Harper majority, so long as it does not include the Bloc.

More than half of Canadians would prefer a Liberal-NDP coalition to a Harper majority government, results of an exclusive poll for Postmedia News and Global National suggest. Conservative leader Stephen Harper launched his campaign with a clear message to Canadians: Coalitions are unstable and will derail the country's economy. But Canadians don't appear to be too nervous: 54 per cent of those polled said they would favour a Liberal-NDP blend to a Harper majority.

What will be remembered from this is that Stephen Harper lied and continues to lie despite the overwhelming evidence that he is lying.

This again will put into question Harper's integrity, because only his coalition had the full support of the Bloc. In 2008 it was only an agreement that the Bloc support the coalition on confidence issues, guaranteeing it's stability for 18 months.

However, given Harper's stubbornness, he will probably continue this nonsense, since he has now told us that Canadians really don't care what he does.

Even after the media has beaten him up on the question of the coalition, Harper continues to rant on the issue. Even after the CBC did a 5-minute feature which repeatedly implied that Harper was lying, he still won't drop it. The CBC's piece by ex-reporter Brian Stewart, examined in minute detail the coalition proposal put forward by the Liberals and the NDP in 2008 -- underlining that the Bloc was never a part of the agreement, that it was signed by just the two federal parties and that the Bloc would have no direct role. The piece also dealt with Harper's efforts to form a coalition in 2006. Harper's insistence on saying that Ignatieff is planning a coalition -- even stating that he "is still saying he will" -- just underlines the importance of the ethics issue in the election.

Those Liberal Women. They Rock

After posting my piece on what will happen to women's rights if we give Harper another mandate, someone sent me a link to an articlefrom February's Ms magazine. They also discuss the erosion of our rights under Harper.

In 2006 we elected a minority Conservative government under the leadership of a grey-faced, thin-lipped man named Stephen Harper. In typical Canadian fashion, progressive forces immediately froze in disarray. We wrung our hands and hoped his Conservative party’s status as a minority government would keep Harper’s right-wing policies from actually having an impact on our Canadian way of life. We were wrong.

“I’d say Tricky Dick Nixon in character,” says longtime Canadian feminist writer Michele Landsberg, when asked which U.S. president Harper most resembles, “But Nixon wasn’t so vicious.” Harper’s actions against women’s needs epitomize the wide swath of Bush-style policies he has inflicted on Canada in the last four years.

It's well worth a read.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Have Joined the Progressive Revolution. Don't be Left Out.

Great video and they are looking for ideas to create future ads.

And speaking of ads, the Conservatives are in trouble again for using copyrighted video in their commercials. Hope they get sued to bankruptcy.

And the corporate tax cuts are already destroying jobs.

Voting Mobs. I love This. Thank You University of Guelph for the Inspiration.

Who said young people don't care? Voting mobs. What a wonderful idea. The start of a movement I hope.

As one person commented:

Step one: Dance around in the cold during busy school paper-season

Done!

Step two: Change the face of Canadian Politics. Lets do this!

The Suspension of Women's Rights. Are We Really Prepared for This?

In 2007, Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University, wrote a paper entitled: A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, which centered around the Reform Party, our neoconservative movement, and William D. Gairdner.

The relationship between Stephen Harper and Gairdner is long and deep.

Both are founding Reform Party members and also instrumental in the creation of The Northern Foundation: "... established in 1989, originally as a pro-South Africa group . . . [n favour of continued Apartheid]. Since its establishment, however, the foundation has developed into a broad coalition of right-wing groups and individuals across the country’ lists among the founding members of the Foundation both William Gairdner and Stephen Harper. (1)

Gairdner is also former chair of the National Citizens’ Coalition, where Stephen Harper spent three decades, eventually acting as both VP and President; and founding president of the Civitas Society, one of the policy arms of the Harper government.

And Gairdner gave the keynote address at the Reform Party's 1991 General Assembly: ‘delegates to the 1991 Saskatoon convention gave William Gairdner enormous applause, even more than Manning later received, for his vitriolic speech denouncing feminists, bilingualism, and multiculturalism, among other things’(1)

Murray Dobbin who was at the event noted "the frequent and extended applause and the cheers that greeted Gairdner’s denunciation of women and women’s rights." Gairdner has been identified as one the most influential core members of Reform and as their party mentor (1), and his book The Trouble with Canada, functioned as ‘the de facto manifesto for Preston Manning’s Reform Party’ (2).

