Stephen Harper, The Second Coming Of Brian Mulroney And The End Of Canada

It is no secret that Brian Mulroney has been advisor to the Harper government and this should come as no surprise. Both are politicians of easy virtue, both are less than candid with Canadians, and both are addicted to the idea of abusing the constitution for electoral advantage. 

Both men are very skilled at misrepresenting themselves. When Mulroney was first elected he passed himself off as a moderate conservative and a federalist. Once elected though his true political stripes were revealed and he was outed as the definitive anti-federalist with the Meech Lake Accord. Similarly, Harper presents himself as conservative, but he is really a closet neoconservative. Signing the “Alberta Firewall Letter” and granting Quebec nationhood killed any notion that he might be a defender of federalism.

Harper, like Mulroney, sees the constitution as another pawn in the political game and has put the country on notice that if he gains a majority he plans on re-opening the constitution.

When Brian Mulroney was building his grand coalition towards winning the largest Parliamentary majority ever he realized he had to dislodge Liberal support in Quebec as this was key to winning a majority government.  In order to do this it was rumored at the time he was including known Quebec separatists in the coalition. One would wonder why separatists would want to join such a coalition. After the election the answer became evident- constitutional favors in the form of the Meech Lake Accord. The Accord was one giant step toward final separation.

When the MLA failed, Lucien Bouchard, then in Mulroney’s cabinet, and one of those separatists stormed out of the Commons and formed the Bloc Quebecois. The MLA was then repackaged as the Charlottetown Accord. As the constitutional bickering spun out of control the government wisely called for a referendum to finally let Canadians have their say. It was voted down conclusively in a national referendum in 1992.

Thanks to Mulroney’s fondness for backroom deals and rolling the dice Canada had a separatist party installed in Parliament in the BQ, now led by Gilles Duceppe.

In a bizarre political irony Harper is trying to dislodge the BQ- the party fathered by Mulroney’s failed constitutional machinations-as gaining seats in Quebec is still the key to winning a majority. Again, he is willing to use the constitution to do it. He has already granted Quebec nation status-like Mulroney pandering to separatism. He has indicated he is going to re-open the constitution. We know Harper is a provincial supremacist, and we know where this is headed should he get a majority.

Harper is pointing out to Quebecois that the BQ will never form government; it will always be a wasted vote. The problem for Quebecois is that Harper believes in minimal government.  He will most certainly cut off, or drastically limit, a steady diet of federal transfer payments to all provinces- and Quebec has always been a major beneficiary of federal pork. Medicare, for example, will continue to be starved out of existence.

Harper has said that under his conservative leadership there will be no federal-provincial bickering as there was under previous Liberal governments.  His solution, no doubt, will be to simply cut the provinces loose. Quebec will finally get its full sovereignty, Alberta will get its firewall and Canada will end up a disjointed collection of provincial fiefdoms and the asymmetry of our federalism will have come to its breaking point-less politely known as balkanization of the country.

 Harper has pledged that Canada will be out of Afghanistan by 2011. Canada and its NATO allies have become the Trojan horse to American imperialism. These are wars of occupation not liberation and will require an ongoing supply of troops and armaments.  Rather than abating these wars will most certainly intensify as the US is now fighting in Pakistan, still has unfinished business with Iran and the Russia-Georgia  conflict has done nothing to ease tensions in that part of the world.

Harper has been militarizing Canada in support of America’s war on terror and it is abundantly clear the shots are being called in Washington not Ottawa.  America’s wars are now our wars.

He is clearly playing politics with Canadian lives. Should he gain a majority the 2011 commitment will be but one broken election promise.  We are in an era of serial warfare and the provocations of the US have assured that for the foreseeable future there are going to be ongoing wars. The only unknowns are the number of conflicts, their intensity, the ultimate casualty lists-human and financial- and will nuclear weapons be used?

Harper has also stated that Canada will now be open to further foreign investment.  This hasn’t been an issue since the Mulroney government terminated the FIRA (Foreign Investment Review Agency). FIRA, a Liberal creation, was never more than a rubber stamp for foreign ownership and as the Mulroney government created its own agency, Investment Canada, the rubber stamp was simply activated quicker and with more resonance.  Of course Mulroney did not stop there as he slid the FTA, now NAFTA, past the electorate and since then Canada has been a captive economy.

When Harper goes to a G8 conference and brags that Canada is an “energy superpower” he is being utterly pretentious. The US has a lock on our resources and in time of shortage the NAFTA requires that we get to freeze in the dark while our natural gas and petroleum continue to flow south. Canada is America’s single largest supplier of energy and our energy resources are really in foreclosure.       

 Harper, like Mulroney before him, practices the politics of betrayal.  Both men share a willingness to sacrifice the country at the alter of their corrupted ultra-right ideology.

In a recent speech Harper claimed that Canadians have become more conservative in the past two decades. It would be interesting to hear what his premise is for this assumption. If this is so why were his conservatives granted only the stingiest of minority governments in the last election? Mistrust is a credible first reason and dates back to the tumultuous Mulroney era. A second is that many Canadians recognize  Harper for what he is-an uncompromising partisan.

In the same speech he said his government would have to put water in its wine when making policy should it gain a majority. Why then were the Red Tories so quickly purged from the Conservative Party of Canada which is supposed to be a coalition of conservatives?

Even as a minority prime minister, Harper has revealed too much as to where he would take the country if granted a majority. Canadians of every political stripe should be concerned. Harper’s ideological fangs are too long and too pronounced to play the wolf in sheep’s clothing.  

This election is not about the economy.  It is about union with the US, about annexation. If Harper’s conservatives gain a majority we can be certain the next election will be well into the future. In one term they can destroy the last remnants of Canadian sovereignty and the damage done will be irreversible. They are unapologetically, cheerleaders to The Empire.

The opposition parties, the Liberals, the NDP, the Greens and yes, even the BQ are utterly derelict in their duty unless they confront Harper’s conservatives on what is conspicuously a unionist agenda. Harper wants a majority for only one reason and that is to lead the country into dissolution.

Behind the soft woolen vests and the family man posing with mothers and their children is the heart and soul of a determined and robotic ideologue waiting to pounce.

If this effrontery goes unchallenged it will truly be the final and ultimate national disgrace.