Wake up Canada!

If this country allows the Harper government to prorogue parliament again and sits by and does nothing, then as a nation we probably deserve to fall into fascism. When a nation is unwilling to stand up for democracy and justice it deserves what it gets. The very fact that people on the news channels blithely discuss the failure of the Government to abide by orders of parliament and the idea that the Prime Minister can just dissolve the nation's legislative body in order to avoid bad press and potential retribution from the majority of the House shows just how bad things have gotten. Shame on Michael Ignatieff for his disappearing act in the past week. 

This is what should be happening; the three opposition parties should be on the television every day making it clear that Canada has slipped into dictatorship. They should be filing cases and the World Court, they should be calling on the Canada to be immediately ejected from the Commonwealth of Nations. We have an serious crisis in this country, and just as Germany and Italy slipped into fascism in the 1930s, if we do nothing now we are in real trouble. But the Official Opposition is not even on the radar screen, it is like they have just given up. The NDP is making some noise but it amounts to very little unless we can get unified action on the part of the opposition. 

Wake up Canada, you are losing the fundamental structure of our democracy.

Say so-long to democracy guys. . . .

I am amazed that many, maybe even most, Canadians really don't get it. Yesterday by refusing to abide by an order of parliament the Harper government took us out of the realm of democracy and put us in the realm of a dictatorship. If the government is able to ignore an order of parliament, which by many legal accounts is the highest legal directive in the land, then our government is a de facto dictatorship. This is fairly simple folks. And all of those Conservatives out there who are acting as apologists for the tyrannous actions of this government, keep in mind the precedent that has been set here. When the Conservatives find themselves in opposition (if they ever actually relinquish power, and it is not clear that they will now that they have made their dictatorial powers clear) the next government can further entrench the dictatorship of the PMO until we have no democracy left. And what will the Conservatives say then? They will have no position to criticize a government that is extending the very principles they first enacted. We are now in very dangerous territory. And if the Liberals do not force the issue and they let the government get away with ignoring the real power of parliament then we are all in very big trouble. 

Even the last Liberal government, which was so vilified for its corruption was quick to call a public inquiry when faced with a real scandal ( a scandal that didn't even compare to a serious cover-up of torture). And honestly I cannot imagining even the Liberals ignoring an order of parliament, and if they ever had Harper would have gone crazy with his criticism. The last thing that compares to this in English parliament is, I think, when Prime Minister William Pitt refused to dissolve parliament when he lost a vote of confidence. 

And can someone tell me why Warren Kinsella is the face of the Liberal Party? I have seen almost no sign of any major Liberal MP in the media for several days now. Pathetic guys, really pathetic. 

Liberals continue their incompetence. . . .

Today was a perfect illustration why Mr. Ignatieff will never be Prime Minister of Canada. As for me, I am very frustrated by the outrageousness of the Harper government, but I think I am even more frustrated by the total inaction of the Liberal Opposition. Today the Conservative government of Canada announced that they will refuse to abide by an order of Parliament, an almost unprecedented action in the British Parliamentary system. And what did the Liberals do? Well . . . . . absolutely nothing! Any competent opposition would have been all over the news today, everywhere we looked we should have seen Ignatieff carrying on about this. He should have had major news conference explaining to people just how important it is for a government to ignore an order of parliament. He should have been pointing out to people that if the government can ignore an order of parliament it means we live in a dictatorship. He should have done media interviews demonstrating what he is going to do to save Canadian democracy. He should have already filed an injunction demanding full disclosure. Instead he decided to do absolutely nothing. All we saw on the news today was Stockwell Day. This has been the MO of the LPC for years now, let the conservatives do anything they want and expect that the people will protest and move naturally back to the Liberals. Well it AIN'T going to happen that way Mr. Ignatieff! Being in opposition means you actually have to do something! You have to be proactive and go after the Government in any way that you can instead of sitting there looking foolish. 

