IMHO, this man, Steven Harper, is an ideological zealot, a neo-conservative campaigning somewhat on the vague "Family Values" platform (fear mongering about crime at a time when crime rates are falling, calling for more jails, playing up homophobia, supporting capital punishment, outlawing abortion, kicking single mothers off welfare, trying young offenders in adult court, Christian fundamentalism, etc.).
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Harper
He is a control freak. He is vindictive. Strongly pro-Republican, he has had his head up GW's butt for so long that I forget what he looks like from the shoulders up. He would like to turn Canada into the United States of Canada. He would like to be the President of Canada. He is frustrated by a parliamentary system of government that provides him with a position of lesser authority and power that of president. He lacks the pragmatic flexibility and judgment to be any kind of leader of a parliamentary government, particularly a minority one.
What has Harper done for Canada? So far nothing except cause needless discontent and trouble in an effort to further his dreams of power. He has reduced Candian political propaganda to a new low with distasteful personal attack ads. He has also spent a lot of tax money to accomplish absolutely nothing.
Harper took down the liberal minority government of Paul Martin with a vote of non-confidence.
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Martin
Paul Martin was an excellent Minister of Finance, more of fiscal conservative than a tax and spend liberal. Much of Canada's (limited) insulation from the current global economic crisis is based on his work holding the purse strings of the country and his financial regulation. Martin, however, was an awkward media personality. He always looked like he had just farted and was embarrassed about it. He was kind of a loser as Prime Minister. He was also politically weak as he was trying to hold splintered Liberal together as he dealt with a corruption scandal circling around his predecessor, Jean Chrétien.
However, things were rolling along just fine with Martin's minority government. The economy was good and things were getting done.
So anyway, Harper took down Paul Martin's government, largely by playing up the corruption scandal, which Martin was trying to clean up anyway. He forced an election which he could not and did not win decisively. Nasty personal attack ads were in play here.
By consent of the opposition parties, Harper's Conservatives formed a new minority government and Harper became Prime Minister. And again things were rolling along OK, but not as well as under Martin's leadership.
Looking across the border to the US, Harper sees a turn to left or to the middle in the political winds. A re-election of a Republican president looks highly uncertain. Lest a Democratic victory should make the Canadian electorate look less kindly on a neo-conservative Canadian political party, one that had been very chummy with the Bush Republicans, Harper calls an early election, again one that he could not and did not win decisively, despite the fact the stupid Liberals did almost everything they could to help him to victory.
The Liberals, under, Stephane Dion, their lamest leader ever, put up no meaningful resistance to the Conservative's onslaught of devastating personal attack ads.
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Dion
There was lots of true excrement that could have been smeared on Harper, but the Liberals just lay down and played dead.
Still with no real opposition candidate to stand in his way, Harper is such a loser that he ended up with yet another minority government. And he pissed away countless tax payer dollars to end up more or less back where he started out.
In his mean-spirited pettiness, one of the first things he sets out to do is to cut government administrative funding for the opposition parties. Then he has stupidity to act surprised when the three opposition parties, the Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois (a Liberal party with a pro-Quebec separatist or at least pro-defence of French language culture agenda) and the NDP, a mildly Socialist party, kiss and make up and make noises about forming a coalition government and then taking the title of Prime Minister away from nasty little Steven.
Now there is a lot of uproar in Canada about all this. Harper and the Conservatives are trying to portray this proposed coalition as something akin to a criminal conspiracy. They are stirring up Quebec separatist hysteria, this at a time when general support for separatism in Quebec was in a lull. Harper is portraying himself as the duly elected Prime Minister of Canada, chosen by the divine will of God as expressed through the Canadian electorate. Many Canadians, the ones who were too stupid to understand their high school text books or too illiterate to read them, believe this lot of tripe.
Wake up and smell the coffee Canada. We have a parliamentary system of government. Nobody votes for Prime Minister. Canadians vote for a Member of Parliament who serves their local riding. The Government of Canada is formed by the consent of Parliament. If a political party has a majority, it can give itself this consent. If it does not have a majority, it must rely on the consent of the opposition parties. Typically the Prime Minister is the leader of whatever party is given consent to form the government. Canada does not have a President. Nobody votes for Prime Minster, OK? God did not reach out and touch Steven Harper as the chosen one. If God had wanted this, Harper would have had a sound majority. OK?
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Indeed, Steven Harper's Conservatives do not have a majority. They were allowed to form a government by the consent of the opposition parties. If Parliament chooses to remove this consent, the government falls and an election must be called. If the opposition parties can unite as a coalition to form a majority, they can choose to form a government. The Governor General, the representative of the Queen of England, Canada's symbolic head of state, can then choose to call an election or to allow the collation to govern.
There is nothing illegal or untoward in any of this, however, much you may not like it.
I am not entirely happy about the situation. But Harper is an idiot. His stupidity frightens me. He has proven himself to be incompetent as a statesman. The void of leadership in Canada is worrisome. A coalition government under the leadership Stephane Dion does not appeal to me. But I am even less happy about Steven Harper. If we are to have a right-wing government, give us a leader with good judgment and some ethics, a John Diefenbaker, a Joe Clark or even a Preston Manning (an honest man). Thank you.
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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!
