Stephen Harper. No Choice But An Election Now

His (2) lackeyism towards the USA has planted permanent feelings of nausea in even conservative stomachs. Approving of the death penalty for Canadians in the US, failing to protect the (now martyr) Canadian “child soldier” in Guantanamo prison, approving of unlimited environmental destruction in Alberta (to get gas for the USA), and panting along behind the US on environmental policy have painted him back into the “Don’t trust this man with a majority government” corner. More Failure. Not only (3) is he plainly ill at ease as (his friendly, ideological mentor) Brian Mulroney gets unflattering attention from a Parliamentary committee, but RCMP scandal (that could explode at any minute) is breathing down his collar. Remember that the RCMP of (now disgraced) Juliano Zaccardelli acted very badly – on Harper’s behalf. Against all propriety it announced a criminal investigation – at the height of the last federal election campaign – connected to Liberal Ralph Goodale’s federal department. The announcement is alleged to have aided the Harper election campaign significantly. (The investigation fizzled into nothing, and disappeared. Strange.) Then in December of 2007 the Brown Task Force on RCMP Governance and Culture Change submitted its Report. The Task Force was set up by Harper, many believe, (against calls for a full Public Inquiry) to take the heat off (his friends) the RCMP. The Task Force, even so, described an RCMP in disintegration, requiring major reconstruction. The Task Force proposed a continuing oversight body and a stern time line for action. The Harper/Stockwell Day/Rob Nicholson security and justice trio has done nothing. They want to do nothing. Meanwhile the RCMP continues to disintegrate across the country. That is a reason, alone, why it may explode, again, in scandal. I have a story, as well – my own amazing experience – that tells volumes about the combustibility of the RCMP, now. Kelly Marie Richard alleges dental maltreatment in Calgary. Evidence led her to ask for RCMP investigation, and then Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP investigation of the RCMP screw-up. Both organizations, I allege, defaulted monstrously. I, then, independently, requested an investigation. (Note the places that got involved!) (1) An officer in Surrey, B.C. wrote me an insolent letter and told me, in short, to get lost. I persisted, pushing at RCMP Commissioner William Elliott in Ottawa, Ontario. I then heard from Deputy Commissioner for the North West Region R.R. Knecht in Edmonton, Alberta who remarked that the investigation was proceeding. It would be overseen and reported upon, Knecht said, by Superintendent Hartl in Regina, Saskatchewan, after investigation by an RCMP corporal from an office in Lethbridge, Alberta. The “Report” by Superintendent Hartl is an embarrassing whitewash. The investigation undertaken is a ridiculous joke. None of the material I asked to have produced is referred to. People deeply involved were not even interviewed. Some, like the insolent officer in Surrey, B.C., were not even mentioned. The “Report”, moreover, contains verifiable falsehood. Consider. Responsible members of the RCMP in Ottawa, Edmonton, Regina, Lethbridge, and Surrey, B.C. (across four Provinces) set up an investigation into allegations of deeply serious - possibly criminal – actions by the RCMP and the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP. The investigations and the Report they produced are laughable monstrosities of investigation and of police conduct – as if the wrong done to an innocent Canadian woman and her sons is a joke. Correspondence on this matter with responsible members of Stephen Harper’s cabinet elicits – NO REPLY WHATSOEVER. This is a catastrophe begging to happen. Failure, one more time. None of those, above, are reasons Harper has to call an election now. (4) It’s The Economy, The Economy, The Economy, first. Why? Your “major” press and media are telling you Canada is swinging from the chandeliers economically. Everything is good. It isn’t. Stephen Harper knows that. His fundamentalist bosses in Washington have called in the soothsayers. They have cut open crows and studied their innards. They have cast horoscopes. They have read the Tarot cards. They have prayed at the tomb of Ronald Reagan. All their scientific information tells them the U.S. is on the economic skids, and things will get worse for many months and maybe years. Canada will be hit. It is being hit already in B.C. (forest products) and in Ontario (manufacturing). Quebec is next. Things are so bad that Stephen Harper’s mythical one billion dollars to help small communities had to be pulled out of myth into reality because people are hurting. For the reasons in 1, 2, and 3 Harper doesn’t want an election. But for reason 4, he is being driven to one. Having been the key lackey of the U.S., having pushed economic integration with the U.S., and DREADING an economic slump in Canada, Stephen Harper is running. He’s running for cover, the cover he hopes an election will bring. He wants Ontario and Quebec – needs them. And so he wants their voters at the polls before Canadians see how bad economic life is going to be for them. Having opened a British Columbian crow and examined its innards, I can tell you everything Harper is thinking, right now. (My crow is dependable.) Harper, now, will settle for another minority government if he can get it, knowing if he waits until 2009, he won’t be able to save his skin, but will get the Kim Campbell treatment – lucky to have two or three members elected. He knows an election will cut off the Task Force on RCMP Governance and Culture Change – at least for awhile. He can try to use an election to cover up the lackey work he’s doing for the U.S.A. by talking loftily about “Canada’s Rightful Place on the World Stage” (meaning killing Canadians and others for the U.S.A.) My crow’s innards told me that Stephen Harper doesn’t believe an election will work for him. But he knows he has no choice. He has to force an election in an attempt to save his skin, to salvage something … and he has to do it fast. There you have it, Canada. Take it from here.