The premise of Lillian's thesis was to analyze "Canadian neoconservative discourse as racist, sexist, and homophobic."

In arguing that at least some sexist discourse should be considered hate speech, I first demonstrate that the popular discourse of Canadian neoconservative author William D. Gairdner is sexist.... Sexism, the ideology and practice of relegating women to a lower rung on the social hierarchy than men simply by virtue of their femaleness, is an integral component of neoconservative thinking, and one way that such sexism is produced and reproduced is through language"

For example, women who choose roles other than that of full-time stay-at-home wife and mother and especially those who actively seek to create conditions in which women who choose other roles are not discriminated against are the women dubbed ‘radical feminists’ by Gairdner and they are purported to be the instruments of the breakdown of so-called traditional values in Canadian society.

Gairdner classifies as feminist a wide range of women including those who advocate publicly funded day care for children, abortion rights, ready access to contraceptives, sex education in schools, affirmative action for women, equal pay for work of equal value, marriage and adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples, as well as those who resist patriarchy in any other way. The only women whom he does not label feminists are women who support his patriarchal vision in which a woman marries young, bears and raises several children, and occupies herself doing unpaid domestic and volunteer work. Of course, if such a woman were to use her time volunteering for a group promoting any of the causes he disagrees with, then she, too, might be labeled a feminist according to Gairdner’s use of the term.

Now we might say that the Reform Party was established more than 20 years ago, so the party [now called The Conservative Party of Canada] may not hold the same views today. However, in the five years that Stephen Harper has held power, the evidence is overwhelming, that he is carrying out the mandate of Gairdner, Reform, the NCC and the NF, when it comes to women's rights and their intended role in society.

In March of 2009:

Representatives of women’s groups and labour unions gathered at the United Nations yesterday, to announce that they will be filing a complaint against the Harper government with the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The complaint condemns the Canadian government for rushing controversial pay equity legislation through Parliament, which will make it extremely difficult for women in the federal public sector to demand equal pay for work of equal value. —Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), “Women launch complaint against Harper government for destroying the right to pay equity,” news release, March 6, 2009 (3)

Can you imagine, after all of our strides, though still with a long way to go, Canadian women were forced to lobby the United Nations for the return of rights we had already fought so hard to acquire?

In June of 2010, Gerald Caplan asked:

"Are you old-fashioned? Do you still believe in gender equality? Do you intend to promote gender equality? Do you believe a woman should be able to have an abortion if she chooses to?"

And in his discussion he reminds us that the attack on these fundamental things is no idle threat.

It's already happened to a large number of groups supporting women's equality. International Planned Parenthood has heard nothing for a year about renewed funding. Match International, the only international development organization devoted specifically to women's equality, has been cut off. CIDA has cut funds to projects in Pakistan and Kenya that were explicitly dedicated to gender equality. In fact, hard as it is it believe, CIDA staff have told NGOs to remove the words "gender equality" from their proposal if they want a chance at funding.

And more recently, Harper's Family tax plan excludes single parents.

In his book, Rogue in Power, Christian Nadeau also discusses the erosion of womens rights under Harper.

Back in September 2006, the government announced major reforms in the operation of Status of Women Canada. This federal body's budget was cut by about 40 per cent, and nearly all its regional offices were closed, supposedly as a rationalization measure. At the same time, Bev Oda, the minister in charge, made drastic cuts in the financial assistance provided for researching women's social struggles. Thus, many human rights organizations were left bereft of financial means.

Women's groups continue to be among the primary targets of budgetary restraints imposed by the government on civil society organizations. Some examples of groups that have experienced recent cuts include the New Brunswick coalition for pay equity, Quebec's Conseil d'intervention pour Faeces des femmes au travail (a council that advocates on behalf of women in the workplace), the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, Action travail des femmes du Quebec (a nonprofit group that works to help women access jobs), the Reseau des tables regionales de groupes de femmes du Quebec (a network of regional roundtables made up of Quebec women's groups), and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. All these organizations expressed indignation at these unjustified cuts, but their statements were scarcely acknowledged by Rona Ambrose, the new Minister of State for the Status of Women, who seemed to have other fish to fry.

