The first reason why I would not vote for a party led by Stephen Harper is because in 2002, he
described Atlantic Canada as having a "Culture of Defeatism"--in other words, They're Bad People, So Fuck Them, beginning a long-term assault on Atlantic Canadians. At the time, he was leader of the Canadian Alliance. "Harper allowed there are positive signs in the region, pointing New Brunswick out in particular. But he insisted there is still a long way to go." It should be noted that at the time, New Brunswick was the only province that had a conservative government. This is a trend that continued. It continued when negotiations over the Atlantic Accord followup in 2005 broke down. Harper has long been a critic of the National Energy Plan because he believes provinces should benefit from their natural resources, not have them be put in service of some national protectionist economic scheme. Which is exactly why he turned around and opposed efforts to allow Atlantic Canadian provinces to take revenue shares in their oil projects and to use those revenue shares to help reduce dependency on equalization. Some might say that Stephen Harper fostered a culture of dependence in opposing this negotiation. Although a deal was eventually reached, it was only reached following Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams (a pro-business Conservative) taking down the Canadian flag in front the House of Assembly in Newfoundland and self-financing a national campaign to tell voters across the country to vote "Anyone But Conservative".
Fabian Manning, a gentleman sitting as a Conservative MHA (provincial representative) was later expelled from the provincial conservative caucus over a dispute about crab management policy--it's Newfoundland, of course it was some dumb fishing thing. Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper recruited Manning as a star candidate to run as an MP of his area, hoping to maintain some semblance of Conservative presence in Newfoundland. Manning lost. He was promptly appointed to the Senate (reminder: Stephen Harper came to power on a mandate to reform the Senate and Senate Appointment processes... or at least to appoint qualified Senators instead of party hacks). Pretty sweet deal for Fabian. Which is OK, when the next election came around, he quit the Senate to run again. And lost again. And got re-appointed to the Senate. Stephen Harper broke his promises on Senate reform. Can I blame him for not being able to unilaterally fix the things he saw wrong with the Senate? Of course not. Can I blame him for consistently appointing losers, incompetents, and lunatics because they are party hacks? Absolutely.
The second reason that I would not vote for a party led by Stephen Harper is the War in Iraq. As most of you hopefully know, Canada under Jean Chretien did not commit to the US-led Iraqi invasion. Partially out of aversion to opening up another war in the middle east. Partly because Jean Chretien was not satisfied with the quality of the evidence that Iraq actually possessed weapons of mass destruction. Harper at the time was a forceful critic of Chretien's decision, saying we were at risk by not joining the invasion.
It turns out his speech in favour of the invasion was mostly plagiarized, but we'll set that aside for now. The worst part of Harper's stance at the time was writing an apology letter to America
in the Wall Street Journal, where he explicitly connected war with Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Embarrassing. And it's what we call an unforced error; American politicians need to go back and split hairs about why they supported the war given that it turned out to go sideways and be a catastrophic mistake. Canadian politicians don't need to do so because of course none of them were ever forced to support it... of course, it seems that some of them did anyway. Where are the answers on Iraq from Stephen Harper? I ask just because this isn't a one-time thing. His foreign policy has been ripped right out of the US handbook: Screw the world, America comes first.
This comes through in contempt for individual Canadian citizens: Why are we paying millions of dollars to Maher Arar? Because we were complicit in American extraordinary rendition. Yes, this is a policy that started before Stephen Harper, which is why it was another unforced error. Which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't reflect his approach on foreign policy for Canadian citizens abroad. Why does the Canadian government no longer lobby to save Canadians who commit crimes abroad from the death penalty?
Well, for one, because Harper is pro-Death Penalty. But also because
They're Bad People, So Fuck Them.
This, by the way, was one of Harper's many court losses over failure to defend the Charter.
It's not just about foreign death penalty appeals. It's also about "foreignness". Why do we need a policy to remove Canadian citizenship from dual citizens? Who are the targets? I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm a dual citizen, and I know Harper isn't going to strip my Canadian citizenship just because I'm telling people I wouldn't vote for him. Rather, it's going to be used against people accused of terrorism-related crimes. Fair enough. This is another page out of the American book. Even though our legal systems are more than good enough to deal with terrorism issues, we refuse to run them through our legal system, because They're Bad People, So Fuck Them. The motivating cases are mostly Canadian Muslims accused of terrorism. Some are guilty. Some are not. I believe in the Charter and the court system. I want them used to deal with stuff. And even though my citizenship won't be stripped from me, I hate the idea that the circumstances of my birth mean I could one day be dealt with differently. That's not Canadian. We're all equal.
It's not just about individual people either. When Israel and Lebanon fought, Harper--as he has before and since--made it Canadian policy that we will not be neutral, we will not be brokers for peace, we will not be saddened by conflict. Rather, our official position is that Israel Is Right And We Will Defend Her. Look, for a leftie, I'm actually somewhat netural on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It's complicated. It's difficult to look at a pattern of escalation, a vicious cycle, an arms race and tell one side that they bare the brunt of it. By what is important is recognizing that patterns of escalation are bad, and regardless of "blame", we need to encourage turning down the heat and coming to common ground. One common ground in the I-P situation is the two state solution, which is why it's disappointing that Harper's government has voted against every single attempt to give Palestine any state level recognition--because They're Bad People, So Fuck Them. This policy isn't just bad policy, it's also bad optics. When Canada asked for a seat on the UN Security Council, we LOST because the international community does not view us as a good faith actor today. That's terrifying. But it shouldn't be surprising, because as Foreign Affairs notes, Stephen Harper is
The Last Neocon.
