Harper’s strategy of refusing to take more than five questions a day from reporters amounts to a gross disservice to the public. Four of the permitted questions (generally two in French and two in English) go to reporters following Harper’s campaign, while the fifth is allotted to a local scribe, wherever the Conservative news conference that day happens to be staged. It’s a fragmented format that renders it almost impossible for reporters’ questions to build momentum and bear down on an issue.
Harpers rivals, in contrast, are far more open with the media — willing to subject themselves, and their policies, to some barbed questions in an effort to get their message out to voters. That’s as it should be. Few Canadians are able to follow the ins and outs of an election first-hand. Reporters serve as the public’s eyes and ears on the campaign trail. Ultimately, voters are the ones denied access and explanations through Harper’s five question format.
Maybe that's why he couldn't fill a small stadium for a rally, where he again focused on his paranoid vision of a "dangerous coalition".
The Liberal platform announced online was an instant hit, prompting Bob Fife to tweet that Michael Ignatieff did not use a teleprompter, while Harper can't leave home without one (my paraphrase).
The differences between the style of these two leaders is astronomical.
Harper focuses on the inanimate 'economy' while Ignatieff focuses on 'people'. Harper's promises are for some distant time, while the Liberals plan to tackle important issues NOW.
Digging up old quotes of Stephen Harper's or any of his MPs, reveals a party that holds our gay citizens in contempt.
But their assault on those they deem unworthy by virtue of their sexual orientation is more profound. This government has been systematically tearing down the institutions put in place to protect them.
When heading the Alliance Party, Harper vowed to use the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution to overturn same-sex marriage, prompting the article featured above.
According to Christian Nadeau in his new book Rogue in Power, "the Conservatives choose not to make possible what they refuse to tolerate, and so they discourage certain practices rather than actually prohibiting them." (1)
There is a belief among many, encouraged by the various Religious Right groups helping to keep them in power, that "homosexuality can be cured", as if it was a disease.
But rather than openly denouncing them, they have been working behind the scenes to force them out of the public sphere.
Jason Kenney's appointment of anti-gay Doug Cryer to the refugee board that decides whether gays get refugee status in Canada, raised some eyebrows. Cryer believes that churches should be able to teach that Homosexuality is a sin, suggesting that "It is part of God's teaching."
Funny I don't remember being taught hatred and discrimination in my catechism classes.
When it was made public that Diane Ablonczy had given $400,000 to the Toronto Gay Pride parade for security, her colleague Brad Trost went on a campaign to ensure his Fundamentalist supporters that his Party did not approve of such things.
She was fired and the following year the funding was suspended. Most governments would look on the parade as the tourist attraction that it is, but again the Conservatives attempted to "not to make possible what they refuse to tolerate".
In 2009 Stephen Harper also sent a clear message to the LGBT community with the hiring of Nigel Hannaford.
It recruited Nigel Hannaford, a former Calgary Herald columnist who is especially known for his opposition to demands by gays and lesbians for legal rights, to work as a speechwriter for Stephen Harper. In a widely circulated article, the newspaper Xtra! pointed out that, back in 2005, Hannaford questioned the decriminalization of homosexuality, enacted in 1969: "Fine, said lots of people. Leave gays alone enough. But, let 'em be Boy Scout leaders? Have each other's benefits? Adopt kids? Marry each other? Ridiculous.
Anybody seeking political office who suggested it would have been laughed off the hustings. Yet, the Liberals are ready to legalize gay marriage. How did we get to this point?" Whatever Hannaford may write for Harper, it is typical of this government to select a wordsmith who is one of Canada's best known critics of gay rights.
He also claimed in discussing gay marriage (I'll be so glad when we can just call it marriage) "that Canadian society had been turned upside down in the last thirty-five years and that it was absurd to use a legal lens to view what had been a serious sin just a few decades earlier."
Harper also signalled his intolerance by appointing David Mosely Brown to the Bench in Ontario. Brown is a well known anti-gay activist. According to Marci McDonald in the Armageddon Factor:
A devout Catholic, Brown has described himself publicly as a Christian lawyer, and, at a 2006 conference shortly before his appointment to the bench, he reminded law students motivated by similar beliefs that, "As a Christian lawyer, you are called to practice your trade and conduct your life in accordance with your faith." Legal principles were important, he told them, but a barrister's dignity springs from "membership in the community founded and sustained by God ... not in some free-standing notion of freedom or autonomy." Earlier, during a debate on same-sex matrimony, he made clear that he objected to the proposed legislation, warning that "Within a few generations, marriage will have no practical meaning and society will be the worse for that."
Still, it was one thing for a lawyer to bring his faith into the courtroom, quite another for a judge to do the same. As critics pointed out, Brown's appointment raised questions about his impartiality should he be assigned a case involving gay rights or pro-choice issues. "I think people should be aware of the views he has," said Carolyn Egan of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, "and how they could potentially impact on future decisions."
But that task was one largely left up to the press. Ironically, while Harper had pressed for hearings to grill Supreme Court nominees, there were no such hearings to explore the views of his hundreds of other appointees to lower levels of the bench. For those probing Brown's judicial philosophy, the chief clues came from an organization he had often represented in court, the Christian Legal Fellowship, whose founding principle is a rebuttal to every damning lawyer joke. "The vocation of law is a calling from God," it declares, and barristers themselves are "instruments through which the Holy Spirit of God works."(2)
As Nadeau asks: "How can recognition of gays and lesbians be advanced, and how can the social scorn they are still subjected to be challenged, if the government itself is playing a role in denying their dignity and trivializing prejudice towards them?
When we go to the polls on May 2, we have to send a clear message, that this is not the kind of Canada we want to live in.
Because if we don't, are we really prepared to live with the consequences?
Sources:
1. Rogue in Power: Why Stephen Harper is remaking Canada by Stealth, By Christian Nadeau, Lorimer Press, ISBN: 978-1-55277-730-5
2. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3
Just before the government fell on fraud and contempt charges, a Parliamentary committee voted to launch a full investigation into the human rights abuses at the G-20 in Toronto. We were also going to learn what the Auditor General had to say about the entire mess.
However, we have since learned that the Utah company hired by Stephen Harper is being charged for licence violations.
Ontario provincial police have laid charges against the private security firm and many of its top executives hired by the RCMP to do screening and metal detection at checkpoints during last summer's G20 summit in Toronto.
Contemporary Security Canada (CSC) is accused of a string of provincial offences under Ontario's private security guard legislation, including three counts of offering services while not licenced, hiring an unlicensed guard at the G20 and G8 and two counts of failing to ensure proper uniforms. During the probe, the OPP made the unusual move of executing a search warrant on RCMP headquarters in Ottawa on Nov. 24, 2010 and seized documents about the bidding and tendering of the contract.
Of course the Conservatives now have Julian Fantino and he was pretty good at "fixing" things for Mike Harris.
Krystalline Kraus is right. We need to make the G-20 an election issue and ask all local Conservative candidates of their views on the human rights abuses.
This is the front page of the Toronto Sun today. Just when you thought that Sun Media couldn't stoop any lower, they outdo themselves. I almost wish I was still getting my Sun Media Kingston Whig Standard so I could cancel it.
But I ended my 35 year subscription when they started running columns by Ezra Levant.
I'm told it's worse now. They should be ashamed. Fox News has more class.
In it he tells the story of how after exposing Harper's treaty with the European Union, that allowed multinationals to take over our fisheries, he received a threat from one of his MPs.
Shortly after, I got a call from Randy Kamp, parliamentary secretary to the fisheries minister and an MP from B.C., who aggressively demanded that I tell him where I got my information and rang off with "the government of Canada is unhappy with you." Keep in mind that in many, if not most, countries on the face of this Earth, a phone call like that from a government official to a journalist constitutes a death threat.
I was disturbed, but also baffled. I’d had governments unhappy with me for 40 years and never heard the like, and nothing in the Canadian tradition explained it. So I assumed this was just one out-of-control individual who didn’t know his job. I checked with people I know in Ottawa. They told me emphatically: "That’s them. That’s them exactly!"
