Whats not being talked about in election 2011

What I am finding increasingly disturbing is what is not being talked about in this 2011 election:
The stimulus program part of the Action Plan is rapidly coming to an end, and many thousands of workers will be out of work again. Convenient that this will happen after the “unnecessary” election is over is it not?

New perimeter agreement with the USA which will further enmesh us into the control of the US Homeland Security with the resulting movement of personal data south.

CETA, the trade agreement with Europe which is still continuing through this election, and will undermine Canadian sovereignty even further. Provinces and municipalities will be subjected to WTO international trade deal rules, which we already know through FTA and NAFTA do not favour Canada. Our sewage, water and infrastructure will all be up for sale to European companies and we could even see the Trans Canada Highway turned into a toll road, owned and controlled by Spanish companies which specialize in that throughout the world.

By the end of this year Health Canada will have removed from the shelves of Health Stores about 80% of their offerings as the producers cannot afford the expensive scientific tests required by Health Canada to prove something that has been known for thousands of years to be fact; natural foods are safe and effective, yet they do not make money for the pharmaceutical companies, on the contrary they lose them profits due to wellness rather than sickness.

The Rule of Law in Canada has been turned on its head because we are becoming ruled by “violation of the regulations” in the laws, not the laws themselves. This means that the courts will not be used to judge innocence or guilt as that will be done by the Ministers themselves and the only recourse under this system is to a review panel established by that same Minister. The courts will not be involved at all. Guilty without the possibility of proving our innocence before a court is contrary to innocent until proven guilty in a court of law before a jury of our peers if necessary.

These and more are not being addressed so please help us get answers

Jeremy Arney

Another letter that tells it as I see it too.

 

Another letter I recieved and was given permission to pass on. It is very gratifying to me that others of much more skill and eloquence are saying the same things as I, in this case it is Robin Mathews.

Thank you Robin for your excellent words of warning, and if there is doubt in your minds dear readers, how many town hall meetings arre your conservative candidates attending?

Jeremy

Greetings: In town, and on the way out fast (family business.) If you think this (just sent to vivelecanada for posting) should go to others, please send it on. best wishes, Robin (back to you soon.) R