Anyone who thinks that Ignatieff is going to be the next Prime Minister is dreaming in technicolor. 

Liberal sinking fortunes and the status quo. . . .

I keep wondering why the Liberals are sinking in fortunes while the Cons are rising. It obviously is not the fact that the Harper government is competent. I know that the majority of Canadians are not paying attention to the quiet ways that the Government is slowly taking apart this country and dismantling democracy. I also know, and even the polls and last election confirm this, that a vast majority of Canadians are closer politically to the Liberals than to the Conservatives. But when it comes down to it the Liberals simply are failing to do anything political. In order to come back from the political wilderness I believe that all the Liberals have to do is produce a significant policy shift which aims at reinventing the party and reinventing politics in general in this country. Included in this new policy approach would be a real decentralization of the power of the PMO, new measures to ensure access to information, a compulsory weekly free press conference with the Prime Minister with no pre-determined questions, a significant shift away from fossil fuel dependence and investment into new technologies (with private/public partnerships if necessary), a genuine commitment to electoral reform (something the Cons in particular are scared of). Overall, the Liberal party needs to commit to real changes in policy and approach. This would bring the Liberal Party back into the forefront of Canadian politics. Now I am no Liberal but I think any simple analysis of the political situation in this country makes this pretty obvious. Only the Liberals wont follow the obvious path because the powerful in the party have become beholden in recent years to many of the same forces that the Cons are beholden to. They are, in other words too much part of the political establishment to actually want to change things and that will be there very undoing.  

New Liberal Ads from a Left perspective. . .

I haven't really seen how other leftists are looking at the recent ads by Ignatieff and the Liberal party but I think the ads were a fairly good way to go for the Liberals. By keeping it fairly positive and trying to say that Canada needs a government that tries to build rather than tear down the Liberals are certainly creating a different image than the Conservatives have created in recent years. Even though I am not a big fan of Ignatieff, the country could certainly benefit from a leader who is not so quick to poison the political well. 

There is, of course, an irony in this portrayal of Ignatieff being sold in the new ads. Ignatieff's now famous support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his stated support for "indefinite detention, coercive interrogation, targeted assassinations, and even pre-emptive war," place Ignatieff squarely in the realm of Harper and Bush on some pretty significant ways. But it also demonstrates Ignatieff as what he is, a child of the traditional noblesse oblige, cold-war, centrist who is quick to stand up for Liberal Values at home but not so quick to stand up for them elsewhere. Let us not forget the history of Western imperialism folks, it was perpetrated with the support of even the left wing parties in many countries, parties that knew that they and their working-class supporters stood to benefit from many of the imperialist escapades. Of course, the Conservative party can hardly attack Ignatieff for political positions that they themselves hold with even greater fervor. 

Still, given my basic political disagreements with Ignatieff, I will still give him a fairly high score for political strategy and a willingness to de-poison the political discourse. 

Ignatieff, the NDP and Election Scenarios. . . .

It took me a few days to  realize what the Liberals must have been thinking when they decided to finally attempt to bring down Harper and his government. I guess I am a little slow this week. Ignatieff and his inner circle are surely thinking that even though they are not particularly high in the poles, with the economy slowly improving (at least by the traditional numbers) this is their best time to go to the poles. But they are not trying to force an election because they are thinking they must win. On the contrary, all they have to do is have a strong showing. If the Liberal Party were to win a minority they figure they can govern for a couple of years with only moderate cooperation from the NDP and the Bloc. But if Harper  wins a small minority (and I am sure that this is the best he can expect) he will once again find himself in a untenable position, unable to govern in part because of his epic ego and partisanship and in part because it will be his forth election and it will be clear at that point even with his own party that he cannot win a majority. So I figure Ignatieff is thinking if Harper wins a minority and tries to govern they can vote down the Thrown Speech and then go to the governor general and ask for their own chance to form the government. Such a request will be almost impossible to deny and the Liberals will find themselves in government by default. Then all Ignatieff  has to do is to make the Parliament function better than Harper was able to do (which should be easy) to maintain his government for a good while. At this point the Liberals can take credit for any recovery that may take place as well as for having smarter government and improving the tone of politics and they would have a good chance at a majority. 