Harper's willingness to deploy force in the Middle East under the same auspices of the Bush Doctrine wouldn't be so bad if he also recognized force as a way to help the world. My Canada is a Canada that peacekeeps, that recognizes that the reluctant decision to use force should always be in service of saving lives and defusing conflict. Which is why it's disappointing that Canada did nothing when the attempted Genocide in Darfur happened.
The third reason why I would not vote for a government led by Stephen Harper is because he earned his first mandate to govern after promising to re-visit the issue of Same-Sex Marriage. Look, same-sex marriage was an emerging issue. A lot of people went through cycles where they thought about it, came out "against it", and then changed their mind. Some might call these people hypocrites. Political opportunists would be closer to right, but I'm okay with giving them the benefit of the doubt. So when in 2004 Stephen Harper described framing same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue
"vile and disgusting" and said sexual orientation is really "sexual behaviour", I'm fine with giving him a do-over. The do-over was the federal vote to legalize same-sex marriage in 2005. He voted against it. The second do-over was the opportunity to view marriage as a settled issue. He did not: his campaign relied on stoking social conservatives to vote for him by using marriage as a wedge issue. It's easy to say that wedge issues are fine, because the people who you are throwing under the bus are Bad People, So Fuck Them, but I think that's a very cynical way of looking at people. People deserve dignity. It's in the Universal Declaration of human rights: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. It is not the spirit of brotherhood to "revisit" the issue and use gay Canadians as a political pawn to rustle up some votes. That the Conservatives half-assed revisiting same-sex marriage made it almost worse, because it showed that they weren't merely motivated by anti-gay animus, but just crass vote pandering. Yuck.
I don't think I need to thread a needle from that behaviour back then to subsequent behaviour, but here are some suggestions. If you're one of the following people, Stephen Harper's government is OK with dividing the country against you to shore up support in his base: women; criminals; educators; artists; jurists; journalists; scientists; Muslims (especially Muslim women, ESPECIALLY Muslim women who "don't look like" Canadians); immigrants; refugees; missing or murdered aboriginal women; aboriginal Canadians in general; sex workers; prospective citizens; new-stock Canadians; and as I mentioned before, dual citizens.
Those are three things that bothered me before Harper became Prime Minister to begin with, all three of which are repeated in a patterned way across his tenure as Prime Minister. Those are more than enough to ensure I never would vote for a party that he is the leader of. But they're not the only reasons: mandatory minimum sentences; ending the prison safe tattoo program; trying to end safe injection sites; reforming parole; tough on drugs; ending extra credit for time served and so eroding the right to a speedy trial; appointing Vic Toews as justice minister; against rehabilitation; considering allowing the expansion of private prison contracting (hasn't happened yet federally, but I'm sure it will);
cutting arts funding because you don't like that the band Holy Fuck has an expletive in their name; making retirement harder for the average Canadian; scrapping Kelowna; scrapping the Martin daycare plan; muzzling scientists; lying to Canadians about copyright reform while promising American government officials their interests would be taken care of; the prorogation gambit; brinksmanship; trying to turn Supreme Court appointments into American-style partisan spectacle; trying to turn Supreme Court appointments into American-style partisan hacks; trying to illegally appoint someone to the Supreme Court; trying to appoint a Supreme Court justice who openly doesn't believe in the Constitution or Charter; enforcing a law to prohibit foreign-residing Canadians from voting; defying the Supreme Court on protection of sex workers; erode foreign aid and attach foreign aid to conditions against abortion; lionizing the troops while leaving veterans behind; ruining Canada's reputation on the environment; not believing in Climate Change; withdrawing from Kyoto during a period where Americans take the lead and secure concessions from China and India; ignoring contempt of parliament; repeated attempts to make voting harder in Canada (mostly based on phony Republican tactics like "vote fraud" allegations); repeated attempts to shrink Elections Canada and render them ineffectual; which is just as well because they repeatedly break elections laws; around-the-clock campaigning and attack ads; they hate oversite, ombudspeople, and the auditor general; against CPP; thinks the status of women is "fine" and shuts down any office that would suggest otherwise; thinks he would never pass an unconstitutional law and shuts down any office that would help Canadians challenge unconstitutional laws (the Court Challenges Program); thinks he would never get any policy issue wrong so has no problem gutting Statistics Canada, even if it means losing life-long dedicated civil servants in protest; hates the CBC; loves Sun Media; wants broad-based internet surveillance; ignores the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because people associate it with Trudeau, celebrates the war of 1812 because the monarchy and the military feel Conservative. This is a government whose policy boils down to drawing a line in the sand between good people and bad people, and then punishing the bad ones. What a worldview.
When I went to the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa in 2012, a conservative--
anti-gay, to note--Rabbi gave the benediction. He remembered those who died in Canada's wars--the War of 1812, the First and Second World Wars, Korea, Peacekeeping in the 90s, Afghanistan today. He said they died in service of Canadian values. The Canadian values he named were not inclusivity, kindness, progress, or dignity. No, he said that Canadian values were self-reliance and personal responsibility. I was struck by that. Self-reliance is fine and all, but I felt like someone was describing a different country, one that wasn't my own. My country is one where we're all in it together, working to build a better world.
Where is my country?
