Harper Government Wins Majority; Pisses All Over Democracy and Laughs at You.

Were you watching the disgust unfold? Were you sharing your aghast with others? Were you with your family and friends and drinks and smartphones?
We were.

I cried.
I did.
As the insanity unfolded.

I even cried for the Bloc who just fucking COLLAPSED.
Unbelievable.

 

Now Greg is making me another Caesar and has run me a bath. 

Defeat can at least feel a little bit less horrible.

Congratulations on the exceptional gain, NDP.

Condolences to the Bloc and Liberal parties on your loss.

While you got very little press, we were with you, Green Party.

And last but not least, fuck you, Harper.

VOTE. 2011: Canadian Federal Election 41.

 

 

Not in Our Names.

https://zone.artizans.com/image/MAC2105/conservatives-demand-to-see-jack-laytons-birth-certificate/

Some people have asked why I am so invested in this particular election.

And they have ever right to be curious, for I have not always been this way.
While I have always been a huge fan of the more micro-politics of relationships and social structures, the macro-political interest waned. For most of my life I was Geo-politically ignorant, and then I became overwhelmed and willfully ignorant. I felt powerless, and getting involved in politics did nothing but reinforce that feeling.

So, why now?

Why get so involved now when it is clear that Canadians have exercised their right to maintain willful ignorance to the point that we may be the least powerful than any other time in history? (Don't believe me? Check out how many rules, laws, bi-laws, mandates, regulations, policies, etc we live under compared to a hundred years ago. It will shock you.)

It would be easy to chalk it up to be aghast at what Harper has done to us, but it is more personal than that.
I have realized that he has been doing this to us for FOUR YEARS and I had NO IDEA.
What the hell was I doing when he was fucking over our aboriginal communities, and sending detainees back to be tortured, and cutting off planned parenthood funding, and attempting to de-regulate banks, and cutting women's advocacy funding by 50%, and breaking campaign regulations to buy his way into parliament for the second time, and weakening regulations to protect us from pesticide carcinogens and GMOs, and then turning around and cutting the long form census down to only "pertinent details" because what do you need the people's information for when it is not in your design to govern for them anyway...?

What the hell was I doing?
Feeling powerless and pretending that I didn't realize it.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that too many others were as well, because if it wasn't for the other parties citing him for non-confidence of the House, would most of us even have realized what the hell he was doing over there?
When he didn't get his way, he fired people, fraudulantly hired others, prorogued parliament TWICE, shrouded numerous documentation, banned transcripts from meetings, and basically told the Canadian public to shut up and mind our own business. And we did.

And look at what the hell happened:

"I have no idea if the general public is aware of or cares how few questions the Prime Minister will allow. I expect that they don’t care that if the Prime Minister rolls into a university town, student publications are not granted a single question"...

 
And it is my fault.
Not ALL my fault, but I was here... ignoring what he was doing to us.

Now, I am not going to get all maudlin and feel sorry for myself anymore than I am about to feel sorry for our country about this.  Sometimes timing is everything.
Because look what has happened:

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper,

On behalf of all Canadians, sir, I would like to thank you. You have done it! You have really done it. You’ve managed to get us interested in federal politics.

This campaign season began several weeks ago with you standing solemnly in an empty Parliament to dismiss a supposedly unwanted election — triggered, of course, by your government being held in contempt of Parliament — as something sure to disappoint Canadians. You didn’t pull this dismissal out of thin air: after all, the last election, held just a couple of years ago, had the lowest turnout in Canadian history; young people between eighteen and twenty-four stayed home in droves, with less than 40 percent bothering to vote. Your party subsequently wrote off the electorate, especially its youngest constituents, and your rivals seemed to agree — in this month’s televised debates, there was very little mention of any issues of interest to young people. It seems like you all assumed that young Canadians won’t vote because they don’t care, so why waste your breaths?

But something has happened. There has been a ground swell of engagement by Canadians of all ages. The internet is ablaze with political talk, more people watched the debates than the NHL playoffs, and on campuses across the country — during final exams — students are holding vote mobs. Vote mobs, Mr. Harper! The very Canadians you dismissed as apathetic, it turns out, aren’t after all. They are forming mobs, sir, and a mob is the next best thing to a riot.

We saw something like this in 2008 — i.e., an unprecedented number of young and discouraged voters becoming engaged in politics for the first time in their lives. The problem was that it happened in American politics, and it centred on the charisma of Barack Obama. The sexiness of the American presidential election only served to highlight the dullness and hollowness of our Canadian choices, further discouraging voters.

But all that is changing, Mr. Harper. Things are really turning around. There are mobs, sir! Mobs! And this exciting shift is largely thanks to you.