Now given the reasonableness of this scenario, the only thing I can't figure is why the NDP changed their tune so suddenly. If this scenario panned out they would surely benefit and all the polling indications suggest that they could actually gain seats in an election. The only thing I can figure is that they actually want the election but don't want to appear that the want the election. Seeing Anne Magrath on CBC last night suggesting that the Liberals are being irresponsible by edging toward an election and running advertising at a time of economic uncertainty must be an attempt to position themselves as a sober and cautious alternative to the Liberals. Now this is probably a stupid and hypocritical game on the part of the NDP, unless it is specifically designed, with the blessing of Ignatieff, to distance the NDP from the Liberals during an election campaign in order to undercut any talk of a coalition by the Tories who want to continue to milk that cow because it is one of the only weapons they have left. 

By the way, wasn't that a bizarre news conference held by Mr. Kenney in which he unveiled a strange and inexplicable tape of what they say was Ignatieff saying nothing significant? It was sort of sadly pathetic. Of course if they realize the scenario outlined above, and they surely must,  they must be in a state of utter panic. If the only way they can continue to govern is to win a majority they have to know they are really in trouble. 

Hoover and todays leaders

Anyone who has not read Kevin Baker’s article in the new Harper’s Magazine should go out and get it immediately. Mr. Baker makes a brilliant comparison between President Hoover and the new President of the United States. Baker shows much the two men have in common at a personal level in a way that is quite compelling. He then demonstrates that Hoover failed because he was too steeped in the economic paradigm in which he was brought up. While Hoover, quite contrary to public perception, made serious and innovate efforts to deal with an economic crisis that the majority of people didn’t even understand. But Hoover’s failure was rooted in his inability to step into a new paradigm, to find structurally new ways of dealing with what was happening. Baker then shows how Obama, despite his radical rhetoric, is making the exact same mistakes. Obama is simply unable of stepping into the new frontier of economic thought that he needs to in order to really deal with the problems he is facing. He is surrounding himself with small-minded party politicians who represent small constituencies and have no courage to make real changes. Instead of stepping into the realm of political conflict that he must in order to make changes, Obama is attempting to play a political game of cooperation and reconciliation that will lead into cosmetic changes in systems that require serious overall.

 

How similar are our political problems here in Canada! Ignatieff, is a man who has no serious vision for dealing with the problems we are facing. Harper has poisoned the political well of Canadian politics and corrupted the entire system with hate and ultra-partisanship. The Conservatives walked Canada right into this economic devastation by squandering surpluses on tax cuts that helped no one but the prosperous. They then tabled a budget which was just another joke. It promised lots of temporary spending, most of which will never go out to the people who need it, and more permanent tax cuts which mean nothing to average working-class and middle-class people. But the Liberals watched it happen and voted for it. Then Ignatieff made a lot of noise about holding the government to account on several important issues, but let the Harper government walk away without a single genuine concession, unless you call another committee of white men with suits real progress.

All that we have learned is that Ignatieff, even if he becomes Prime Minister, will fail because he has no genuine ideas. He is working within the same paradigm as Mr. Harper and thus he cannot step beyond the very politics that he claims to be opposing.

The depression of the 1930s almost brought capitalism to its knees and led in Europe and elsewhere to fascism. Capitalism saved itself by the actions of men like FDR who were willing to shift the paradigm away from the politics that had reigned since the previous depression in the 1870s. But in the present crisis it appears that no leaders are stepping out on the limb that must be traversed in order to shift modern politics and economics into a new era.

 

Excellent . . . Another Committee!

