On Canada's New Government
by C. L. Cook
"Speechless" was all a friend of mine not prone to that condition said of yesterday's majority election win for incumbent Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. It's a sentiment I shared, and one I'm sure is felt by millions of Canadians who watched poll results gape-mouthed last night.
"How could it be possible," I wondered, that a man who so recently was forced to dissolve the Parliament due to multiple findings by the independent Parliamentary watchdog's office of 'contempt of Parliament' return a majority government less than six weeks later?
That contemptible condemnation is unprecedented in the history of the nation, and as the Parliament is the "people's House" it means those Mr. Harper truly holds in contempt are the people and laws of Canada.
How is it possible that unprecedented alt-organizing by the nation's youth to bring out the vote resulted only in a measly 2% rise over the record-setting low participation seen in 2008? Barely 61% of Canadians eligible to vote bothered to come out Monday, resulting in a majority "mandate" for Mr. Harper with far less than 40% of the electorate behind he and his party.
Harper will now embark on the unencumbered transformation of Canada's liberal democracy he has for so long promised, (or threatened).
Some of the changes he has already managed over the last five years include: adoption of a U.S.-styled "law and order" mantra, replete with mandatory minimum sentences, the closure of prison farm programs, and proposals for the construction of billions of dollars worth of Supermax prisons.
Lest those likely private, for profit prisons don't fill, as Canada has seen a steady decrease in the crime rate over the last two decades, (figures Harper dismisses as incorrect) a ratcheted War on Drugs promises to keep the nascent Canadian prison industrial complex profitable for years to come.
In the last five years, Mr. Harper has, like his Liberal predecessors, devoted ever greater budgets to the military, while cutting vital social infrastructure spending, and on occasions too numerous to enumerate, expressed his unflinching enthusiasm for Canada's continued inclusion in America's forever wars abroad.
He has even managed to one up his Liberal colleagues in the House by expressing Canada's primacy among the supporters of Israel during that nation's assault on Lebanon in 2006, and vowed "Not one red cent in aid" would be forthcoming to Palestinian causes as Israel tightened its near-starvation blockade on Gaza following the free and fair election of Hamas. He, like Barack Obama, had little to say about 'Operation Cast Lead,' Israel's illegal and immoral assailing of the civilian population in Gaza over Christmas in 2008.
And, with a minority government, Mr. Harper also managed to use the treasury's purse strings to punish, withholding funding from groups and causes his ultra-orthodox Christianity and averred belief in "the market economy" opposed, while devoting billions to wasteful military spending on jet fighters and a seemingly limitless expansion of the Canadian Forces.
What further mischief he can do with a majority, or as he once described the office of the prime minister, a "benign dictatorship," is anyone's guess. Stephen Harper is no democrat; his actions both as prime minister and as leader of the opposition provide ample examples of his top down approach to organization and the exercise of power. He is an ideologue on a mission to transform the nation.
As Harper has been open enough about some of the changes he wishes to see, (while his less advertised desire to make of Canada a new, American-modeled republic remain in the background and out of the election campaign) it's hard to fathom why Canadians would support someone with so little regard for the people and history of the land he would lead.
That profound disregard was on full view for the world to see in Toronto last summer at the infamous G20 confab, where hundreds of concerned Canadians were brutalized by police, and more than a thousand were arrested on spurious charges and held in atrocious conditions. But support him they did.
Now Canadians can look forward to as many as five years of Harper's "dictatorial" rule, (few believing it will be a benign experience) followed by the hard work of trying to patch what torn fragments of the national fabric remain after him.
It's a dark day indeed for many in this country Canada today, but as former NDP stalwart Stephen Lewis remarked: On the bright side, in gaining his majority, Harper's Conservatives did what they had always wanted to do and all but destroy entirely the Liberals. Now, Lewis says, without the phony opposition of Canada's second right wing party, perhaps there is hope for a real move away from the right wing, corporate domination of Canada. Possible perhaps, five years down the road.
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