Sol Invictus
01-07-2010, 10:09 PM
The prime minister's suspension of parliament has created angry voiceless citizens whose votes have become meaningless
Heather Mallick
guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 January 2010 17.00 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/01/democracy-stephen-harper
If there was a gold medal for shafting democracy at the Winter Olympics, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper would win it. Just before the games open in Vancouver, he has halted parliament in its tracks, suspending it for the second time in little more than a year.
Canada will not have a House of Commons until March 3. Instantly, we are a part-time democracy, a shabby diminished place packed with angry voiceless citizens whose votes have been rendered meaningless. Harper didn't even visit the governor-general of Canada for the formality of asking permission as he did last Christmas. Instead, he phoned her and got his PR man to send out an announcement to the nation.
Rage and shame are flowing on the internet because there is nowhere else for voters to turn. Even The Globe and Mail, Canada's national and excessively staid newspaper, had a front-page editorial steaming with reproach. The Globe often leaves me frustrated, but I was moved when I read it and … did what exactly? I took a stand. I joined a Facebook group called Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, an earnestly pathetic act that may be part of the reason our nation is so lessened on the first day of 2010.
Look, I can't even call my federal MP, a Liberal member of the opposition, because she's effectively out of commission for the next two months. All that's left to me is to tell you what it's like here and why you should care.
Harper, that strange vengeful man you will see in February clapping awkwardly as Olympians leap off mountains and shoot past in the luge, has been on a mission since his youth to turn Canada into a pale, watery version of the United States of America. Even then, the US was well into its identity-switch into the undereducated, paranoid, self-destructively aggressive overspent mess we watch now with grim fascination.
Why follow failure? His reasons elude me, but he has only just begun his mission of the extreme right. His method: absolute personal control of everything. Unfortunately, he has a free pass – there is nobody of any stature in his cabinet, and no opposition to speak of. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff cannot seem to find his place.
The specific intent of proroguing parliament was to smother a scandal, to halt a highly embarrassing and public inquiry into the Canadian military – eight years into its weird little war in Afghanistan – handing over prisoners to the Afghan "government" while knowing they would be tortured. Another reason was to stack the unelected second house, the senate, with five more Conservatives, reshuffle crucial committees and take the country one step closer to complete hard-right majority government.
Harper, frustrated by his repeated failure to achieve more than minority rule, nurses a venom not before seen in Canadian politics. Bush and Blair hired people for this purpose; with Harper it is self-contained. He torments whistleblowers even as they win public acclaim, scorns climate change evidence and makes an international fool of us in Copenhagen, is bent on dismantling the national gun registry set up after the 1989 Montreal massacre, plans the same anti-drug mandatory-sentencing laws that bloated and blocked the US jail system, and fires federal watchdogs who disagree with him.
Obama's failures have complicated roots but Canada's failures have been deliberately engineered. The Conservatives are mean people. The Conservative Party was not always like this and Canadians are unaccustomed to this level of cruelty and proud ignorance in public life.
I am fed up. Powered only by the stoicism on which this winter-bound nation was built – we aren't even frozen any more, thanks to climate change, we are merely damp – I went out last night to see in the New Year with two friends who are government scientists (shan't name them, Harper hates civil servants even more than he hates science). One of them, an American, campaigned for Obama in 2008, the same year she took Canadian citizenship.
We drank a Sandbanks Estates wine – tough little Ontario grape – and toasted a country for which we still have such hopes. I avoided her kind but sceptical eye.
Heather Mallick
guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 January 2010 17.00 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/01/democracy-stephen-harper
If there was a gold medal for shafting democracy at the Winter Olympics, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper would win it. Just before the games open in Vancouver, he has halted parliament in its tracks, suspending it for the second time in little more than a year.
Canada will not have a House of Commons until March 3. Instantly, we are a part-time democracy, a shabby diminished place packed with angry voiceless citizens whose votes have been rendered meaningless. Harper didn't even visit the governor-general of Canada for the formality of asking permission as he did last Christmas. Instead, he phoned her and got his PR man to send out an announcement to the nation.
Rage and shame are flowing on the internet because there is nowhere else for voters to turn. Even The Globe and Mail, Canada's national and excessively staid newspaper, had a front-page editorial steaming with reproach. The Globe often leaves me frustrated, but I was moved when I read it and … did what exactly? I took a stand. I joined a Facebook group called Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, an earnestly pathetic act that may be part of the reason our nation is so lessened on the first day of 2010.
Look, I can't even call my federal MP, a Liberal member of the opposition, because she's effectively out of commission for the next two months. All that's left to me is to tell you what it's like here and why you should care.
Harper, that strange vengeful man you will see in February clapping awkwardly as Olympians leap off mountains and shoot past in the luge, has been on a mission since his youth to turn Canada into a pale, watery version of the United States of America. Even then, the US was well into its identity-switch into the undereducated, paranoid, self-destructively aggressive overspent mess we watch now with grim fascination.
Why follow failure? His reasons elude me, but he has only just begun his mission of the extreme right. His method: absolute personal control of everything. Unfortunately, he has a free pass – there is nobody of any stature in his cabinet, and no opposition to speak of. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff cannot seem to find his place.
The specific intent of proroguing parliament was to smother a scandal, to halt a highly embarrassing and public inquiry into the Canadian military – eight years into its weird little war in Afghanistan – handing over prisoners to the Afghan "government" while knowing they would be tortured. Another reason was to stack the unelected second house, the senate, with five more Conservatives, reshuffle crucial committees and take the country one step closer to complete hard-right majority government.
Harper, frustrated by his repeated failure to achieve more than minority rule, nurses a venom not before seen in Canadian politics. Bush and Blair hired people for this purpose; with Harper it is self-contained. He torments whistleblowers even as they win public acclaim, scorns climate change evidence and makes an international fool of us in Copenhagen, is bent on dismantling the national gun registry set up after the 1989 Montreal massacre, plans the same anti-drug mandatory-sentencing laws that bloated and blocked the US jail system, and fires federal watchdogs who disagree with him.
Obama's failures have complicated roots but Canada's failures have been deliberately engineered. The Conservatives are mean people. The Conservative Party was not always like this and Canadians are unaccustomed to this level of cruelty and proud ignorance in public life.
I am fed up. Powered only by the stoicism on which this winter-bound nation was built – we aren't even frozen any more, thanks to climate change, we are merely damp – I went out last night to see in the New Year with two friends who are government scientists (shan't name them, Harper hates civil servants even more than he hates science). One of them, an American, campaigned for Obama in 2008, the same year she took Canadian citizenship.
We drank a Sandbanks Estates wine – tough little Ontario grape – and toasted a country for which we still have such hopes. I avoided her kind but sceptical eye.