Lots of Nortel Workers, many with decades of service, have been laid off without severance pay and with their pensions lost. This week a number of Nortel executives are getting big bonuses. And while this is going on did the leader of the opposition choose to do something? No, instead he decided to do what politicians do best; strike up a committee.  It is like something out of Monty Python. I am just amazed. Anyone who thought that Mr. Ignatieff’s MO was different from the standard politico can now see the light. Just what the unemployed in Canada need: another committee of Liberal and Conservative MPs who will spend three months of per diems to decide . . . absolutely nothing. Meanwhile more people will become unemployed this summer and more people will lose their homes while Ignatieff enjoys his life of comfortable prosperity.

Here’s an idea: instead of going on the BBQ circuit, Mr. Ignatieff should be compelled to spend the summer months living in social housing on four hundred dollars a month. Maybe then he would understand that what people need are not more committees. What we need is genuine people of action to lead in troubled times.  

I suspect that the scenario will play out something like this: this committee will be entirely unable to come to any kind of agreement and their report will reflect this. This indecision will not derive from any genuine ideological difference but will exist because Ignatieff see EI as a wedge issue and has already instructed his MPs what they are permitted to decide. Ignatieff will then make a big show out of his attempt to find compromise with Harper’s government and will make his argument concerning the need for an election. The Liberal will probably win and when they get into power we will see that their policy stance (where it can get out of a committee) is almost indistinguishable from the Conservatives. They will not reverse most of the horrendous legislation that Conservatives have brought in and we will have seen, once again, a quiet shift to the right in Canada. And Harper will resign with a huge pension and a high paying job in the private sector.

Politics has become something like professional sports; two teams of rich men fighting it out but whose victory or loss means very little to them since they will be wealthy whether they win or lose. Only instead of meeting in an arena they met at a committee tale. Maybe we should make this dubious EI committee meet on the lawn of Parliament and we could set up bleachers and sell peanuts and beer. And after three months of cheering, the spectators can go home just as empty and unfulfilled as when it all started. 

Harper's a Bully: Ignatieff's a coward!

Well, for all those Liberal rumor-mongers who spend the last month condemning Jack Layton at the merest suggestion that he might vote to keep Harper’s Government alive, it is time to eat your words. Because while the NDP has consistently voted against this Government in matters of confidence, the Liberal Party has proven once again that it is little more than a rubberstamping committee for Stephen Harper. Harper must be in a constant state of political orgasmic ecstasy. He surely can’t believe his luck; to have three spineless and weak opposition leaders in a row is a political dream come true. It would be laughable if it were not so pathetic! We watched the Liberal polling numbers go up over the past few months but now watch the numbers begin to creep the other way until the Liberals are back in the 20s again. The reason, of course, is simple. Harper operates in politics like a bully. But there is one thing people dislike more than a bully, and this is someone who acts as though they are tough enough to stand up to the bully only to back down at the very moment of conflict. This creates a kind of visceral impulse of disgust which lowers the would-be hero to a state lower than the bully. Being nasty and hostile is always distasteful in politics, but being cowardly is surely worse. If I were a Liberal today I would be hiding my head in the sand and ripping up my membership card. 

PS. A number of Partisan hacks have tried to leave comments on this posting suggesting that Layton tried to make a deal with Harper, and that Layton is a weak hypocrite etc etc.... as though in the absence of any actual deal between the NDP and Harper, Liberal hacks just make one up out of thin air! It is pathetic! I am not Partisan in any sense, I am no fan of Layton and have always made a point of criticizing him where critique is due. But this fact is simple: the NDP, whatever you think of Layton or NDP policy in general, is the only party in the House that has consistently voted against Harper in confidence matters. IT IS A SIMPLE FACT! The rest is spin. 

Ignatieff is a Dion Clone

Today Ignatieff showed that his just as weak, hopeless, and dithering as Dion. The Liberals are pathologically afraid of Harper for some reason and now they have just shown again that they have no balls and Ignatieff will go the way that Dion did. Soon his public image will be seen as weak and useless. 

