“Will this be enough to do him in?” That question was posed by me at the Advance office last week by a man who drops in occasionally to chat about a wide range of topics. It took me a minute before I realized that “him” referred to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and “this” was a reference to the robocall scandal, which seems to be gaining traction as a national hot button topic.
My friend is someone I would describe as a left-winger, and he takes a pretty chilly view of party politics, probably even more than me. His comment shook me out of my lethargy on the robocall topic, one that I had been pretty much been ignoring as just another in a long string of anti-democratic offences perpetrated by Harper and his party.
What a monstrous, evil idea, I thought, for someone, anyone, to have thought up the scheme to divert voters, identified as having been non-Conservative supporters, to polling stations other than ones they were allowed to vote at. This activity, surely without precedent in Canadian elections, which haven’t historically been rife with dirty tricks, is not without parallels to the sort of activities that inspires the United Nations to send in observers to other, less “democratic” nations.
How desperate is the need to cling to power that a party campaigner could have dreamed up the notion of giving ordinary Canadians misinformation, with the specific purpose of making it difficult or, preferably, impossible for them to cast ballots? Is this what we have come to as a country?
We may never know whether Harper had anything to do with the scam, but we do know something equally as important. He has denied, deflected, pooh-poohed and denigrated any accusations that his party and or its supporters had done anything wrong. In fact, the man who seems less and less prime ministerial and more and more dictator-like with each passing day, actually stood up in Parliament and laid the blame on the Liberal party, using completely false information to make his case.
I’ve never been much for conspiracy theories, but more and more I get the feeling that Harper has a miniature speaker set deeply in his ear that gives him directions from a secret source. How else to explain the bizarreness with which the party that bespeaks of fiscal responsibility, less government and individual rights so often acts in complete opposition to those values? Or didn’t anyone pay attention to Harper’s recent mention of the “new world order”, a phrase he backed away from faster than a cursing kid who knows the bar of soap is coming?
We have faced a steady stream of legislation designed to snatch our rights away, to consolidate power within the prime minister’s office and to spend like there is no tomorrow. We will balance the budget, we are told, but it’s damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead for the purchase of fighter jets (despite cogent arguments that they are a bad deal), military and security water vessels (does anyone remember the B.C. fast ferry fiasco) and the construction of jails to house a huge jump in prisoners anticipated under new legislation (despite warnings from Republicans in Texas, who are now willing to admit the scheme doesn’t work). Have all of these decisions really been made by Harper and his advisors, or even by Canadians? Or are they undertaken at the behest of those voices in Harper’s ear (or perhaps just in his head)?
If there has been the slightest glimmer of hope on the national front recently, it was the huge backlash against Bill C-30, and the government’s surprising move to refer the Internet security bill back to committee. An Ottawa political commentator reported the decision wasn’t caused by the groundswell of anti-government sentiment, but by opposition from Conservative Party members and members of parliament, who told Harper in no uncertain terms that the proposed legislation was deeply flawed. Now if those same folks could only take on the many, many issues Harper promotes, which are equally derisive of conservative values.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.