I would like to tell you that your own charisma is inspiring Canadians to become involved in this election. Or that one of your competitors is taking the country by storm with a message of hope and change. But, much like last time, this election is pretty much void of any charisma, save for one plucky challenger. Left wanting for something positive and hopeful, Canadians have found an equally powerful inspiration in response to what you lack. These vote mobs, this Facebook chatter, the viral videos, and potty-mouthed websites that show the increasing engagement of those young voters you dismissed are not partisan per se, but are united, instead, by a severe distaste for the Harper Government and the questionable ways it runs things. Canadians from all walks of life, from the Arcade Fire, to Margaret Atwood, to Joe Nobody, are lashing out against your five years of secrecy, contempt, and hypocrisy. Canadians are engaged in federal politics now more than they have been in a very long time, thanks to you. And it looks like many young Canadians will now decide to vote for the first time. But unfortunately for you, Mr. Harper, it will be for anyone other than yourself.

Best,

A voter"

This is what happened.  People got invested. I got invested.
Finally.
And it is a beautiful thing to witness. From all of us.

ALBERTA SENATOR TOMMY BANKS: A Letter to the Voters of Canada.

"There is only one thing about the outcome of the May 2nd election on which Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper agree.  It is that one of them will be the Prime Minister of Canada.  Mr. Layton, Mr. Duceppe and Ms. May are not in the running to form a government.  They can’t.  It will be either Mr. Ignatieff or Mr. Harper.

That is the choice, and it is a very clear – in fact, stark choice.  We will choose between openness or secrecy. Between listening or refusing to listen.  Between someone who respects Parliament or someone who disdains it. Between things we can and will do now or things that, (provided of course that everything goes well), we might do in five or six years.  Between someone who answers all questions from Canadians, or someone who won’t accept any.

Between Mr. Harper who said “It’s past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act”, or Mr. Ignatieff who said   “ . . . we don’t want user fees.  We want universal, accessible, free-at-the-point-of-service health care, paid out of general revenue.  That’s just bottom line.  Otherwise we get two-tiered”.

Between buying jets or helping vets.  Between real early childhood learning and care or Saturday-night babysitting.  Between respect for our great institutions or contempt for them.  Between helping families or helping big corporations. Between the Canada that we think we have, or the way in which Mr. Harper has already changed it.

Over the past few years Mr. Harper’s government has quietly engineered so many changes that there are some ways in which our country is barely recognizable.  Many of us don’t yet realize the extent of those changes, because many of them have been brought about very carefully and gradually – almost imperceptibly in some cases.

This is diabolically clever.  If these things had all been done at once, there would have been loud protests and reactions.  But moving just one little brick at a time doesn’t cause much fuss – until you realize that the whole house has been renovated.  And we’ve hardly noticed.

These are changes that are at the very heart of who and what Canadians are.  They are changes to the protections that used to exist against the tyranny of the majority – or against a single-minded my-way-or-the-highway autocrat.  These changes are losses to our very Canadian-ness.  Let me remind you of some of them:

The Law Commission of Canada was created by an Act of Parliament in 1997.  It worked very well. It kept an eye in a sort-of avuncular way, on necessary reforms of the law, including election law.  The Commission couldn’t actually change law; but it was very good at letting governments and everybody else know when changes needed to be made and why.  It was our legal Jiminy Cricket, and it performed a valuable service for Canada.  The Commission was created by an Act of Parliament, and any government wanting to shut it down should have been up-front about it.  It should have come to Parliament with a Bill to rescind The Law Commission of Canada Act.  That’s what any of our 21 previous Prime Ministers would have done.

But to Mr. Harper, Parliament is an inconvenience.  Somebody might ask “Why are you doing this?”   But he didn’t want to go through all that Parliamentary trouble; so, rather than proposing the abolition of the Commission (a proposal about which there would have been pretty fierce debate on all sides), they just eliminated all funding for it in the federal budget.  Governments can do that.  Poof – no Law Commission.

Nice and quiet.  Just one little brick.  Hardly noticed.

Then there was the Court Challenges Programme, set up in 1994, which was the means by which a bit of legal help could be provided to a private individual or small organization who didn’t have a lot of money, and who was taking on, or being taken on by, the Government of Canada.  It leveled the legal playing field a bit.  It was a perfect example of fundamental Canadian fairness.

By convincing a tough panel of judges of the reasonableness of your cause, you could get a little help in paying for some lawyers to go up against the phalanx of legal beagles that could always, and forever, and at public expense, be brought to bear against you by the State.  In other words, if you weren’t rich, and if you were taking on or being taken on by the Feds, you might have had a chance.  But Mr. Harper doesn’t like being questioned, let alone challenged.  It’s so inconvenient!  Solution?  Quietly announce that the Court Challenges Programme is being, er, discontinued.  Poof – no Court Challenges Programme – no court challenges.

