Canada: the new face of authoritarianism?

          Stephen Harper has never projected a Mr Nice Guy image.

          To reveal my own biases, I find him pompous, stiff, ideologically rigid and biased, (silently) arrogant, petulant when opposed, a bit "full of himself". Except for ideological rigidity and bias, none of these qualities necessarily make for a bad politician. It is even arguable that a bit of chutzpah sometimes helps in his job.. (Consider another field, music. Richard Wagner wrote great music but that didn't prevent him from being a racist jerk..)

          Harper's election, it must be admitted, marked a new style (and to a lesser degree a new orientation) in Canadian federal politics, one based on the gritty, dirty, below-the-belt American neoconservative / New Right style. 

http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/angry-white-men/

(note: this article is from the conservative Macleans magazine, so this is how the Center and moderate Right see things - not just us flamin' Lefties. My major disagreement with the author might be about the chances of the "dinosaurs" going extinct anytime soon. I personally don't think they have hit their full stride yet. We ain't seen nothing yet..)

           Harper's gritty, mean-spirited populism shows in several areas, which we have treated in our articles the last few years. Primary among these:

1- critical, negative, demeaning attitude toward the media. Many journalists have complained about the chill and the Stalinoid control of the media (ironically, the Harperites like to beat up on Communist countries and parade about in the robes democracy, liberty and "individualism").

http://voices-voix.ca/en/issues/transparency/media

2- the muzzling of science when it does not accord with neoconservative "Free Market" ideology. This is especially obvious on issues relating to the environment and Albertan Tarsand exploitation.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/federal-scientists-closely-monitored-during-polar-conference-1.1248559 

Talk about a Stalinoid time warp: beam me up, Scotty, UP! FAST!

http://www.terry.ubc.ca/2014/02/19/is-the-canadian-government-censoring-its-scientists/

Kafka would have loved this..

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/03/experimental-lakes-areas-curious-episode.html

A true national tragedy this one. F'ng obscene: deliberate destruction of World Class science - philistines!

Update: a happy ending, for a change (you don't see many when it comes to environmental issues). There are some good folks and forward looking institutions out there. The Experimental Lakes Area project and infrastructure were saved in the nick of time.

http://saveela.org

3- The Nadon affair. After the supreme court refused a Harper nominee for the bench, Stephen went for the jugular.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/05/05/andrew-coyne-pmo-has-created-another-needless-controversy-by-picking-fight-with-canadas-top-judge/

           Again, we choose the conservative Maclean's magazine, to avoid the argument of excessive ideological bias on our part. Andrew Coyne even seems a bit worried about Harper's mental health. Thinking conservatives seem to be having the doubts about the drift of the Harper government as the following comment from a reader suggests:

"Edmund Burke believed a conservative was someone who respected the accumulated wisdom within existing institutions and defended them from radical assault.
Some conservative Harper is."

Prostitution in Canada: an interesting social experiment

background:

"In a Dec. 20 ruling, the high court unanimously struck down laws against street soliciting, living on the avails of prostitution and keeping a brothel.

The Supreme Court deemed that the laws endangered sex workers and were violations of the constitutional guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person. It gave the government one year to come up with new legislation before the current Criminal Code provisions lapse."

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/02/17/conservatives_invite_public_comments_on_rewriting_canadas_prostitution_laws.html

            In an innovative move, the Federal Conservative government of Stephen Harper has decided to consult the Canadian public on its attitudes towards sex workers and the sex trade. 

Speak Up! Get your 2¢ in..

           The original reason for the supreme court's overturning the old codes on prostitution and sex trade work was a progressive desire  to protect sex workers from harm. The old, puritanically inspired laws, tried to sweep the problem under the rug: out of sight, out of mind.. But clandestinity also played against the sexworker, rendering them more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The court tried to step in and provide them with a minimum of security and protection of civil rights.

            However, all acts have unexpected consequences ("blowback"). The supreme court's ruling has obliged the government to draft new laws and, in the process, provided the opportunity for this novel experiment in collective governance. Fortunately, the Harper government people had the wisdom the seize this opportunity to listen to the people. For this, at least, they deserve some credit.

The larger context: Will we have the wisdom to use the new electronic media to empower civil society? Or will we pervert it to dumb down the masses so they can be better controlled by a functionally demented economic elite ready to sacrifice the future of the planet on the altar of their moloch, Profit? Everything is up for grabs, today. Things can tip off in any one of a number of directions, some expected, some totally novel. We are living a time of Great Choosing. This social experiment by the Harper government is just one small symptom of these times and their character.

                  One suspects the Harper government was taken by surprise by the high court ruling. Several commentators have made the point that the government does not seem to be acting ideologically. Like myself, they appear to be genuinely confused by the the whole sextrade issue and are feeling their way along a dark wall looking for the light switch..

                For some short, thoughtful comments of the ethical reasoning behind the court ruling, see the following article by our favorite conservative journalist, Andrew Coyne:

Coyne: court rules to protect sex workers

                Boy! we don't often get the chance to give praise to the Harperites. We might as well take the opportunity to give them credit for something else they got right: eliminating the penny as legal tender. In our overpopulated world of rising expectations and depleting non-renewable resources we have much better things to do with a valuable metal like copper than to make trash-money out of it. Think: electrical conductors, motors, generators and all that other good stuff that keeps our modern civilization running.. 


Bye! Bye! Pretty Penny

Caught with your hand in the cookie jar, EH?

           Senate rules allow senators to claim up to $22,000 per annum to maintain a secondary residence near to parliament in the Ottawa area. Conservative senator Mike Duffy and two other senators (one a Liberal) are in hot water in claiming the allowance while actually residing in Ottawa (and not in their claimed primary residence in their home province). The Duffy saga has indeed taken some weird twists in the last few weeks. Senator Duffy offered to pay back the $90,000 he owes the taxpapers, claiming ignorance of the rules on his part. It now turns out that Nigel Wright, PM Steven Harper's chief of staff payed the re-imbursement out of his own pocket, raising some fundamental questions of ethics in high places.

          From the pen of our favorite conservative journalist, Andrew Coyne. When your own best people start crying foul, you know there's got to be a problem.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/Coyne+Judgement+lacking+Mike+Duffy+bailout/8392611/story.html

          Coyne, I think, rightly analyzes the ethical problems raised by the Duffy affair. Was the Duffy bailout by Nigel Wright a loan? Then it should have been registered as an asset by Mr Wright. Was it a gift? If so, then under Senate rules, Duffy should not have accepted it. Either way the action was, as Coyne argues, stunningly stupid. (Or, are the players so assured of the passive compliance - or stupidity - of the public, they feel themselves immune: "little gods of the earth"?)

          Once again, it seems we are faced with the essential truth of the old adage: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Harperites were elected on a platform of Law and Order, responsible government and transparency. We've got Law and Order with the incessant tightening of regulations concerning immigrants, refugee claimants and unemployment benefits (most of these changes rendering the laws less accomodating or even mean-spirited). But where have the responsible government and transparency gone? Are the senators who claim expenses they are not entitled to behaving responsibly? Is the government being transparent in its release of information to the public? The very fact that Harper's right hand man, Mr Wright, bailed Senator Duffy out would have remained a state secret if it had not been leaked to the press. And who is responsible for this leak and why? 

          Under a government elected on a promise of transparent government, the atmosphere in Ottawa appears to some observers even murkier than it was under the Chrétien Liberals.