The following letter has been recently published
at http://plblack99.blogspot.com/
, I do not know Mr Black and can only say that I agree wholeheartedly
with him, we must indeed focus upon the attacks by the Harper regime
upon our democratic institutions and show Mr Harper that contrary to
his recent statement Canadians DO care about our democracy.
Dear
Messieurs Ignatieff, Layton, Duceppe and Ms. May
In
the 2006 election, the Conservative Party’s slogan was “Stand
Up for Canada”.
In the coming election, your common slogan must be “Stand
Up for Canadian Democracy”.
I
know that you will explain to Canadians why you disagree with various
policies
of the current government. I am asking that, in addition, you remind
Canadians of the numerous practices
of Stephen Harper which are undermining our democratic
institutions -
Parliament; the Judiciary; the Civil Service; and Canadians’
right to information and the truth from their government:
Abusing
Parliament
·
Shutting
Down (Proroguing) Parliament twice
in 5 years, once to avoid a non-confidence vote which would have
brought their government to an end, and once to avoid providing
information to Parliament on whether our armed forces were
collaborating in torture.
·
Ignoring
Canadian Legislation – after
passing legislation to establish a fixed date for federal elections,
the Prime Minister called an election in 2008 in violation of the new
law. Recently, four senior Conservatives were charged with willfully
exceeding spending limits in the 2006 election campaign.
·
Disrupting
Parliamentary Committees – the
Conservatives prepared a secret 200 page manual to guide Conservative
MPs on how to subvert the work of Parliamentary Committees.
Conservative MPs adopted these tactics on many occasions. This is the
type of political “thuggery” one expects in Russia
or Zimbabwe
but not in Canada.
·
Refusing
to Answer Questions – Ministers
refuse to answer questions during Question Period and refuse to allow
their staff to respond to questions when summoned by Parliamentary
Committees.
Undermining
the Canadian Judiciary
·
Recently,
Minister Kenney criticized Federal Court judges for rendering
decisions he didn’t agree with. He was sending a message about
how they should behave in the future. Such remarks show contempt for
judicial independence – an absolute necessity in our system of
government.
Attacking
the Civil Service
·
Firing
or maligning civil servants who don’t agree with the government
– the head of the
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (Linda Kean) was fired for
ordering the shutdown of the Chalk River reactor; Richard Colvin, a
respected Foreign Service Officer, was ruthlessly subjected to
personal attacks by the Harper Conservatives as a result of his
testimony to a parliamentary committee; the Parliamentary Secretary
to the Defense Minister sent out emails promoting the purchase of
F-35 airplanes and demeaning the former Assistant Deputy Minister of
Defense’s concern about the sole-source deal as “BS”,
without any explanation of this distasteful comment.
·
Lying
about Senior Civil Servants – Minister
Oda said that the CIDA President supported the government’s
decision to eliminate funding to Kairos. Months later, the Minister
admitted that her statement was false. The Minister of Industry
claimed that the Chief Statistician (Munir Sheikh) supported the
government’s decision to substitute a voluntary census survey
for the traditional long form survey. Mr. Sheikh resigned his
position in order to tell Canadians that a voluntary survey could not
do the job of a mandatory census (i.e., the government lied about his
advice).
Lying
to, and Hiding Information From, Canadians
·
The
government claimed that hundreds of Canadians had complained about
the intrusiveness of the long-form census. Yet, the government was
unable to substantiate this claim, and the Privacy Commissioner of
Canada had
received just three complaints about the census in the last decade.
·
The
government has introduced a dozen crime-related bills. Yet, when
asked by MPs about the expected costs of this legislation, so that
they can decide its merits, the government claimed that such
information is a “Cabinet confidence”. It looks more like
Cabinet arrogance and secrecy about Canadians’ public affairs.
So,
my hopes rest with you to remind Canadians of the extreme steps which
the Conservative Party, under
its current leader,
is prepared to take to remain in power. And if Stephen Harper ever
achieved a majority in the House of Commons, he would wield near
absolute power in his tyrannical approach to governing. M. Chrétien
won a (false) majority government on three occasions with only 40 per
cent of voter support, and Mr. Harper has the same opportunity under
our discriminatory, unrepresentative electoral system. I very much
hope that, collectively, you can prevent him from doing so.
Sincerely
Peter
Black
Former
Public Servant
Government
of Canada
This is of course a
much foreshortened list of the many instances where the Harper
regime has shown total disdain for our parliamentary system. Whilst
the opposition's recent awaking to the fact that bringing such abuses
to the attention of the public and the HoC is long overdue let us not
forget that they do so more for political reasons than for any great
concern for our democracy. Only if we the public make this an issue
during the coming weeks or months when candidates appear on our
doorsteps, and make it clear that the protection of our parliamentary
democracy is a condition of receiving our vote will much change no
matter who replaces King Harper.
For 'them' to care we
must show that 'we' care. Let us make parliamentary and electoral
reform an 'up front' issue during the next election – which may
well be called as early as next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment