As Stephen Harper eliminates the voter subsidy, what goes next ... the ballot box? A government notorious for its abuse of power continues on its merry way, unchallenged, and there is not one iota of consideration (despite generous attestations to the contrary on election night - when Harper actually smiled) for the 60% of Canadians who voted distinctly otherwise on May 2nd. One reason given for Harper’s elimination of the voter subsidy is that he was “tired” of so many elections in such a short period of time. Is four years from now really not enough time to rest up for an election?
So it looks like we will not have competitive politics for quite a spell because Harper actually likes tampering with how we individual citizens support the parties for which we vote. The Conservatives call it, according to their marketplace model (and soma-induced mantra) “freedom of choice” - a ruse, as if democracy were based on some form of consumerism, you get what you pay for. I call it the stepping stones to a not-so-benign dictatorship because the party playing fields are nowhere near level without the subsidies. Instead of four or five federal parties, we may now (possibly) have only two, at best – how is that for “choice”? What masquerades as “individualism” manifests as illiberalism. And this was not necessarily a “public” subsidy (and by the way what’s wrong with the word “public”?). This was not a “tax” on my vote, and Harper really is fiddling with nickels and dimes here – remember the cuts to GST? (Quite the big thinker, he is!) No, this was “my” subsidy, a toonie from “my” taxes to support “our” democracy (what’s left of it), and it was conceived in the interest of electoral fairness, to minimize the undue influence of big corporations and unions, nothing otherwise.
In taking away the subsidy Harper is subtracting from the dignity of my vote, your vote and everyone else’s vote – and he is at his partisan, malfeasant worst. Two dollars per voter is mere pocket change, but multiply that several election times over I am sure we will come close to another billion dollars, or so, just enough to hold another G20 Summit with possible occasion to bludgeon ordinary Canadian urbanites ... again. Shall we all rest easy, now? My guess is that Harper will eventually become tired of pesky and annoying elections altogether (far too much chatter, to which his Cabinet is surely unaccustomed), so in the end he will appoint himself Governor General and then usurp the powers of the Prime Minister – something akin to Putin.
Just because Harper “won” (read: spent far more money on) the election (with the last-minute help of bin Laden’s sudden demise) does not justify the proceedings of his “government,” regardless of so-called party pronouncements prior to the vote. Not everyone who supported the Conservatives will sit comfortably with the move to eliminate the vote subsidy. Oliver Cromwell and the experiment with Republicanism is an important episode in British constitutional history (with which we should all be familiar, for King Charles I did lose his head), but it does not necessarily deserve our respect. There are certain parallels with today (though not quite in the same sequence): for example, the truly unprecedented accumulation of unrivalled power (outside of Parliament), the air of “Puritanism,” the emphasis on the army, and the promotion of “religious liberty” at the expense of political liberty.
There are other precedents for Harper – mostly in third-world countries. And as the Prime Minister is busy ensuring that the likes of Gadhafi not get overthrown by his very own people, he continues with intense bombing missions, as if Edmund Burke can double as a fighter pilot. He confuses his affections for Marie Antoinette with the dark figure behind Lockerbie. As well, I am reminded of the right-wing figure from turn-of-the-century France, Charles Maurras, who opposed freedom for Jewish Captain Dreyfus (falsely accused of treason), thinking he should remain on Devil’s Island even if innocent, because releasing him would be a stain on the French State (and Army). Similarly, the (once teenaged) – and only Canadian - Muslim Omar Khadr languished in Guantanamo, implicated by his father’s apparent relationship with bin Laden (and former Prime Minister Chrétien), a hand grenade, and a U.S. military court that cried bloody murder in war. True to his Machiavellianism, Harper calculated that he would get more votes (and money, let’s face it) from his evangelical base (otherwise known as the PM’s “conscience”) if he kept Khadr in Guantanamo’s gulag than if the boy received due process in Canada.
A century ago the Dreyfus Affair split France in two, and the French government apologized to the family only in 1998, on the anniversary of Zola’s J’Accuse, but the truth was that Dreyfus was innocent. The truth in Harper’s Canada is that Khadr’s rights as a human were grossly violated, but then again, the evidence shows that we cannot get habeas corpus right in downtown Toronto (another development in the Britain’s early pre-Civil War period). I see at least one apology generations in waiting (for “policing errors”), assuming we still have our sovereignty as a nation.
Eventually Mr. Harper will lose, and his luck will fail. Even the voters will tire of their captivity. Maybe there will be one too many wars. In the future, there will be no earthquake in Haiti to save him, no late-night, James Bond- type assassinations of the world’s most-wanted criminal mastermind, and possibly (recalling Mr. Dion’s failed interview) fewer unethical decisions by our news networks to stir the public imagination ... all again, last-minute. No, as I am fond of saying: Oliver Cromwell was followed by his son Tumble-down Dick.
Because of Harper, we have already fallen far. Now the view looks precipitous: it is not so much the dearth of Liberals as the apparent death of liberalism (originally formed as opposition to the abuse of power – epitomized by the “voter subsidy”) ... that is what worries me most. Canada will, however, “Rise Again” (following Stan Rogers' song "The Mary Ellen Carter"). And then will begin the job of undoing Harper’s nefarious consequences, if possible. The first order of business will be to restore the “Harper Government” to its original nomenclature (“Government of Canada”); then, to pull down the statues of he-who-shall-not-be-named.
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