Victory or Loss?

So it really happened. The Prime-Minister prorogued the parliament. Some people have suggested that there is still a victory here. After all, the opposition stopped the Government from taking away the right to strike, and Harper was unable to take away public funding for political parties. But this victory is purely temporary. At a practical level the Governor-General has shown that she will not stand up an protect the constitution. This means that she would never have allowed a Coalition in the first place. This means that in January, when the Tories bring a budget to the House with all those things from the Economic Statement that we have temporarily stopped, the opposition will just have to let them go through in the budget. Because the GG will not sanction a Coalition and they can’t have an election three months before the Liberals choose a new leader. All that has happened is that the Tories bought enough time to spend millions on advertising, lying to the public about pretty much everything. There is no victory here.

Instead we have suffered a terrible loss. Because the Governor-General has shown that Governments of Canada can put an end to parliament any time they wish. This means that if a Government is clever they will never have to face a confidence vote again. What we really learned today is that the Government of Canada can rule by decree and that we live in a dictatorship. No, there is no victory here, neither at a practical nor at a principled level.

Remember the words of Yeats

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere Anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed eye is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Don't Vote for Harper

Why People Shouldn’t Vote for Harper

Let’s forget for a moment whether one agrees or disagrees with the various policies of the Conservative Party. Frankly I am appalled by a number of policies of every party. And lets forget for the moment that Harper consistently lied about various issues like taxing of income trusts. Any party in power is going to be guilty of lying about a few issues if for no other reason than certain realities of governing are going to be a surprise even to the most ideological or experienced party leaders. One might notice that there is a great irony in the fact that the Conservatives built their entire public image on the notion that they were more honest and dependable than the Liberals but there are no surprises here. The over-riding reason that no one – no matter what your politics – should not vote for Harper’s government is very simple: They have shown time and again they have no respect for the sovereignty of parliament! On more than one occasion when the House has passed a bill that the Government doesn’t like or agree with, Harper has explicitly stated that they will simply ignore the law! A Government that has said that it is not bound by the will of the House has said in essence that it is not bound by the will of the people. Such a government has made it clear that they are not bound by democracy and has therefore lost the right to govern. When Harper’s Government said that it would ignore the House concerning the principles of the Kyoto accord or the issue of the lowering of the Flag, it showed that as long as the democratic process leads to results it doesn’t like, these results will be willfully and flagrantly ignored. (And, by the way, the Harper Government has shown that they will also ignore the results of international democratic process as well.)This is the stuff of which dictatorships are made. People who believe in democracy should never vote for a party or government that doesn’t believe in democracy!