Harper Continues Aversion to Democracy
I don’t think anyone can truly believe Stephen Harper deep down believes in the democratic principles that Canadians expect and currently enjoy. He is a hyper partisan who not only lives for the scuffle with his political foes, but for the taste of blood. Harper is a dirty fighter. That much has been proven through his in and out scheme, the lies and misleading statements that both he and his inner circle make regularly and their over the top character assassinations of their opponents.
I am a partisan. Like most partisans, I enjoy winning. But how one wins is extremely important to me. Democracy only works if those who win do not absolutely blow their opposition out of the water. Further, a Government must never attempt to use legislation to simply take the opposition out the running. Harper has tried this before. Stephen Harper when he came to power cut the ceiling on political party donations from $5000 to $1000 to weaken the Liberal Party of Canada’s ability to fight the next election. He largely succeeded in that and made the public financing of political parties that much more important for the Liberal Party. Something that passed Parliament with a majority and is fairly shared among all parties.
Now Harper and his circle if Karl Rove wannabees are going to try to take a massive chunk of that money away in hopes of crippling the opposition. I do not want a one party system in Canada and anyone else who is opposed to unchallenged Conservative rule needs to stand up to this now.
Parliament can and if necessary must, bring Harper down over this. He has not been in office long enough to necessarily be granted an election by the Governor General. She could allow a three party coalition if necessary to prevent an election and to prevent this thinly veiled anti democratic move from happening.
The Bloc receives 86% of it’s funding from the per vote subsidy, the Greens 65%, the Liberals 60% and the NDP 57%. The Tories receive just 37% of their funding from this program and therefore will be significantly less hurt by this. As a first step Harper could cut some of the dead weight from Cabinet – a body he ballooned just a month ago, right after lying throughout the election about the deficit.
This will be the only time you will ever here me suggest a three party coalition might be necessary. This is just far too important to allow to happen regardless of what has to be done to stop it.
Here is the link to the CTV article.
Tags: Anti Democratic, Bloc, Conservative Party of Canada, Green Party of Canada, Liberal Party of Canada, NDP, New Democratic Party, One Party Rule, Political Party Funding, Stephen Harper, Stephen Harper Deficit
November 27th, 2008 at 6:40 am
A Path to political and economic corruption
Removing campaign funding combined with Harpers abuse of election spending rules will destroy the ability of political parties to compete fairly. And destroy our democracy and replace it with a system buying votes. Sensible political interests which attract the majority of common people will not win, but rather political interest which make the rich richer will win. If anything the current system does not reward sensible political interests which attract the majority of common people enough.
This is a path to economic and political corruption and national destruction.
HOW MUCH has the private sale of the 407 cost the public through increased travel cost either directly or over crowding the 401?
The 407 was sold and is the gift that keeps giving. This corporate gift generates the kind of money can buy a lot more advertising then families trying to make ends meet. But it cost us all and makes us less economically efficient.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:44 am
[...] 2: I’d link to all the Progressive and Liberal blogs that are expressing outrage at this tactic, but there are so many of them I’m not sure [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:09 am
Harper
It seems like his sole aim is to destroy our country’s political system.
Stop all funding for opposition parties.Bull his programs through and neglect the needs of the people.
The three party agreement gives nothing to the bloc in fact what the bloc has agreed to is simply to support the liberal and ndp with no constitutional amendments to be brought forth for at least 18 months. The economy being the main issue something that harper seemed to forget in his hurry to replace god