Tuesday, March 10, 2015

2015 ELECTION #1


VANCOUVER BC
1 MARCH 2015

RE: 2015 FEDERAL ELECTION

During the run-up to the coming federal election I will post blogs regularly to point up the consequences to Canada and Canadians of legislation passed into law by the Harper government since he took office in 2006. The list is long, the effect has changed and continues to alter and contradict our long established values of democratic and fair governance for the good all, the likes of which we haven’t seen for a generation, the worst of it in the last four years since Mr Harper has had complete control of the House of Commons and the Senate. I feel we have an urgent need for many blogs, to reach those who have a misunderstanding of Harper’s intention, and to encourage everyone to vote; it’s critically important that we get out the vote.

The economy is the Conservative platform intended to win the 2015 election and it is probably the most destructive instrument Harper has used to manipulate Canada to serve big business, to destroy our democracy and all that word stands for.

Harper has paid out $billions of taxpayers money to companies that need it the least while starving those that need it the most thus creating extreme inequality such that we haven’t experienced since colonization. At the same time he has encumbered the country with debt, deficit and the cost of its service alone of $ 29.3 billion 2013/14 or 11% of revenue.[1]

Misspent funds cover the gamut of unnecessary and phantom services for party promotion and opposition attacks in the form of million-dollar ads; frequent and uncalled for travel, and security for party members and family; the extravagance and waste of the G8/20 Summit; Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor office $180,000. but no counsellor, no work; $376K to bring a prisoner back to Canada for trial; and the infamous $1.3 billion every year in subsidies to the Canadian oil industry while the country is told with regular monotony that we must tighten our belts for the good of the federal debt.

The galling loss of revenue to tax evaders, those who bear citizenship and are wealthy and surreptitious enough to seek closets to hide their wealth, to escape their obligation for their share of assessments leaving the least able to take up the slack for them, lies uncontested by Harper. The same citizens are the bearers of dead capital.

And the loss of jobs sent offshore with trade deals, little left but the top-heavy part-time, minimum wage, temporary employment that so many most resort to, has left over a million unemployed, 376,00 of those our young people,[2] 60% unable to collect employment insurance and their protection by unions threatened, students and all youth must leave to find a career and a future. They can see that the country is not better off now and will be so much worse in their lifetime with the Harper government.

All of this is not just allowed but encouraged, indeed advanced by the Harper ideology, which has created a country with rotting infrastructure, extreme inequality, ignorance of the severity of climate change, and the removal of funding for social services leaving it to the unregulated private sector to make obscene profits on education, health and housing, the basic needs and rights of Canadians.

I can’t leave this without adding the clear and frightening Bill, C-51, that Harper is tabling in security under the guise of terrorist threats based on murders by lost, mentally ill young men who needed help, the kind of help that he sees no need to provide but has harnessed the constabulary with the responsibility, the social work and counselling for which police are neither trained nor funded.




[1] Fraser Research Bulletin, Fraser Institute, August 2014, Vancouver, p.6.
[2] Towards a Youth Job Guarantee, Broadbent Institute, p.3

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