Adolf Hitler. Stephen Harper. The Big Lie.
A column like this one opens a question that can’t be answered immediately – perhaps not for a long time.
Fifteen years from now an observer may say this column shows how far from reality a commentator could go in the contentious days of 2011 in Canada.
Or, the commentator may ask why only the writer of this column saw the inevitable coming … what became obvious to everyone else … but only when it was too late?
A clue that the second case might be true is the repeated summing-up of the leaders debate on Tuesday, April 12 by Chris Hall (CBC parliamentary reporter).
Over and over he reported that the leaders of the NDP, the bloc quebecois, and the Liberals attacked Stephen Harper – and that he answered them. Not once did Chris Hall – or any of the other (‘mainstream’) commentators I have observed say that very many of Stephen Harper’s replies were manipulations of fact to convey falsehoods … when they were not outright lies.
Stephen Harper repeatedly said there was no tax cut for corporations in the latest budget (before Parliament closed for the election). That was not the point. A six billion dollar tax cut for the large corporations will come into effect if the Harperites win government.
Those cuts need not come into effect. And so, in fact, the Harperites are giving large corporations a six billion dollar tax cut.
Lying flagrantly, Stephen Harper insisted his Party is not in contempt of Parliament when it is so without question.
On the matter of the Harperites refusing to provide spending information (one of the bases of the contempt ruling) Harper said his agents gave all information – a statement which is simply not true.
Perhaps most important of all, he denied the fundamental facts of parliamentary government, insisting that “Canadians” believe the Party with the most votes must govern. What he argued, in fact, is a denial of the democratic parliamentary system. In short, he lied.
This morning on an open line show a caller claimed his statement that the Canadian Labour Congress endorses his budget is an outright lie.
Those are five random examples. Random, I say, because one would need a script of the debate to count up the number of times Stephen Harper lied outright or manipulated facts to convey falsehoods.
He didn’t disable his opponents by superior argument. He disabled the whole debate by using persistent falsehood and near falsehood.
The latest, mid-election flurry of revelations of misdoing concerns expenditures on the G20 Summit. Allegations are of misleading Parliament by the Harperites (words for ‘lying to Parliament’?), misallocation of huge amounts of money, insider indulgences of Roman proportions. All that through “leaks” of a forthcoming Report by the Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
In Ottawa, Harperite insider John Baird has spoken with apparent confident authority about what is contained in the confidential Report. How can he do so? Who gave him copies of the Report? Did Sheila Fraser? Stephen Harper (characteristically) is avoiding responsibility … for as long as he can.
Canadians must ask how many such seamy revelations are waiting for an opening of the secrecy-bound activities of the Harperites? They must ask the question.
Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, it has been revealed the Harperites took words of praise Sheila Fraser wrote about Liberal financial activities and quoted them about Harperite “work”. Sheila Fraser is apparently upset! Stockwell Day apologized profusely. But the question remains – who did that piece of chicanery? Did Stephen Harper order it? Can the Harperites be trusted on any matter whatever?
The conclusions which I have come to are quite clear. I believe Stephen Harper is more comfortable lying than telling the truth. I believe he is a psychopathic liar – which means I believe he will lie (and follow up his lies) in any way he can to gain his ends and aggrandize his position.
To take the logic of that position to its conclusion, I believe that – if Stephen Harper were to gain enough power – he would murder his political opponents, would have innocent Canadians shot down in the streets. [Remember the Toronto G20 violations of free assembly.]
If what I write is fair comment on observed public affairs, then Stephen Harper may properly be described as a neo-Fascist.
Historians of Nazism sometimes suggest the architect of “the Big Lie” in Nazi politics was Josef Goebbels, the only Ph. D in the inner circle and an early Party member. But the ultimate author of all Nazi strategies of falsehood in that brutal despotism was Adolf Hitler himself.
He was a friend of Winnifred Wagner, manager – preceding and during the Second World War – of the famous Bayreuth (Wagner) Festivals. Early in Hitler’s time of growing power Winnifred Wagner would express dismay to him about Nazi street brutality against political opponents and others.
Like Stephen Harper when faced with evidence of undeniable wrong-doing by the Party, Hitler would say he knew nothing about it, or someone else did it without his orders. Or he would belittle the evidence or … change the subject or … lie outright.
When faced with inescapable need to act with courage and honesty, Hitler, like Stephen Harper, would take the coward’s way out.
In a moment of brazen bravado, for instance, Harper suggested a one-on-one election debate with Michael Ignatieff – who agreed immediately. On April Fool’s day, the press announced Stephen Harper’s retreat, babbling nonsense and, again, repeating a simple lie – that a coalition exists and is led by Michael Ignatieff.
Harper’s campaign is built and based upon that and worse kinds of lying. As the Encyclopedia Brittanica writes in relation to Fascism, Stephen Harper makes a “proud sacrifice of all ethical scruples to success”. What Canadians must realize is that Stephen Harper employs a complex strategy of lies that are well thought out and employed in no accidental way.
To say Harper is fairly called a neo-Fascist may seem harsh. But people in democracies must be clear-eyed if they wish to protect democratic freedoms. Even Plato – 2500 years ago – observed that Tyranny develops most naturally out of Democracy.
The characteristics of Fascism across Europe in the first half of the twentieth century were plain: the sharing of State power with private corporations to pursue common goals. Using the police to destroy civil freedoms. Operating all activities under ‘the Big Lie”. Enrolling the Mainstream Press and Media as accomplices in political gangsterism. Persecuting, starving, torturing, murdering any number of people opposed to the Fascists.
Hitler was determined to take power by constitutional means after having failed in a violent attempt at a coup in Munich in 1923. Twisting, perverting, exploiting, debasing constitutional practice (like Stephen Harper), Hitler managed to bully and coerce his way to supreme power in Germany – with results we know too well.
Stephen Harper’s wholly perverse manipulation of prorogation to avoid votes in Parliament might have been learned directly from Adolf Hitler.