In the area of pay equity, the Harper government has also shown what it is capable of, especially in relation to public service employees. In 2009, the House of Commons gave third reading to the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act, contained in Bill C-10, the Budget Implementation Act. The text of the law, a door-stopper more than five hundred pages long, obstructs women's right to demand wage equality with men for work of equal value. It takes away the right to submit pay equity complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Finance Minister Flaherty stated that he wanted to end a system of "double pay equity" and said the collective bargaining framework was adequate for dealing with this issue. In other words, employers were relieved of a responsibility ... Briefly stated, without declaring that it is openly antifeminist, the Harper government has done plenty to block the movement for equality in relations between men and women. Without institutional' guarantees for this social struggle, it is easy for Harper to state his commitment towards women while contradicting it on a daily basis in his policies. (4)

Are we as citizens ready to reverse the movement by about 50 years? Will we have to march again?

And remember that under Harper, protesters are not welcome, as those at the G-20 and Save the Prison Farms campaign, learned. Riot police appear to be on constant standby. In Kingston those abused and arrested ranged from a 14-year-old girl to an 88-year-old woman. The message is clear. If you go against this government you will be dealt with.

Are we really prepared for this?

Sources:

1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7 4

2. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6

3. HARPER PLANS TO WIN MAJORITY USING WOMEN VOTERS: A Brief Chronological Account of the Erosion of Women’s Rights Under the Tories, By Rolf Auer, March 28, 2011

4. Rogue in Power: Why Stephen Harper is remaking Canada by Stealth, By Christian Nadeau, Lorimer Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-55277-730-5

If We Give Stephen Harper Another Mandate it Means That we Are Giving Him Permission

Before the 1993 election, the Mulroney Government was awash in scandals. Mulroney himself resigned in February of that year, just months before the party, then led by Kim Campbell, had to face the electorate.

Canadian voters sent a clear message to the party and they were reduced to just two seats. We punished them for their actions.

In 2005 Paul Martin was fighting his party's troubles with the Sponsorship Scandal, ironically perpetrated by the same people Brian Mulroney had given patronage appointments to. (See Stevie Cameron's book: On the Take)

Again Canadian voters responded and the Liberals lost the 2006 election. We punished them for their actions, despite the fact that Paul Martin wasn't involved, and he himself ordered the inquiry.

We are now in another situation, where a government fell, not only because they were awash in scandals, but also had been charged with Contempt of Parliament, considered to be a crime against democracy. Literally. The first time, not only in our history, but indeed in the history of the British Parliamentary system.

So will Canadians again respond with their votes, their only weapon against corruption and tyranny, and punish Stephen Harper and his team?

Because if we don't, it will mean that we are giving Harper and his Conservatives permission to continue to behave in the same manner.

We will be giving them permission to abuse our tax dollars for self promotion. ($247 million on the Canadian Economic Action Plan alone)

We will be giving them permission to treat our Parliament with disrespect.

We will be giving them permission to simply close down the House every time Stephen Harper is being challenged, and risks losing his job. The last prorogation cost taxpayers $50 million.

We will be giving them permission to alter documents after they've been duly signed. (Instead of taking responsibility, Harper is on the campaign trail suggesting that we don't care and that few Canadians have ever even heard of Bev Oda)

We will be giving them permission to withhold important information required by our elected MPs, to make decisions on our behalf.

We will be giving permission to buy off ethics commissioners to avoid them speaking of 200 ethics complaints against this government, many involving fraud. $500,000 of our money is the price of silence.

We will be giving them permission to dismiss the fact that two of their senators could go to jail for fraud, suggesting that it is a mere accounting error. An accounting error that involved fabricating receipts to collect taxpayer money that they weren't entitled to.

We will be giving them permission to expand prisons, take justice issues away from the justice department, and even lock up our children for minor marijuana offenses.

We will giving them permission to continue their assault on women's rights.

We will be giving them permission to continue their assault on gay rights.

We will giving them permission to continue their assault on basic human rights, as we witnessed at the G-20 in Toronto.

We will be giving them permission to continue their hostile takeovers of arms length agencies, and vilify any who oppose their agenda, from diplomats to academics.

We will be giving them permission to lie, cheat and steal.

If we give Stephen Harper another mandate, it means that he can continue his destruction of Canada with our blessing.

Is this really the message we want to send?

Think about that on May 2. We have an opportunity to make history by taking back our country, and saying loud and clear that Canadians will continue to punish those who attempt to play fast and loose with our money and our rules.

VOTE and VOTE wisely!