You have company. Among the growing numbers of your friends are conservatives — real ones — realizing that Stephen Harper is not one of them, but rather a right-wing radical, maybe worse, out to conserve nothing. As some ex-Tory politicians, federal and provincial, stood up to oppose the manipulative omnibus budget bill, the PC Party of Canada declared the Harper party “corporatist” — essentially rule by and for corporations.
(Yes, there is a “Progressive Conservative” party, led by Mulroney-era cabinet minister Sinclair Stevens, but it can’t call itself that. Harper, in one of his acts of vandalism, legally obliterated the word “progressive,” making sure that nobody would ever link it to “conservative.” The PC stands for Progressive Canadian. I’m not sure if they do anything but send emails, but their running critique of Harperism has intrigued me, considering the source.)
Keep in mind that one of the dirty words for “corporatist” is “fascist.” Is that over the top? When I watch a guy like Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who acts as though he’d be comfortable as minister of Internal Security for most dictatorships on Earth, I wonder.
Keep in mind too that something similar is unfolding in the U.S., where moderate Republicans are realizing, to their horror, that even Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. wouldn’t pass muster with today’s party extremists.
Many pundits seem to be baffled by some of Harper’s moves because they don’t make short-term sense electorally. But Harper is a man on a long mission. His inspiration is in the Bush-Cheney caper, complete with electoral dirty tricks manual. His philosophy would be that of the Republican guru who delivered the famous line that the idea was to make government so small that you can “drown it in a bathtub.” After that’s done, corporations take over, elections are manipulated and the little guy gets even littler.
But Harper is slicker than his old buddies. His moves usually have a legitimate starting point. The justice system, EI, in fact the entire bureaucratic structure of the modern state, were indeed in need of reform. In Harper’s hands, however, “reform” quickly becomes a destructive rampage, sometimes by stealth.
Take EI. It’s not just the cutbacks, some of which make sense. It’s that the bureaucracy to deliver it is being trashed. You’ll have trouble collecting even the reduced amount you’re owed. Offices are being closed and the whole thing will be run from a computer in Ottawa — you’ll get emails on your cellphone or computer. If that’s not bad enough, if you’re part of the 20 per cent or so with neither, you won’t exist.
As in other jurisdictions that employ the “big lie” technique, the trick is to keep the announcements coming so fast, with expertly manipulated timing, that the opposition, the media and the public stay off balance and don’t realize the real effects until later.
How much later? The Harper calculation is that the resources economy and international big deals, plus a divided opposition, will deliver victory and the coup de grace to the Canada we know. With his western base, if he can keep the greed-is-good crowd in southern Ontario onside, plus the Don Cherry crowd (those who blow hard but know nothing, and are easily manipulated), plus other targeted groups, the rest of us can go hang. Plus Pierre Poutine is still at large. These guys have led us to believe that they’re not above trying to steal an election.
If any brake is to be applied to the Harperites before the next election, it will have to come from real conservatives within government. This will take courage of the type shown by the one MP who has stood up to Harper — Nova Scotia’s Bill Casey. Are there a dozen Bill Caseys in the House? The rookie B.C. MP who declared his unease with the omnibus bill, saying there were a dozen more like him, was taken into the alley and snuffed.
Meanwhile, a word for one conscientious conservative. Bob Mills, one of the original Reform Party MPs, is doing some international work and declared that “when I hear Canada mentioned, it’s often with a slur.” I like him because he delivered a line I can keep: “I have always said, if you’re smart, you surround yourself with a bunch of really smart people; and if you’re dumb, you surround yourself with a bunch of cheerleaders.” Maybe Stephen Harper isn’t so smart after all.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: RALPH SURETTE
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