Just as Stephen Harper always told us, a new threat emerges practically every day. And so, on to the Barnyard Underground. Canadians need to be protected from marching milkers and John Deere tractors, and their socialist sod-buster owners. My God, these bovine Bolshies pooped up the nation’s capital and left it standing in pools of milk!
Whats next? Cheesed off cheese-makers tossing fresh curds at cowering crowds? Chickens laying more eggs on Parliament Hill than the previous government?
Ah, the absurdities of Election 2015 — from militant cows to people hyperventilating over two ladies who want to wear veils while taking the citizenship oath. Listen up all you brides: no veils when you take your vows. Pierre Poilievre, that paragon of independent thinking, is now refusing to rule out a ban on face coverings in the public service. Con polling says this nonsense is playing well with the base and a few other people too. In Harperland, the new rule (notwithstanding what the courts say) is that if the majority turns against a minority, that’s fair play.
Behind the facade of a democracy that is increasingly showing signs of losing its way in the swamplands of marketing and malarky, a serious political war is going on. It’s the fight to establish the ballot question heading into the home stretch of this long and laborious dust-up. Will it be the economy or national security?
According to senior sources in the Liberal campaign, this is nothing short of a life-and-death struggle. If the focus remains on the economy, Team Trudeau thinks it can win. Why wouldn’t they? Here’s the snapshot after a decade of Harper: a recession (his second); a dollar that has lost 12 per cent of its value since 2006; seven out of eight budgets in deficit; and an extra $150 billion added to the national debt. Not exactly an argument for staying the course. As for prudent fiscal management — raiding the budget of veterans to balance the books doesn’t count. No wonder the Grits are excited.
But if security dominates, the edge goes to Harper. The Liberals understood that coming into this joust — which is why they made the high-risk move of supporting Bill C-51. They knew Conservative strength on this file was deep, though based more on emotion than reason. The last thing they wanted was to give Stephen Harper a hot-button wedge issue to excite his xenophobic fans by making Trudeau look soft on terrorism.
The law of unintended consequences quickly kicked in. As experts and Everyman alike turned against C-51 once they better understood the frontal assault it represented on civil liberties, a chill went through the progressives who were leaning towards Trudeau.
How could he have supported something his father would have instinctively recoiled from, something so inimical to the Charter of Rights that it raised the blood pressure of ex-prime ministers and Supreme Court justices alike? Suddenly, Thomas Mulcair and the NDP looked like the more trustworthy choice for those who’d had their fill of Harper. Along with Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Mulcair opposed C-51 and ultimately voted against it because — as he put — he wasn’t afraid of Stephen Harper.
The choice to support C-51 carried a price for Liberal MPs — blowback from a disappointed base. But Trudeau answered — going beyond denying he had ever told UBC students that his stand on C-51 was due to political tactics in an election cycle. There were elements to the bill he supported, he said, like putting Canada’s “no-fly” list on a firmer legal footing. But there were other things touching civil liberties that he would amend, given a chance.
It wasn’t enough. There’s a rule in politics — if you’re explaining, you’re losing. On to Plan B.
Before C-51 passed, Liberal MP Joyce Murray brought forward a private member’s bill, C-622, pinpointing the things in C-51 that required changes: the need for independent review of the Communications Security Establishment, for a new Intelligence and Security committee for Parliament and for a sunset clause to give the law a limited lifespan, as opposed to the Harper government’s plan to make it permanent. Murray hoped to lessen the disillusionment that grassroots supporters felt after the Liberals voted for C-51.
Murray’s bill was defeated on November 5, 2014, but got a favorable notice in a new book, False Security: the Radicalization of Canadian Anti-terrorism. The book’s eminent authors, Craig Forcese and Kent Roach, applauded Murray’s legislative attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Bill C-51, calling it “impressive and wide-ranging”.
Based on her continuing interest in security matters, Murray — who finished second to Justin Trudeau in the last Liberal leadership contest — is now asking her leader to consider making further public announcements touching the national security file. She wants Team Trudeau to announce a “comprehensive” White Paper. Its purpose would be to examine Canada’s “security laws, institutions and review mechanisms” — every last scrap of it.
According to Murray, amending C-51 is only part of the job. The other part is taking current thinking on national security issues “down to the studs”. That way, if the Liberals get a chance to make good on their promise of a full review of C-51 after three years in office, there will be a solid evidentiary base for the process. Party sources tell iPolitics that the leader is mulling over Murray’s request, but the economy remains Justin Trudeau’s primary focus.
And so it sits. The NDP could still have a lot to say about whether this is a two- or a three-party horserace. True, their numbers in Quebec have been dropping, pushed down by the utterly phoney niqab issue — on which Mulcair has taken a principled, non-hysterical stand — and the NDP’s dubious decision to begin their prospective government with a balanced budget.
But Mulcair has been unequivocal about getting rid of Bill C-51. A lot of progressives are going to remember that, particularly if national security becomes the number one issue in this election. In that case, the alternative to Harper — the candidate for change — could still turn out to be Tom Mulcair.
Despite the NDP’s top spot in the polls in Quebec, senior Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts isn’t betting on an NDP resurgence — mostly because he thinks the economy, the Liberals’ preferred battlefield, will trump national security at the end of the day.
“The NDP is having problems in Quebec because they’re not putting anything real on the table for Quebeckers. They are offering a minimum wage nobody will get, and a daycare program people already have. They’re doing nothing on the economy. Nothing to rebuild Quebec’s creaky infrastructure. Nothing to put money in people’s pockets. That’s the real source of their problems.”
And the real source of Justin Trudeau’s problems? Though he’s doing very well in Ontario, his native province has yet to feel the love. So far, the NDP’s losses in Quebec have not turned into Liberal gains, but rather into greater support for the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois.
Who would have thought that Harper government’s dire history of lies, mismanagement, abuse of power, thuggishness and the studied division of societal groups could slip behind a disguise as thin as a woman’s veil? Or that the divisions on the Left could lead to four more years of that?
Something far more threatening that Elsie the Cow is abroad in the land.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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