At least another year of Harper's frightening and dictatorial rule. 

Negative Ads, Percy Shelley and Bloodsucking Conservatives

Ok, I am only going to make one more post about these negative ads because it is getting boring. But since I have had a few people on the internet observe that they doubt that these ads are bigoted I just need to clear this up. The easy way to know that these ads have an undercurrent of bigotry is with a small conceptual exercise. Imagine for a moment that Michael Ignatieff happened to be a person of color. In this Case it is clear that the even the Conservative Party would not have run the ads because the implications would be very clear to everyone. Or if the ReformaTories did run these ads under such condition the outcry would have been so overwhelming that they would have pulled them. As it is the ran another ad that I am sure they have pulled (at least in this area of the country) which showed various events over the past thirty-five years and said that "these were the events that shaped my Canada . . . and Ignatieff missed them all." The bigoted, dare I say racist, implications of this ad were much more clear and that is the reason, I venture to say, that I have not seen it again.

Tell every ReformaTory you can that these ads do not constitute political discourse and they bilittle us all and slowly destroy the core of our 'democracy.' Oh yea, I forgot, the destruction of democracy seems to be the actual goal of the ReformaTories. They cut off funding for court challenges, they have destroyed the freedom of Cabinet Ministers (and Caucus members) to speak, they have take almost all funding from adult literacy programs, they destroyed de facto freedom of information, they fired watchdogs who do their jobs, they have ignored court orders, they have ignored actual bills passed by the majority of the House (failing to implement the will o the people), they have created handbooks on how to shut down parliamentary committees, they have prorogued parliament to avoid a confidence vote, and though they created the office of the Parlliamentary Budget officer, they cut his powers after he did his job and have consistency refused to cooperate with him because he doesn't say what they want to hear. The destruction of democracy and the 'coronation' of their leader into absolute power is clearly their goal.

But you know, the only thing I don't understand about it is why average Conservative MPs are putting up with this. Surely they got elected to have some say in how government works and if you read Garth Turner's recent book Sheeples it is clear that they MPs have no say at all. And watching the Government self-destruct means many of them will lose their seats so why don't they just speak up?

I met murder on the way-
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him;

All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.


Shelley (from The Mask of Anarchy)

Now imagine Harper as Castlereagh and the seven fat blood suckers as John Baird, Jay Hill, Jason Kenney, Peter Van Loan, Jim Flahety, Gerry Ritz, and Rona Ambrose.

Igantieff the Western Imperialist.

I guess I should be clear. Despite speaking out against the negative Conservative ads which I consider bigoted and out of line, I have no intention of defending Michael Ignatieff as an intellectual or a politician. I believe that Ignatieff is another in a long line of Western-centric, imperialistic, and even warmongering thinkers who use the intellectual constructs that emerged from the Enlightenment to wrap his ideas in rational respectability. Lest we forget that Mr.Ignatieff was one of the most avid intellectual defenders of Bush’s war in Iraq and he gave a ‘liberal’ respectability to what was obviously a neo-imperialist effort on the part of the US to gain greater control of the geo-politically  important oil-rich region. Of course when Ignatieff saw real political power in Canada as a genuine possibility, he attempted to distance himself from his support for the disastrous war.  In his article in the New York Times Ignatieff claimed that  he failed to ask himself the ‘hard questions.’ Imagine that, a man who generally portrays himself as a world-class intellectual failed at the very thing on which intellectuals should hang their credibility; asking the hard question. But Ignatieff’s failure is not based on any naivety or emotional hopefulness on his part as he might have us believe. Rather, Ignatieff’s words and actions make it clear that his support for the War in Iraq was part of an overriding Western tendency to believe that the powers of the West have the moral authority and credibility to take any measures to enforce their will. This point is clearly demonstrable when we read the soul ‘hard question’ that Ignatieff admits that he failed to ask concerning the War in Iraq; “I let emotions carry me past the hard questions,” Ignatieff claims, “like; can Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites hold together in peace what Saddam Hussein held together by terror?” Instead of asking whether the Western powers have a right to invade a sovereign nation (a nation by the way that the Western powers made and supported in the first place), Ignatieff refers exclusively to whether the forces in Iraq are capable of living up to the Western standards. Of course Ignatieff fails to even mention that though not all the roots of the disputes between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites are caused by Western interventions they have been badly exasperated in Iraq by years of Western support for dictatorships which either acted in the West’s interests or were kept busy among themselves, thus not acting against Western interests.

