The Harper government dictatorship continues to show itself in its true colours. Just a few points of late that I gather were not part of Harper’s election platform in the spring, as follows :
- Contrary to the job description for the Auditor General of Canada requiring fluency in both official languages, Harper appointed unilingual (English) Michael Ferguson from bilingual New Brunswick to the post. This smacks of partisanship and is disrespectful of bilingualism. Further, if a partisan appointment, it surely jeopardizes the AG Office mandate of ‘an independent and reliable source of objective, fact based information that Parliament needs’.
- The elimination of inspectors to verify the ‘Nutrition Facts’ labelling on food products, thus allowing food producers here and around the world, if they so wish, to supply inaccurate information. This is a potentially dangerous move for the sake of government budget cuts, especially since the nutrition facts have proven so reliable and helpful since their inception, thanks in part to government verification. (As an aside, maybe not as potentially dangerous as the cutbacks of government air safety inspectors some years ago allowing airlines to control aircraft safety requirements without verification.)
- The announcement by Peter Kent at the UN climate change conference in Durban that Canada will not renew its government commitment to climate change per the Kyoto accord, a Liberal party initiative implemented several years ago. Yet another of Harper’s ‘Commodity Economy’ plan for Canada primarily to protect ‘ethical’ (ha) oil sands.
Adding these items to a possible growing list of other ‘hidden agenda’ items, together with legislation that will proceed to become law due to the Harper government majority, namely closing down the Wheat Board, scrapping the long gun registry and building ‘super prisons’ due to tough on crime legislation that would never have become law under a minority government, does not fare well for Canada. The majority of Canadians clearly do not want these changes, contrary to Harper’s line that ‘Canadians have spoken by giving him a majority.’
Let’s face it, the present majority government on the basis of around only 22 per cent of the popular vote is a farce. Politics had reached that low a point prior to the last election, largely due to what the media called ‘Harper attack ads’ and what I call ‘Harper hateful propaganda and character assassination against any opposition,’ tantamount to a dictatorship. Harper had enough in his ‘war chest’ to do this, combined with a seemingly complete lack of ethics, respect and compassion. Unfortunately, none of the four other parties had enough money to counteract Harper’s demeaning barrage. This caused massive public apathy to a point of a very low turnout in the polls, resulting in the neo- conservatives gaining a majority with an abysmal number of votes, even though they ‘came up the middle’ in some ridings due to a split vote.
Further, the ‘first past the post’ type of election does not work with five parties as it did with two parties when instituted in Canada in the 1800s. As long as Canada does not have electoral reform and some kind of proportional representation we will be mired in the type of election and result that happened last time around. Clearly, partisanship has dictated that opposition coalition for the good of the Country is not an option.
This was not a democratic election. Many dictatorships around the world have come about due to similar scenarios. An election is only democratic if the parties have a level playing field. Money should not be a factor in destroying the level playing field. This has happened recently in Egypt where there is now the spectre of Sharia law.
Failing opposition party, public, political analyst and media support of electoral reform, the banning of electoral hate propaganda would help the situation.
Something has to give for sure, otherwise government propaganda together with public, political analyst and media apathy will eventually destroy the fabric of Canada.
It is time for less complacency and more passion in this country before it is too late.
John R. Shakespeare,
Charlottetown