Allan Gregg in his review of Lawrence Martin's book Harperland, confirms that that is exactly how Harper and Co. conduct business. With threats and intimidation.
And what Surette found even more disturbing, was that despite the fact that the elected MPs voted against the treaty, Harper signed it anyway. He just does as he pleases.
Majority or minority it won't matter. We need to vote him out. It's that simple.
On March 9, Gloria Galloway reported in the Globe that: "A long-running attempt to make it easier to produce and distribute copies of patented medicines for sale at cut-rate prices to the world’s poorest countries has been approved by the House of Commons."
But unbelievably Stephen Harper had his little lapdog Tony Clement recommend turning down the bill, perhaps this government's most inhumane action to date.
It passed and went to the unelected Harper dominated senate. They turned it down flat. Democracy at work.
Stephen Harper ended Parliament in typical style. He had the trained seals he’s appointed to the unelected Senate (a body he doesn’t believe in) sabotage the clear will of the democratically elected House of Commons with consequences that will cost the lives of “thousands, maybe millions, of poor people” in Africa and elsewhere.
Killing C-393 last week was a second example of the extraordinary harm a majority of Conservative senators have been ready aye ready to inflict at the behest of their master. (Some Conservatives stayed away from the chamber, apparently to avoid voting with the majority but not prepared to vote against them, and one, Nancy Ruth, honourably spoke in favor of the bill.) Have no doubt the majority knew exactly what they were doing and what the stakes were.
Last night my local Conservative candidate Alicia Gordon, hosted a $125 a plate fundraiser with two of Harper's senators, Mike Duffy and Hugh Segal, in attendance. She is bubbly and bright and no doubt charmed everyone in the room.
Now imagine that with a backdrop of the devastation that Aids is causing in Africa, a nation too poor to provide the proper medication to fight the disease.
I would like to ask her how she looks herself in the mirror. She is better than this, or at least I thought she was.
I sent her an email, though I'm not expecting a response.
We need to do this with every Conservative candidate. Bring them onto the national scene. Harper is trying to keep all campaigns local, so that people like Gordon don't have to wear his shame. We can't allow that to happen. We need the electorate to know just what they would be supporting.
I can't imagine too many voting to deny aids patients the right to life, simply because they are poor.
My note to Alicia:
Hi. I have to admit that I was quite disappointed to learn that you were running for Stephen Harper's party. As a former PC supporter, who voted for your husband back in the day, I was devastated when the Reformers took over and swung the party so far to the right they make the Tea Party look moderate.
Am I to assume that you are now homophobic?
Am I to assume that you support your government's boycott of a bill to provide generic medication to fight aids in Africa?
Am I to assume that you hold Parliament and our time-honoured institutions in contempt?
Am I to assume that you are now against women's rights? And please don't remind me that you are a woman, because it won't matter if you are sent to Ottawa. You will have no voice of your own. The very worst message to young women that they are destined to be subservient.
You claimed that you were going to run on strengthening social programs, while Harper is tearing them down.
Yes I am very disappointed and I hope in your campaigning you will denounce this government's actions and promise to reverse them, rather than simply being compliant.
I’m extremely disappointed that someone would target our campaign signs in such an organized manner,” said Keon. “I think we all realize that signs do sometimes become damaged in a campaign, however, our signs were directly targeted in different communities across Nepean-Carleton.
“This really is a direct attack on our democracy. This election is about presenting myself as a viable alternative to the current Member of Parliament. I have two young children at home, and I now have to explain to them why their father’s picture on my campaign signs has a bulls-eye on my head. It’s incredibly disturbing to me, my family and to our democracy,” concluded Keon.
This is what happens when you run a campaign on hatred and fear mongering. You incite rather than inspire. Hopefully the message will reach Harper and he'll tone the rhetoric.
Stephen Harper is denying that his campaign has fallen flat , which is a good thing, because it means that he will continue his course of fear mongering, which is starting to turn people off.