For an more eloquent and thorough exploration of this issue see this article from the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/06/intellectualwarmonger

Thus if anyone wants to attack Michael Ignatieff, why don’t they address issues of war and policy rather than personal geography?

 

 

 

The Visitor

I turned my last blog post into a parody of the Conservative attack ads. Tell me what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWpJLIZR1Vg&feature=channel_page

Was Gandhi a carpet-bagger?

In response to the sickening attack ads recently published by the Conservatives, I offer this small tidbit of information. Mohandas K. Gandhi left Indian in 1888 to study law in London after which he lived in South Africa for twenty-one years. During his time in South Africa Gandhi moved the nation and contributed significantly to the cause of the oppressed. When Gandhi returned to India after approximately 26 years he was greeted as a hero for the work he had done in the cause of justice. Even the poor and uneducated of India in the early years of the 20^th century were able to look beyond their boarders and recognize that a contribution to the world by one of their own enriched all of them. Of course, as we all know, Gandhi went on to contribute incalculably to the nation of India both culturally and politically. Who would dare call this man a carpet-bagger? 

Poilievre the Carpetbagger

Pierre Poilievre should resign. After all, he is from Calgary and he has the temerity to represent my riding here in Ottawa. He is a carpet-bagger, an interloper! Go back to Alberta Mr. Poilievre! No one who grew up in Calgary could have any commitment to Nepean-Carelton.

Unfair! I hear you say. Poor Pierre could have a commitment to Nepean-Carelton and still be a good Albertan. Not according to Poilievre himself who has defended the anti-Ignatieff attack ads suggesting that Mr. Ignatieff’s time in Britain and the US precludes him from being a devoted Canadian and the Prime Minister of the Country. But I bet Poilievre would say that if he were called back to live in Alberta he would still carry his principles(?) and commitments back with him and be a committed Albertan. Well, if this is so he should show a little respect to others. Furthermore, the Conservative ads verge on racism because they imply that any immigrant to this country is not fully Canadian unless they renounce any commitment that they may have to their nation of origin. Once again Poilievre’s actions, and those of the entire Conservative Party, do not represent serious political discourse, only petty, small-minded, partisan interest. The voters of Nepean-Carleton and Canada have had enough!

 

Conservatives are attacking all Canadians

By now most people have probably seen the much awaited Conservative attack ads against Michael Ignatieff. Until I actually saw them I really didn’t think the Conservatives would be so provocative as to insinuate that Ignatieff is somehow less Canadian than other people because he has not lived in Canada for his whole life. What next? Might they suggest that because he is a world renowned academic he is somehow unqualified to be the Prime Minister? Oh yea, they did that too. These ads are a serious and significant indictment not of Michael Ignatieff but of the Conservative leadership because they are a consummate example of negative advertising. Instead of making substantive claims about Ignatieff’s approach to policies, his more general approach to politics, or even his integrity, the Conservatives have lowered political discourse to geography. Presumably, any Canadian who has lived outside of the country for any length of time, or even a so-called snow-bird who spends significant portions of his or her year away, is not really Canadian. But most troubling aspect of these ads are this: since Ignatieff chose to give up his prestigious and lucrative career  abroad and has spent the past few years here in Canada working for his constituents, what does this say about recent immigrants to Canada? Are they also less Canadian than the rest of us because they have only spent a few years here? And what is the cut-off point? I was not born in this country and since arriving in the 1970s I have spend quite a few years out of the country. Am I to assume that the government of my country questions my status as a Canadian? Harper and his bullies have done many questionable and sinister things but now they have put everyone’s citizenship status in question and put themselves in the position of deciding who qualifies as Canadian and who doesn’t. This is a disturbing and frightening precedent which should trouble everyone. Once again the Conservatives have shown that they have no respect for the law or constitution of this country. I hope that Canadians overwhelmingly reject these distasteful and troubling actions by the Conservatives and let them know that Stephen Harper is not the arbiter of people’s citizen status. It seems to me that regardless of one's political affiliation, these ads should be considered offensive and an attack not only on Michael Ignatieff but on all of us. 

