April 20, 2011
Standing up against Harper's assault on democracy
Murray Dobbin writes that Harper "is the only prime minister in Canadian history to openly detest his own country: its efforts at egalitarianism, its social programs, its wealth redistribution, its peacekeeping history internationally, and its attempts at promoting and preserving its unique culture."
Dobbin, an author of five books, research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, policy analyst for the Council of Canadians is one of Canada’s most respected political commentators and public intellectuals.
He is the author of a new report, published on April 15th by the Council of Canadians: Harper’s Hitlist: Power, Process and the Assault on Democracy.
This is a sustained and devastating analysis of the Harper government’s dishonesty, corruption, and political extremism.
Above all, it analyzes Stephen Harper’s repeated flouting of legality and his open contempt for the forms and principles of Canadian parliamentary democracy.
“This sneering contempt for the very things that Canadians hold dear,” he adds, “is the flip side of [Harper’s] attraction to positions from the far right of American politics.”
Murray Dobbin documents, with care and precision, the underhanded and undemocratic means by which Harper has pursued a project of stealthy “social engineering,” with the goal “of turning back the clock and creating in Canada a completely unfettered free-market society.”
Dobbin’s report analyzes “the most serious violations of democracy committed by the prime minister and his government,” which “add up to a dangerous undermining of our democratic traditions, institutions and precedents—and politics.”
“These violations,” Dobbin writes, “are not accidental, they are not incidental and they are not oversights or simply the sign of an impatient government or ‘decisive’ leadership.
They are a fundamental part of Harper’s iron-fisted determination to remake Canada, whether Canadians like it or not.”
The Canadian Charger urges all Canadians to read Murray Dobbin’s report, Harper’s Hitlist: Power, Process and the Assault on Democracy.
It can be downloaded from the website of the Council of Canadians, at http://www.canadians.org/democracy/index.html, either as a single text (1 MB), or else in ten separate sections.
We urge you to read this report, and tell your family and friends about it.
Then make up your own mind on the issues.
And make sure you vote on May 2nd, 2011!