Harper’s actions to deny Parliament rightful information and to support the alleged lies of a cabinet minister might, also, have been learned from the earlier “drive to power” of a dictator-in-waiting.
Like Adolf Hitler, Stephen Harper is, I have no doubt, the author of all his Party’s ‘strategies of falsehood”, all its attempts to destroy the democracy in which it presently works.
Harper’s use of the RCMP to eject the unwanted from “democratic” election campaign meetings matches Hitler’s “strong-arm squads” created to protect Nazi meetings from attendance by “the unwanted”.
Indeed, before the present election was announced, I wrote a column on the RCMP and its growing corruption. In that column I guessed that the dismissal of the top man at the RCMP, William Elliott, was post-dated by Harper because the Mounties would be needed for dirty work in the election.
As happened, RCMP officers have been used as thug “security” in the Harper meetings. Did those RCMP officers wear the brown shirts of the Nazis? We know nothing about them. Who are they? What are their names? Why have they not been identified? Who ordered them to act at those meetings? Was it Stephen Harper? We must know – before the election.
Nor is it accidental, I believe, that William Elliott – the recently fired top RCMP officer – was, earlier, a key actor in the Prime Minister’s Office undertaking the approval of much-charged Bruce Carson to become a top advisor to Stephen Harper.
Carson is presently under investigation by the RCMP for alleged improper behaviour in attempts to get contracts awarded. He has a record of misdeeds and dubious connections. Stephen Harper alleges he knew almost nothing of Bruce Carson’s past.
One may guess that for his good and faithful service first in the PMO, and then in Stockwell Day’s Public Safety Department, and then as head of the RCMP, William Elliot will fall from grace onto a very carefully prepared, soft, luxurious bed.
Under Guiliano Zaccardelli, the RCMP used its “investigation” of Ralph Goodale and the Department of Finance in 2006 to help defeat the Liberals. Now the RCMP makes clear it can say nothing about the tale of Stephen Harper’s senior henchman Bruce Carson, involved, it is alleged, in a dirtier piece of business than any Ralph Goodale has ever been remotely connected to.
Having very recently discovered ethics, “ethics” is apparently the basis upon which the William Elliott RCMP refuses to report about Bruce Carson.
Carson’s close relation to Stephen Harper and the PMO has, we may be sure, nothing to do with the RCMP’s newfound “ethics” and “discretion”.
The same slippery dishonesty, I believe, is involved in the case of Elizabeth May’s exclusion from the leaders debate. The key force rejecting her has been, I believe, Stephen Harper. When the decision of the “media consortium” was announced, both Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff said she should be included in the debate.
Characteristically shifting responsibility, Stephen Harper said he would accept the decision of the “media consortium” – which, of course – consulted the Parties. Only when it became plain that public sentiment wanted Elizabeth May in the debate – only then did Harper change his tune and say he supported her presence.
If truth is ever told by members of the media consortium, I am almost certain they will report that Harper publicly supported May’s presence while privately telling the consortium he would withdraw if she was allowed in. Harper knows she threatens his nondescript candidate Gary Lunn. And so I believe Harper – in typical covert fashion – acted to keep her out.
Consider the next minority government. I believe the Mainstream Press and Media are doing what they can to secure a Harper victory. If they were being genuinely impartial, they would have to be reporting simple, factual things they are not reporting. 1. Minority governments occur commonly in parliamentary systems. 2. Such governments often do excellent work. 3. Coalitions may form – and, if they do, they can govern effectively. 4. If they don’t form, ‘agreements to govern’ (as has, in fact, been the case in Canada since 2006) can be effective. 5. And so Stephen Harper’s attack on those possibilities is a sham. It is a hoax which he is attempting to perpetrate on the Canadian public.
But … more! The Mainstream Press and Media should expose Stephen Harper’s real goal … the one he is trying to use a pattern of lies to achieve.
Having gone Right to the point of having ‘nut case Yankee policies”, Harper knows they won’t be supported by a minority government. $30 billions (plus) for fighter planes. A $6 billion gift to large corporations. Multi billions to build [who will get the contracts?] new nineteenth century jails to pack with people who shouldn’t be in jail. And more….
Harper has set up a situation that is so obscene no minority parliament could accept it.
That means the minority parliament will vote him down and will seek from the Governor General the right to rule. Stephen Harper has, I believe, anticipated that (as I believe he anticipated he would need William Elliott as head of the RCMP during the election). And so he appointed a Harperite Hack as Governor General. That opens huge and dangerous possibilities. If the Governor General attempts to work politically for Stephen Harper, instead of constitutionally for Canada, he will create a crisis in Canadian democracy.
In that situation a Harper attempted coup d’etat will be used to prevent a Liberal-led minority government.
If that happens, the Opposition parties will be forced into some kind of coalition. To save Canadian democracy, the matter may demand an all-party Opposition coalition. Stephen Harper knows that, I am sure. He is trying to lie enough to make Canadians believe (in advance) that a coalition is undemocratic and illegitimate. That is why he lies about it consistently…on and on and on.
Stephen Harper has never let the truth stand in the way of his ambition to rule as what Plato called a Tyrant.
The Mainsteam Press and Media – which opens up none of the facts on this matter, supports, I believe, what is in fact Stephen Harper’s baldfaced lying. Even the CBC does. In the face, for instance, of what the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting insist is an outright lie by the Prime Minister’s Office, by Stephen Harper, and by the arts and culture minister James Moore about cuts to CBC funding … the CBC remains mute.
Complicity with lies and wrongdoing can’t go much farther than that.
It is plain that Canadians are going to have to figure out the pattern of lying laid out by Stephen Harper and what it is intended to produce. They are going to have to figure it out in the face of the failure of the Mainstream Press and
Media to do their job. Canadians would be wise to be ready for a major attempt to hi-jack democracy in Canada and to have set up in its place a Harper Tyranny.
Canadians are going to have to realize they’re facing what I believe is a neo-Fascist leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. And Canadians are going to have to reject him with all the energy they have.