What do our Politicians stand for.

In the lead up to the Liberal convention conservative pundits are ratcheting up their rhetoric against Ignatieff in an effort, one supposes, to stem the growing tide of his perceived popularity. Thus far, however, with few obvious targets on which to centre their negative rhetoric, the reoccurring theme of Conservative talking points has been the simple claim that Mr. Ignatieff doesn’t seem to stand for anything. “Sure, he’s smart,” they concede, “but what does he actually stand for?” They ask. And then comes the inevitable reply that he doesn’t stand for anything and that he is all show. Now here is a monumental irony in action. In the lead up to the  2006 election the cornerstone of the Conservatives campaign added up to little more that “We aren’t the Liberals!” On the heels of the Sponsorship scandal the Conservatives estimated that this is all they had to do to get elected. In the next election they stood for so little that they even tried to avoid publishing a platform and only did so a few days before the actual voting day under the pressure of media scrutiny. The platform, by the way said little of any substance. In the end the Conservative Party under Harper’s tutelage has centered almost all of their electoral efforts on attacking the Liberals rather than defining themselves. This  has led to the continual display of irony in which whenever they are embroiled in a problem or scandal their only defense seems to be the refrain that “The Liberals used to do that, and usually worse than we.” The only issues that the Conservative have consistently pursued have been ‘Crime’ and ‘Taxes.’ In the case of crime, this is a typical right-wing scare tactic. The system of law enforcement in Canada, the one that is so woefully lax according to the rhetoric of the Conservatives, has ushered in a gradual decline in Crime over the last thirty years. In this case the media helps to inadvertently promote the Conservative rhetoric that  the country is about to fall into chaos of gang-violence and murderous rampages. However, given the decline in crime, we must conclude that overall the system is working more or less the way it is supposed to. (One could, of course, make a more profound critique of the system’s emphasis on incarceration and lack of preventative social policies. But the point here is simply that the Conservative critique is based on an entirely false premise that crime is rampant and on the increase. ) Somewhat ironically, one of their only actual legislative efforts on crime is to eliminate the long-gun registry, a move that is strongly opposed by police forces across the country. The other issue that the Conservatives have tried to make theirs is taxes. They have tried to represent themselves as the party that has and will decrease your taxes, trying to benefit from the widespread perception that Canadians pay an exceptionally high rate of tax. The main part of their tax policy has been to lower the GST by two points. This is a move that most economists disregard as, at best, totally irrelevant to most people, and at worst, entirely wrongheaded. Even a number of Conservative Party insiders have admitted that the decision to lower the GST was not based on sound economic policy but on a public relations effort. The Conservative also attempted to portray themselves as tax fighters in other sectors like personal and income taxes. Anyone who has filed taxes over the past couple of years knows that in most income brackets taxes have stayed the same or even increased.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that while the Conservatives are trying to portray Mr. Ignatieff as little more than a tweed blazer with no genuine political ideas, the Conservative are even worse than bereft of ideas and that their only idea is to misrepresent themselves, their opponents, and the state of the country. Harper himself cannot even rise to the level of being a tweed blazer; he is only a sweater-vest with a disturbing grin. Next time someone asks what their political opponent stands for, whether Liberal, Conservative, or otherwise, ask them what they really stand for. 

