The criticism came at a Broadbent Institute Progress Summit panel discussion headlined “The Great Unravelling: Why it Matters How Canada has become Less Democratic.”
Mark Bourrie, author of Kill the Messengers, and Michael Harris, author of Party of One, focused on aspects of Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) governing style that they exposed in their research and writing—the centralization of power in the PMO, Mr. Harper’s extreme-discipline manner of exercising power, the way Mr. Harper has held sway over his MPs as well as the public service and the iron grip he has put on government information and its dissemination.
Mr. Bourrie and Mr. Harris appeared on the panel with Fair Vote Canada executive director Kelly Carmichael and University of Montreal’s centre for international studies director Frederic Merand. The panel was moderated by Toronto Star columnist and author Susan Delacourt.
Mr. Bourrie, based on the details he researched in his book, Kill the Messengers: Stephen Harper’s Assault on Your Right to Know, said he believes Mr. Harper might win the general election this year, and if he doesn’t, the deep changes in government that he has ruled over may be difficult to undo.
“I actually don’t think they’re planning to leave anytime soon,” Mr. Bourrie said. “I also think that things they are doing are being so entrenched into our system, like a sort of fibrous tumour, that it will take many, many years to extricate this stuff if any new government wants to do it.”
Mr. Bourrie said this has been happening since the Second World War but has been accelerated in recent years by Mr. Harper’s Conservative government. “It makes it very easy for the core central group, the clique that ends up running the prime minister’s office, to run the country,” Mr. Bourrie said. “It will take almost superhuman discipline for the next clique that runs the country through the PMO to undo this, to shed this kind of power. And it will be very easy for those people to rationalize not doing it.”
If things don’t change, this will be the new reality, he said. “We have to actually get back to rational, reasoned thought and even if we take it on the chin or it’s a little harder to deal with reality instead of bullshit, we have to do that. If we don’t, the fantasy land we live in will become a sort of weird reality,” Mr. Bourrie said. “What Harper has done, by controlling information and also by very skilled propaganda, is to change the way we think about ourselves and feel about our country, and the way we feel about each other.”
Mr. Bourrie added that there is so much damage that it can’t simply be fixed through legislation. “The ways that we are going to have to look at how we interact on a class basis, on a gender basis, on a whole lot of things that we thought we had fixed, that are being unfixed very, very quickly by this government,” Mr. Bourrie said. “It’s going to be a very tough election. I’m not sure Harper is going to lose this election. In fact, I’m quite sure he has a very good chance of winning it.”
Mr. Harris was also blunt in criticizing Mr. Harper, indirectly referring to two major Conservative scandals that grew over past elections—one from the 2006 election on the in-and-out scandal, and the other from the 2011 election, on robocalls and misleading voters on where to vote.
“He may win the next election, because they’ve cheated in all three. He may win again and he has rigged the Fair Elections Act so that it’s going to be easier this time to cheat. And if there is one thing that Stephen Harper has taught all of us, it’s to parse every word, to read every amendment, to look behind every correct of his rhetoric and see what he actually does,” Mr. Harris said.
“I spent a long time in that book (Party of One) looking at exactly what he did,” Mr. Harris told an audience of several hundred grassroots New Democrats, union members and community activists.
“Two things jump out,” said Mr. Harris. “Stephen Harper isn’t interested in the truth. There are many, many examples of that, nor is he interested in any form of accountability, and his favourite weapon is fear.”
Mr. Harris told the room that he spoke to former Reform leader Preston Manning who said as much.
“When I did my interview with Preston Manning, the most interesting insight he gave me was ‘words don’t mean anything to Stephen,’ and this is not coming from a colleague in the business who may or may not like the Conservatives, this was coming from Stephen Harper’s mentor, who hired him as he stepped out of university,” Mr. Harris said. “His view of Stephen is, ‘He would say anything as long as it had the desired effect.’”
Mr. Merand noted the trend toward the centralization of power in the executive branch of government has been experienced in European countries, as well as the United States, particularly during the last term now of President Barack Obama.
“The current [Canadian] government may have taken this quite far, but this is happening everywhere, in all western democracies,” said Mr. Merand. “President Obama often governs by executive order, and as progressives we like that, the fact he governs this way.”
Mr. Merand said, however, that left, or progressive governments, have also exercised power unilaterally. Mr. Merand cited France, where socialist President Francois Hollande exercised a special constitutional provision to pass a recent budget without a vote in Parliament.
Ms. Carmichael focused on her organization’s emphasis on changing the way government runs through reform of the electoral system. She cited statistics that show an increase in the representation of women, youth and other demographics through proportional representation systems in Europe.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: Tim Naumetz
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