Thursday, December 04, 2008

Mr Harper, Canada Deserves Better

Soon to be former Prime Minister Steve Harper took to the airwaves last night with the intention of saving his job with fertilizer. Not the fancy stuff you buy down the Home Hardware in a big bag, nope, the old fashioned, organic kind... bullshit. Flanked by a pair of only and exclusively Canadian flags he squatted down on his porcine haunches and steamed up the screens of the nation with heaps of rump fresh dung.

"And the Opposition does not have the democratic right to impose a coalition with the separatists they promised voters would never happen."


Well good morning Canada, by Imperial Fiat the pig eyed one has re-written the tenets of our parliamentary democracy. It is unseemly of the Prime Minister to lie to the whole of the nation and make no mistake, what he is attempting to put forward is no less than a bald faced lie. Worse, it is also an attempt to sow dissent and disunity. The ugly and divisive rhetoric coming out of the Conservative Party and its operatives is a willful effort to incite emotional responses and inflame old wounds. He is counting on ignorance and ugliness for his personal, political salvation and he is willing to go to any length. Canada deserves better than the petty lies of a selfish and spiteful wannabe autocrat. Canadians must demand better than lies and deception from our leaders.

Harper condemned the Liberal-NDP coalition, which is backed by the Bloc Quebecois, as a dangerous deal with the separatists - the same separatists he flirted with four years ago.

He gave nearly identical four-minute speeches in English and French, with the exception that he referred to the Bloc as "separatists" in English and "sovereigntists" in French, a term preferred by Quebecers.


Classy. That's our Steve. But what do the actual experts have to say about his customized take on our democratic system of governance? To refresh, Steve's claiming that the coalition is attempting to gain power, "without your say, without your consent, and without your vote." Take it away experts...

In fact, every constitutional expert has said the coalition is legal and legitimate.

"I think the attack on democracy is the mob rule that Harper is appealing to," said Ned Franks, professor emeritus at Queen's University and one of the country's most respected constitutional scholars.

"(He's) saying that the way people cast their votes isn't the way they should have cast them, and that the government doesn't need the confidence of the House of Commons ... I think that's the real attack on democracy."


As the political crisis deepens with every snide turn that Mr Harper takes, we are left in the shadow of a greater crisis, one even more important that the political fate of Steve Harper. With no plan of action on the Conservative horizon for dealing with the impact of a global economic disaster, Mr Harper is poised to prorogue the parliament and leave us all dangling in the breeze.

Opposition MPs have assailed Harper for what they called a desperate ploy to cling to power despite the fact that proroguing Parliament would preclude any major spending at a time of economic crisis.


Clearly, the priorities of the Conservative Party need to be adjusted and they need to be reminded that they are the servants of the Canadian people. They are bound by the constitution and traditions of our democracy and that no one man or party is greater than or more important than those traditions and the rule of law that enforces them. I call on all Conservative Members of Parliament who, in good conscience, can see beyond the petty and the partisan, to speak out in defence of our nation. If your leader is willing to lie to you and your constituents, he is unworthy of your loyalty and unworthy of our trust. Either he must step aside or be removed. Should he or your party resist the will of Parliament and the constitutional rule of law, then I ask you to cross the floor and sit with members of the opposition parties. To do less is to legitimize the scorched earth that Steve Harper is advocating by his "any means necessary".

5 comments:

thwap said...

It all depends how many people of principle (albeit, misguided in my view) are on the Tory benches, and how many of them would find themselves at home at KKKate's site, or trading passive-agreesive barbs with "Wayne" or "Raphael Alexander."

Lindsay Stewart said...

actually thwap, it comes down to how many tories are on the conservative/crap benches. the governing party of the moment is not the tories, that is a misappropriation of name that has served only to disguise the reform alliance party. they deserve no such legitimizing. that said, i'm sure there must be some principled folk shaking their heads in the benches behind big steve. they should do a reverse emerson for their own sake as well as the country's.

SmartlikeStreetcar said...

Hear, hear...

You've nail it!

Niles said...

Actually, what got me was the talk afterwards on CBC.

Where a Conservative, and I'm sorry, I didn't catch the name stated that proroguing would give the government time to gerrymander voting districts so the results would tilt more in the favour of Conservatives during the next election.

Aside from the fact that it's nice to know what the Cons will be focusing on (and I admit, my jaw did drop open at the casual admission of what has apparently been a priority for some time by the Cons) instead of the economy, can they do that while there is no Parliament going on?

Is that the point of proroguing beyond buying PR time? So the government can conduct undemocratic power shifts without interference from other parties? If so, they need removal tout de suite.

M@ said...

So Harper is worried that a coalition will govern "without your say, without your consent, and without your vote."

And now he's suspended the legislature he's supposed to lead without your say, without your consent, and without your vote.

Go democracy.