Harper and History

The unusual  events of history brought Stephen Harper to power, and soon I believe history will take that power away from him. First Harper was lucky enough to come across the rather ineffectual Peter Mackay who was willing, despite written promises to the contrary, to give the entire Tory party away. Then the Sponsorship scandal landed right in his lap coupled with an unusually honest Prime Minister in the guise of Paul Martin who, instead of brushing it under the rug, was willing to start a genuine independent investigation. (Unlike Harper who would never have investigated  such a scandal) And with the Sponsorship issue in the air, Harper had no need to run a genuine election campaign but just kept telling us that the Liberals were ‘corrupt’ and we should get rid of the bums. Yet even with one of the worst scandals in Canadian politics Harper still couldn’t come close to a majority. They managed to play this out for nearly two years, and any time they were caught in their own scandals they simply pointed at the opposition and told us that the Liberals did worse things. Then they broke their own electoral laws and in a vain attempt to get their much sought after majority. But despite their relentless attacks on Dion which worked remarkably well on a gullible electorate, the Conservatives were still unable to win a majority. Then came Harper’s two biggest mistakes; a denial that there was a looming economic crisis, and his disastrous fall economic statement which finally exposed the depth of his partisanship. But the real spanner in the works for Harper is the economic slowdown which he reacted to by abandoning his entire economic oeuvre.  In his master’s thesis Harper condemned all deficit spending as an attempt by governments to get reelected. Now suddenly when his political power was threatened, he is a great convert to government intervention. This conversion seems hollow to just about everyone. But despite the abandonment of his so-called principles, the economy will wrench Harper from power as it has done to so many politicians before him. Oh, the Conservatives will fall back on their old tactics; they will begin relentless attacks on Ignatieff, but one can only cry wolf so many times and these attacks in the midst of a depression will appear to most people as particularly unseemly. Bullying will only take you so far even in politics. Indeed, the conditions of history will oust Harper from power just as it brought him to power. 

New Leadership

Mr. Ignatieff is correct in taking a cautious approach to his up-coming confrontation with Harper and his thugs. He is smart not to appear to have judged a budget that has not been written. He has nothing to lose by suggesting that he is ready to work with the Tories if they write a decent budget; one that is not simply an ideological attack on democracy. This is a kind of Pascal wager because if he is wrong he has lost nothing and made himself look as though he is ready to be cooperative.

Ignatieff is particularly free to take this approach because there is such a slim chance that the Tories will come up with anything meaningful. It is generally accepted that Harper is the most fiercely partisan Prime Minister in Canadian history. He is mean spirited and obsessed with destroying his political opponents to the point that he will end up destroying himself. His budget will only pay lip-service to the financial crisis and he will surely be unable to resist his desire to add a number of neo-conservative attacks on worker’s rights, freedom of information, women’s rights, and other basic elements of democracy. Ignatieff’s only real concern is to determine how to ensure that the people of Canada see Harper and his policies for what they are; a Machiavellian effort to make the rich richer and shaft the rest.

I guess we will see what happens. But we know that the Tories have already begun to work on efforts to portray the new Liberal leader as an undemocratic leader who was parachuted into the position by elite Liberals from Ontario and Quebec. But they are not dealing with Dion anymore, and I suspect that Ignatieff will not be so easily cornered. I get the feeling that he is ready to fight back in a way that Liberals have not done for years. Liberals have good reason to celebrate today, and hopefully we will all reap the benefits if Ignatieff can unseat Harper and his evil regime. The problem is that to defeat the Tories Ignatieff will have to resort in part to the same tactics that Harper and his bullies have used for the past few years. I just hope that once they destroy Harper, Ignatieff can give up that seductive strategy and bring some civility back to Canadian politics.