Canada Lost

What has become of Canada and what is becoming of its democracy? We have a right-wing prime minister hidebound to his ideology, the one that died years ago, neoliberalism, the Chicago School of Economics, and he is turning us on our heads.

The litany of things destroyed through plainly un-Canadian policy by Stephen Harper is devastating:
    -151 soldiers and 4 civilians killed in Afghanistan
    -We are bringing the soldiers home next year but Harper is buying jet war machines
    -Peacekeepers relegated to history long enough to have lost all the training and to shame us as not keeping our commitment to the UN
    -Climate change, the Kyoto Protocol, the Kelowna Accord, all disregarded by the PM until we are 34% above the Kyoto target (2007)
    -Bill C-440 in support of War Resisters, 64% of the country in support, Harper not
    -Cluster Bomb ban by the rest of the world, not Harper
    -Barely a fraction of Foreign Aid commitment of 0.7%
    -No movement to eliminate poverty in Canada
    -An obvious necessary Bill like C-300 to hold extractors accountable especially abroad can’t get past Harper
    -The Long Form Census seen as an unnecessary and problematic move by Harper but his obstinacy makes him rigid to change
    -The tragic mishandling of Kairos and the Human Rights and Democracy Commission have left a nasty stain on the PM
    -The mishandling of the Guergis conundrum and other attacks on women in the cabinet leave one wondering about Harper’s insecurities
    -Another obvious Bill, Housing C-304, still not passed so the housing, low income crises remains unalleviated
    -Harper does not support Canadians abroad as many are stranded, tortured, even killed until the few fortunate that the media have featured made it impossible for the government to ignore
    -Day Care promised, never happened
    - Canada-Colombia free trade strongly objected to on the grounds that Colombia has a very poor human rights record still going ahead
    --Harper takes credit for the controls over our banks yet he was not even there; it was done by the Liberals and Harper would never have regulated the banks
    -Second lowest business taxes in the world at 19%, on our way to first place at 15%. Guess who is taking up the slack.
    -The surplus we had for hard times spent by Harper so we are now deeper in debt that in the last Conservative government. Harper claimed the recession that destroyed thousands of jobs and thousands of lives was, “No big deal.”
    -G20 badly mishandled at a huge cost to taxpayers
    -Billions in grants paid out to extractors every year while social services, Arts and Culture, poverty, the infrastructure go wanting
    Harper supports factory farms so stands by while small Canadian farmers to lose everything