Senator Tommy Banks letter re Harper’s gradual destruction of our Canada

There is a paragraph in the begining of this that allows me to put this on my blog and I gladly do so.  It is vindication of what I have been trying to say for years now.

Thank you Tommy Banks, a senator for the people of Canada.
Jeremy

What Canadians have lost under this “Harper” Govt.
Tommy Banks,

Canadian conductor and pianist,
host of the CBC television’s “The Tommy Banks Show” for 15 years.
—– Original Message —–
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 11:33 PM
Subject: Tom Banks

A letter from my partner Tom Banks
by Sharman King on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10:39am

I apologize for this long re-post, but I’d like to share with my friends this letter from my business partner and musical associate Senator Tommy Banks. It’s worth noting that Tom was a Conservative when he was appointed to the Senate. If you agree with this food for thought please feel free to send it to your friends of whatever political stripe. The bigger message here is how we want our government to behave, no matter who forms that government. Here’s Tom’s missive:
There is only one thing about the outcome of the May 2nd election on which Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper agree. It is that one of them will be the Prime Minister of Canada. Mr. Layton, Mr. Duceppe and Ms. May are not in the running to form a government. They can’t. It will be either Mr. Ignatieff or Mr. Harper.

That is the choice, and it is a very clear – in fact, stark choice. We will choose between openness or secrecy. Between listening or refusing to listen. Between someone who respects Parliament or someone who disdains it. Between things we can and will do now or things that, (provided of course that everything goes well), we might do in five or six years. Between someone who answers all questions from Canadians, or someone who won’t accept any.

Between Mr. Harper who said “It’s past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act”, or Mr. Ignatieff who said “ . . . we don’t want user fees. We want universal, accessible, free-at-the-point-of-service health care, paid out of general revenue. That’s just bottom line. Otherwise we get two-tiered”.

Between buying jets or helping vets. Between real early childhood learning and care or Saturday-night babysitting. Between respect for our great institutions or contempt for them. Between helping families or helping big corporations. Between the Canada that we think we have, or the way in which Mr. Harper has already changed it.

Over the past few years Mr. Harper’s government has quietly engineered so many changes that there are some ways in which our country is barely recognizable. Many of us don’t yet realize the extent of those changes, because many of them have been brought about very carefully and gradually – almost imperceptibly in some cases.

This is diabolically clever. If these things had all been done at once, there would have been loud protests and reactions. But moving just one little brick at a time doesn’t cause much fuss – until you realize that the whole house has been renovated. And we’ve hardly noticed.

These are changes that are at the very heart of who and what Canadians are. They are changes to the protections that used to exist against the tyranny of the majority – or against a single-minded my-way-or-the-highway autocrat. These changes are losses to our very Canadian-ness. Let me remind you of some of them:

The Law Commission of Canada was created by an Act of Parliament in 1997. It worked very well. It kept an eye in a sort-of avuncular way, on necessary reforms of the law, including election law. The Commission couldn’t actually change law; but it was very good at letting governments and everybody else know when changes needed to be made and why. It was our legal Jiminy Cricket, and it performed a valuable service for Canada. The Commission was created by an Act of Parliament, and any government wanting to shut it down should have been up-front about it. It should have come to Parliament with a Bill to rescind The Law Commission of Canada Act. That’s what any of our 21 previous Prime Ministers would have done.

But to Mr. Harper, Parliament is an inconvenience. Somebody might ask “Why are you doing this?” But he didn’t want to go through all that Parliamentary trouble; so, rather than proposing the abolition of the Commission (a proposal about which there would have been pretty fierce debate on all sides), they just eliminated all funding for it in the federal budget. Governments can do that. Poof – no Law Commission.

Nice and quiet. Just one little brick. Hardly noticed.

