And even then, in afterthought and following consultation with a lawyer, the interviewee, however eager to assist Mr. Harris, was so concerned about anything being traced back, that Mr. Harris not even paraphrase what he told him in his book.
Obtaining information from a Conservative, even those who had been shut out of Mr. Harper’s inner circles years earlier, was for Mr. Harris like arranging an intelligence rendezvous in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
But Mr. Harris, author of the recently-released Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada’s Radical Makeover, and an award-winning columnist at iPolitics, who unabashedly describes the result of his two-year project as an “indictment” of Mr. Harper, nonetheless obtained enough information, insight, drama, and accounts of political and PMO backstabbing that even the National Film Board could turn it into a riveting movie.
The political thesis, to use a dry phrase for what is actually a layered, in-depth, and, at times, emotive account of some of the most controversial stories that have taken place since 2006, is: Parliament, public service independence and integrity, scientific authority and even Canada’s democracy have been either threatened or undermined by Mr. Harper and his government following his first election as Prime Minister nine years ago.
Party of One, a clever double entendre, is jammed with facts, insights, fresh angles on stories that raged across the web and TV, as well as quotations from original, undisclosed documents that fill in the thesis Mr. Harris presents. Even the footnotes are worth digesting.
Mr. Harris explored not only the political history, but also lives catapulted into upheaval and conflict, even despair, as Mr. Harper plowed his way through a series of scandals and controversies, including a potential nuclear reactor disaster, to maintain his grip on power as he strove to obtain the majority government he finally won in 2011.
Helena Guergis, the former star Conservative MP whose beauty pageant looks won her a coveted camera-angle spot behind Mr. Harper in the House of Commons before her career collapsed in a scandal over nightmarish allegations that turned out to be entirely false, reveals how Mr. Harper and his top political operative Jenni Byrne and Cabinet ministers would watch and coach her on speaking before Question Period.
“When I lapsed into my real voice, because it was hard to project that phony one for too long, Peter Van Loan would urge, ‘Helena, big-girl voice, big-girl voice,’ ” Ms. Guergis told Mr. Harris.
Before a three-month investigation by seven RCMP officers exonerated her from corruption allegations, the PMO turned her once-envied attraction into a weapon they used against her.
“I’m no angel, but I never used coke and I’ve never been in a strip club. Harper and his henchmen used to their advantage sexism and the acceptance of sexism to manipulate. Everyone fell for it. I was not even human, just something to kick around for a couple of years,” the former Tory star says in Party of One.
Linda Keen was a 22-year public servant with impeccable credentials before Mr. Harper engineered her dismissal as head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after she lost a battle trying to enforce nuclear safety regulations during the so-called medical isotope crisis of December 2007.
Ms. Keen faced similar treatment when she turned down a secret offer passed on by a senior bureaucrat that would have allowed her to keep her job, for another six months, if she acknowledged her agency had made the wrong decision when it refused to overlook a reactor regulatory failing by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: Tim Naumetz
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