Challenge To Harper

Perhaps the Liberal agenda of Star Wars, privatization and corporate tax cuts is too close to his own to criticize, but in his latest bizarre attack, Harper lashed out at the NDP over one of the rare instances of him agreeing with the party.

In his leadership acceptance speech on Saturday, Harper accused the NDP of wanting to “destroy the system.” Given the NDP’s support for the systems of international law and publicly funded and delivered health care, he could only have been referring to the NDP’s “change the system” campaign on proportional representation.

Funny, because Harper used to support the NDP plan to call a referendum to ask citizens if they would like to change their voting system and use PR instead. When the NDP triggered Parliament’s first vote on PR since 1923 last fall, he joined the Alliance, Bloc, two Liberals and the NDP and voted in favour of the referendum.

Or, perhaps he was referring to the banking system, which, for the record, only needs changing, not destroying. He could explain what he meant by agreeing to debate NDP Leader Jack Layton, something Harper has refused for four days.

Layton challenged Harper to a debate after Harper’s first bizarre attack on Wednesday, in which he said NDP policies were more dangerous than Quebec separation to the future of Canada. Despite criticizing fellow leadership candidate Belinda Stronach for not debating him, Harper refuses to explain why Canadian values will kill the country in a radio or television debate with Layton.

Last year, he ducked about 10 radio or television debates with Layton, all initiated by media outlets, on such issues as the war on Iraq, same-sex marriage and the federal budget.