Hardly noticed.

The Coordination of Access to Information Request System (CAIRS) was created (by a Progressive-Conservative government) in 1989 so that departments of government could harmonize their responses to access-to-information requests that might need multi-departmental responses.  It was efficient; it made sure that in most cases the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, or at least what they were saying; and it helped keep government open and accountable.  Well, if you’re running a closed-door government, that’s not a good idea, is it?  So, as a Treasury Board official explained to the Canadian Press, CAIRS was killed by the Harper government because “extensive” consultations showed it wasn’t valued by government departments.  I guess that means that the extensive consultations were all with government departments.

Wait!  Wasn’t there anybody else with whom to extensively consult?  Wasn’t there some other purpose and use for CAIRS?  Didn’t it have something to do with openness and accountability?  I guess not. Robert Makichuk, speaking for Mr. Harper’s government, explained that “valuable resources currently being used to maintain CAIRS would be better used in the collection and analysis of improved statistical reporting”.

Right.  In other words, CAIRS was an inconvenience to the government.  So poof – it’s disappeared.  And, except for investigative reporters and other people who might (horrors!) ask questions, its loss is hardly noticed.

And the bridge too far for me: Cutting the already-utterly-inadequate funding for the exposure of Canadian art and artists in other countries.  That funding was, by any comparison, already laughably miniscule.   Mr. Harper says that “ordinary” Canadians don’t support the arts.   He’s wrong.   And his is now the only government of any significant country in the world that clearly just doesn’t get it.

All these changes were done quietly, cleverly, and under the radar.  No fuss.  No outcry.  Just one little brick at a time.  But in these and other ways, our Canadian house is no longer the kind of place it once was. Nobody minds good renovations.  Nobody even minds tearing something down, as long as we put up something better in its place.  That’s not what has happened.

Mr. Harper fired the head of the Canadian Wheat Board because he was doing his job properly.  He removed the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission because she wanted to make sure that the Chalk River nuclear reactor was safe.

Hardly noticed.

There are many more things that were hardly noticed:  Cuts to funding for the Status of Women, Adult Learning and Literacy, Environmental Programs, museums funding, and more.  All quietly, just one brick at a time.

Hardly noticed.

As to campaign promises, everybody in sight on every side is guilty of breaking those.  Except the Federal NDP of course, who haven’t yet had the opportunity. (It’s very easy to make promises that you know you will not likely have to keep).

But the government promised to end wait times in health care.  They didn’t.  They promised to end, once and for all, the whining of some provinces about the non-existent “fiscal imbalance”.  They didn’t. They said they had brought final resolution to the softwood lumber problem with the U.S.  They haven’t.  They promised to create thousands of new child-care spaces in Canada.  They haven’t.  They promised not to tax income trusts (“We will NEVER do that!” they said).  They taxed them.  They promised to lower your income tax.

They raised it.

They said they had a good “made-in-Canada” plan to meet our obligations on climate change.  They don’t.  Mr. Harper has said plainly that whatever the Americans do is what we’ll do too.

They campaign on a platform of transparency and accountability; but they’re now trying to discredit the Parliamentary Budget Officer that they created, because he’s trying to do the job that they gave him. Mr. Harper said that our form of government, evolved over centuries from the 900-year-old British Westminster tradition, was all wrong.  We had to have fixed election dates, because otherwise, democratic principles would be trampled.  ”Fixed election dates”, he said, “stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar.  They level the playing field for all parties”.

So Parliament (remember them?) at Mr. Harper’s insistence, passed a law requiring fixed election dates, which Mr. Harper promptly broke.

Somebody once said that we get the kind of government we deserve.  What did we do to deserve Mr. Harper? He once said that we should all “Stand Up for Canada”.  Well, let’s do that.  We just have to decide whether the present version of Canada is the one that we’ll stand up for.  Or stand for.

Thank you,

Tommy Banks (an Alberta Senator.)"

Election Looms as Government Falls.

It's official — the government has fallen from power, clearing the way for a spring election.
The opposition Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois came together Friday afternoon in an historic vote to say they no longer have confidence in the Conservative government. The non-confidence vote automatically sparks an election after five years of Conservative minority rule.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper immediately rose to ask that the House be adjourned.
Harper was expected to speak in the foyer of the House of Commons within minutes of the adjournment.
He is also expected to go to Rideau Hall Saturday morning to ask Governor General David Johnston to formally dissolve Parliament. As soon as he does that, candidates will hit their local neighbourhoods and the party leaders will fan out across the country to ask voters to send them back to Parliament.
Only five other non-confidence votes have happened in Canada's history, according to information on the Library of Parliament website.

This is the first time it has occurred because a majority of MPs voted that they believed the government was in contempt of Parliament.

source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/03/25/pol-defeat.html