World Affairs Board - View Single Post - A Harper majority would cripple Ottawa

mostlymad · 02-07-2007, 09:40 AM

pretty harsh article with comments by Joe Clark:

Quote:

February 7, 2007
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

A Harper majority would cripple Ottawa
Frances Russell

Frances Russell Canadians might want to think twice before giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper a majority, according to former Progressive Conservative Party leader and prime minister Joe Clark.

Getting a majority drives everything Harper does, Clark told a CBC Montreal radio audience last week. But Canadians have "no idea" what he would do with it.

Harper's "principal goal... is to come back with a majority and I think he's going to go where a majority will take him," Clark continued.

Harper will abandon his doctrinaire positions on issues such as the environment in the short term, he predicted. "But what is his long-term commitment? What would he do with a majority government? There is reason for concern about what he would do."

A new poll by Harper adviser Greg Lyle's Innovative Research Group, published in this newspaper Saturday, gives Clark's fears an Orwellian twist. Borrowing a leaf from the U.S. Republican playbook written by Karl Rove and Frank Luntz, Lyle advises Harper to basically ignore the 55 per cent of voters who won't vote Conservative under any circumstances and the 28 per cent who are committed Conservatives and use wedge issues like crime, Canada's relations with the U.S. and ethics to play on the fears and emotions of the 17 per cent "open" to his party.

Negative politics is a perversion of democracy. It divides rather than unites, breaks down consensus rather than builds it and pits citizen against citizen, group against group. The very word "democracy" ceases to have meaning once politicians scoff at the majority and seek to win by pandering to the separate fears of a collection of often-antagonistic minorities.

One Canadian academic has peered into the crystal ball of a Harper majority. He calls Harper Canada's "Great Dismantler" and warns that "ultimately, all his policies are designed to dismantle the federal government as a force in Canadian economic and social policy."

Trent University historian Dimitry Anastakis lays out the Harper blueprint: starve Ottawa by endless tax cuts and cripple it by parcelling its powers out to the provinces.

"From his days as the Reform party's 'wonder boy,' to his time in the anti-government National Citizens' Coalition, to his writing of the infamous anti-federal 'firewall' letter following the 2000 Liberal election victory, Harper has espoused a patently anti-federal government ideology," Anastakis said in The Toronto Star recently. "Now, after a year, we can see his ideology in action."

Harper began by attacking Ottawa's fiscal capacity. "Instead of using deficits as a reason to slash taxes, as (former Ontario premier Mike) Harris did, Harper and the Conservatives act just as U.S. President George W. Bush did, using hard-earned federal surpluses as an excuse to cut taxes, which are, in essence, service cuts.

"In Harper's logic, having deficits or surpluses are a reason to cut taxes -- it doesn't matter since the only goal is to cut taxes."

The one-point drop in the GST was hardly noticed by all but the richest Canadians. But it deprived Ottawa of $5 billion. "More importantly for the Conservatives, the phantom GST cut means that the federal government can no longer use that $5 billion to pay for any other programs," Anastakis says.

Second, Harper dismantles social programs even though there is a surplus, destroying the Liberals' nascent national early learning and child-care program and replacing it with a taxable cheque to parents.

"Remember," Anastakis warns, "Harper is not in the business of building. He is in the business of dismantling."

Third, is Harper's anti-democratic assault on the Canadian Wheat Board.

Fourth, is Harper's plans to elect senators without first reforming the upper chamber. Anastakis says this will create parliamentary gridlock, a conscious assault on federal authority. The Senate has co-equal power with the House of Commons except it cannot originate money bills. The current appointed body lacks the legitimacy to frustrate the will of the House of Commons. But an elected Senate would feel emboldened, perhaps even obliged, to do so. Especially to protect provincial rights. "True to form, Harper will have succeeded in paralyzing the federal government while claiming to make it more 'democratic,'" he says.

And finally, Harper wants to abolish the federal spending power, "long a demand by premiers and anti-federal conservatives. Such a measure would mean a final total victory of the provinces over the federal government in the age-old tension between them, a tension that has helped to give Canada one of the best standards of living on the planet."

Anastakis says Harper's abhorrence of government means he's trying to impose a 19th-century state on a 21st- century nation. Only strong national governments can manage the challenges posed by the environment, globalization and the need to create a knowledge-based economy, he said in a telephone interview.

"Now, more than ever, we don't need a dismantled state. We need a state that is powerful and proactive."

Harper could be the second Conservative leader in a generation to utter Brian Mulroney's 1984 election appeal to "Give me four years, and you won't recognize this country."