Stop Harper

by Allan Wood, Melissa Graham, James Clark & John Bell

“We have to stop him from wasting billions on fighter jets, military bases, and corporate tax cuts while cutting social programs and destroying the climate. Most people in this country know what we need are green jobs, better medicare, and a healthy environment for future generations,” said Brigette DePape, former senate page after her silent protest against Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

DePape’s dissension struck a chord with millions of Canadians and exposes the Harper government where it’s weakest. The next several months will be critical in the fight against Harper’s austerity agenda as set out in the recent budget.

Postal Workers

The strike by the members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is a fight against the Tory vision of Canada. Canada Post wants a two-tiered wage and pension system, where new hires get lower wages and worse pensions. This is what the Tories want for all of us. This a critical battle.

Building solidarity with striking postal workers is key to winning this fight, which will bring a major blow to the Harper government.

Corporate tax cuts

Despite Harper’s election victory, a clear majority of the public remains firmly opposed to corporate tax cuts, especially for oil and gas corporations—some of the Tories’ best friends. As Finance Minister Jim Flaherty demands that ordinary people tighten their belts and accept his austerity agenda, the richest companies in Canada are drooling over the Tories’ generous corporate tax cuts.

But more and more people asking how the government can afford to reward the richest people in Canada—who have already made handsome profits in the last year—if it cannot afford to protect jobs, services or pensions. There is also widespread anger over rising fuel costs, which ordinary people feel most sharply at the gas pump.

The Tories claim that the corporate tax cuts create jobs, but all the evidence shows that the money ends up in the pockets of shareholders.

The cost of fuel is also raising questions about the generous subsidies that exist for the energy industry.
Government support for one of the most profitable industries in Canada will likely fuel the growing perception that the Tories speak for the corporations and the banks, not the people who have suffered most from the global economic crisis.

Torture documents

Harper is refusing to release more than 40,000 pages of documents that would likely prove that his Conservative government knew that Afghan detainees in Canadian custody were subsequently tortured after being turned over to that country’s National Director of Security.

Richard Colvin, Canada’s former senior diplomat in Afghanistan, told a Parliamentary committee in 2009 that torturing detainees was “standard operating procedure. ... [T]he likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured.” In addition, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said he may begin investigating war crime allegations against Canadian military officials.

Harper shut down the House of Commons rather than face questions about the documents, and he has ignored Parliament’s call for an official inquiry. When the government finally released some heavily censored documents in March 2010, that were, in the words of one MP, “totally incoherent and totally disorderly.”

Facing contempt of parliament proceedings, Harper relented, and a six-person panel began examining the unredacted documents last summer. A preliminary report has been prepared, but a few weeks before the election it was announced that any information regarding the documents would be kept secret until after the election.

We must tell Harper and our MPs that Canadians want the truth about torture in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister is not above the law. These documents must be released.

Abortion rights

Throughout the election, Harper repeatedly proclaimed that he had no interest in opening up the abortion debate in Canada, but can we take him at his word? Here are some reasons why not.

Regardless of Harper’s personal views on abortion, he and his cronies are backed by religious groups and social conservatives that have been hungrily waiting for an opportunity to roll back abortion rights.
Anti-choice activists in Quebec have stated that they are more interested in defunding pro-choice organizations and weakening public support than in immediately getting anti-abortion legislation passed through Parliament.

The massive cuts by Harper’s government to groups like Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides family health assistance—including abortion—to women all over the world, are part of this strategy.

Harper also restricted women’s choices through foreign policy, by excluding abortion provision in the Maternal Health Initiative. Attacks on abortion rights in the US have also increased the boldness of the anti-choice here in Canada.

Because the majority of Canadians are strongly pro-choice, Harper’s Conservatives will continue to attack abortion rights by stealth. We will need to stay mobilized to defend women’s right to choose.

Impending scandals

The Tory government is not a new one, just a slightly bigger one. That means that all the Tory scandals of the last parliament—many of which remain unresolved—will carry over into this one. And there are many waiting to break.

One of the biggest targets of criticism in the last parliament was Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. He still faces a number of lawsuits that will be decided soon.

In October 2010, the federal court issued a scathing 60-page ruling that exposed the role of Kenney’s office in banning former British MP George Galloway from entering Canada. The ruling allowed Galloway to return to Canada where he completed an 11-city speaking tour last November. Since then, Galloway has launched a civil suit against Kenney and his former Director of Communications, Alykhan Velshi, seeking $1.5 million in damages. That case could be decided within a year.

Kenney also faces an ongoing federal court case against him for his decision to cut funding for an immigrant settlement program run by the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF), in response to its criticism of the Tories’ uncritical support for Israel during the war on Gaza. Kenney’s attack on CAF is part of a wider attack on civil society organizations that have publicly criticized the Israeli government, including KAIROS and Rights and Democracy.

More evidence of this kind of repression is likely to emerge demonstrating the Tories’ attack on democracy in Canada and their contempt for the rule of law. This time, though, the Tories will not have a minority parliament to blame for their undemocratic behaviour.

Climate change

Just days after the election, a Postmedia report revealed that Harper’s government had deliberately lied to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Harper directed his Environment Ministry to omit statistics about pollution from his beloved tar sands in a report on Canada’s environmental performance.

The Tory report claimed that Canada’s production of climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions dropped by six per cent from 2008 to 2009. But once the deliberately omitted numbers are included, Canada’s greenhouse gas pollution actually increased by a whopping 20 per cent that year. This is despite the drop in pollution resulting from manufacturing shutdowns during the 2008-09 global economic slump.

Tar sands emissions exceed those produced by all of Canada’s cars and trucks combined.

Harper will try to use his parliamentary clout to override objections from environmentalists, First Nations and local communities, and to fast-track construction of pipelines to carry tar sands crude to new tanker ports on the BC coast.

But recent “accidents” have shown that pipelines are environmental disasters waiting to happen; and the waters that China-bound supertankers would have to navigate are among the riskiest in the world.

Polls show the majority of Canadians care about the environment, believe climate change is an immediate threat, and are embarrassed by this government. Now is the time to turn that passive concern into an active campaign, using civil disobedience to block pipeline construction and to shut the tar sands down.

The Tories are weak and Brigette DePape has the answer, “This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring, a flowering of popular movements that demonstrate that real power to change things lies not with Harper but in the hands of the people, when we act together in our streets, neighbourhoods and workplaces.”