Then there was the Court Challenges Programme, set up in 1994, which was the means by which a bit of legal help could be provided to a private individual or small organization who didn’t have a lot of money, and who was taking on, or being taken on by, the Government of Canada. It leveled the legal playing field a bit. It was a perfect example of fundamental Canadian fairness.

By convincing a tough panel of judges of the reasonableness of your cause, you could get a little help in paying for some lawyers to go up against the phalanx of legal beagles that could always, and forever, and at public expense, be brought to bear against you by the State. In other words, if you weren’t rich, and if you were taking on or being taken on by the Feds, you might have had a chance. But Mr. Harper doesn’t like being questioned, let alone challenged. It’s so inconvenient! Solution? Quietly announce that the Court Challenges Programme is being, er, discontinued. Poof – no Court Challenges Programme – no court challenges.

Hardly noticed.

The Coordination of Access to Information Request System (CAIRS) was created (by a Progressive-Conservative government) in 1989 so that departments of government could harmonize their responses to access-to-information requests that might need multi-departmental responses. It was efficient; it made sure that in most cases the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, or at least what they were saying; and it helped keep government open and accountable. Well, if you’re running a closed-door government, that’s not a good idea, is it? So, as a Treasury Board official explained to the Canadian Press, CAIRS was killed by the Harper government because “extensive” consultations showed it wasn’t valued by government departments. I guess that means that the extensive consultations were all with government departments.

Wait! Wasn’t there anybody else with whom to extensively consult? Wasn’t there some other purpose and use for CAIRS? Didn’t it have something to do with openness and accountability? I guess not. Robert Makichuk, speaking for Mr. Harper’s government, explained that “valuable resources currently being used to maintain CAIRS would be better used in the collection and analysis of improved statistical reporting”.

Right. In other words, CAIRS was an inconvenience to the government. So poof – it’s disappeared. And, except for investigative reporters and other people who might (horrors!) ask questions, its loss is hardly noticed.

And the bridge too far for me: Cutting the already-utterly-inadequate funding for the exposure of Canadian art and artists in other countries. That funding was, by any comparison, already laughably miniscule. Mr. Harper says that “ordinary” Canadians don’t support the arts. He’s wrong. And his is now the only government of any significant country in the world that clearly just doesn’t get it.

All these changes were done quietly, cleverly, and under the radar. No fuss. No outcry. Just one little brick at a time. But in these and other ways, our Canadian house is no longer the kind of place it once was. Nobody minds good renovations. Nobody even minds tearing something down, as long as we put up something better in its place. That’s not what has happened.

Mr. Harper fired the head of the Canadian Wheat Board because he was doing his job properly. He removed the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission because she wanted to make sure that the Chalk River nuclear reactor was safe.

Hardly noticed.

There are many more things that were hardly noticed: Cuts to funding for the Status of Women, Adult Learning and Literacy, Environmental Programs, museums funding, and more. All quietly, just one brick at a time.

Hardly noticed.

As to campaign promises, everybody in sight on every side is guilty of breaking those. Except the Federal NDP of course, who haven’t yet had the opportunity. (It’s very easy to make promises that you know you will not likely have to keep).

But the government promised to end wait times in health care. They didn’t. They promised to end, once and for all, the whining of some provinces about the non-existent “fiscal imbalance”. They didn’t. They said they had brought final resolution to the softwood lumber problem with the U.S. They haven’t. They promised to create thousands of new child-care spaces in Canada. They haven’t. They promised not to tax income trusts (“We will NEVER do that!” they said). They taxed them. They promised to lower your income tax.

They raised it.

They said they had a good “made-in-Canada” plan to meet our obligations on climate change. They don’t. Mr. Harper has said plainly that whatever the Americans do is what we’ll do too.

They campaign on a platform of transparency and accountability; but they’re now trying to discredit the Parliamentary Budget Officer that they created, because he’s trying to do the job that they gave him. Mr. Harper said that our form of government, evolved over centuries from the 900-year-old British Westminster tradition, was all wrong. We had to have fixed election dates, because otherwise, democratic principles would be trampled. “Fixed election dates”, he said, “stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They level the playing field for all parties”.

So Parliament (remember them?) at Mr. Harper’s insistence, passed a law requiring fixed election dates, which Mr. Harper promptly broke.

Somebody once said that we get the kind of government we deserve. What did we do to deserve Mr. Harper? He once said that we should all “Stand Up for Canada”. Well, let’s do that. We just have to decide whether the present version of Canada is the one that we’ll stand up for. Or stand for.

Thank you

Tommy Banks (an Alberta Senator.)