Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election
Posted: 23 Aug 2015 23:27
Do you think I mean another Harper term would cause the Canadian economy to crumble and society to disintegrate into a bleak dystopia where every man has to don hockey gear and fight for his share of the dwindling maple syrup crop until the nation ultimately dissociates into warring states and is eventually absorbed into Russia? That's a poor assumption, reflective of your ignorance of or inattentiveness to context. You're beginning to sound like the kind of armchair analyst who jumps at the chance to make snarky, dismissive statements rather than give someone the benefit of the doubt. Partisan politics apparently does bring out the stupid in people.TheGreatNads wrote:Talk about over the top. You and Vic are beginning to sound like those people who said if Obama is elected people are going to start being thrown into FEMA camps, or the U.S. will become the next Greece or whatever silliness. Partisan politics sure seems to bring out the stupid in people.Kong Wen wrote:and another term would risk damaging Canada almost beyond repair.
Harper's done bad things. If he's back, he'll probably do more bad things. But another term is not even remotely a risk for damaging Canada beyond repair.
I can't speak for Vic, but I'm not concerned about the lines on the map, or even about Canada's economy—despite the fact that Harper turned an inherited surplus into debt in his first term and has run budget deficits for the past 8 years in a row and that Canada is technically in a recession, an economy can almost always be fixed. No, I'm talking about "Canada" and what that means to people like me who could make a statement like the one you misrepresented here. I'm talking about a systematic dismantling of the values and institutions that contribute to Canada's national cultural identity. Specifically, I'm talking about stuff that a new government can't easily step in to fix, stuff that can get out of hand when left unchecked for another 4+ years.
For example, Bill C-51 is a mess of the "you're either with us or with the terrorists" variety that needs a serious overhaul to close loopholes that present a serious danger to e.g. free speech, privacy, and peaceful protest rights. 4 years of this could have profound effects on institutions like CSIS and RCMP if no oversight is implemented.
Speaking of big omnibus bills, Harper is good at burying sneaky stuff in giant reams of new legislation that get rushed through parliament. Like the time he leveraged the RCMP to illegally destroy long-gun registry records. When they came under investigation, Harper passes an omnibus bill that changed access to informations laws, making the offending officers' actions retroactively legal. Like Bill C-38, which effectively gutted or repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, Fisheries Act, and Navigable Waters Protection Act. Like Bill C-23, the "[Un]Fair Elections Act" that's more effective at disenfranchising Canadians than preventing fraud. This stuff would all be difficult to parse out and repeal, even if a new majority government were formed this year—another 4+ years of Harper government or even a shift to a new minority government would be even trickier.
Ask a Canadian about the role and legacy of their military, and the most likely response you'll get is "Peacekeepers". The Canadian military used to be synonymous with UN Peacekeeping. We're now ranked 67th in terms of our contributions. For the first time in history, we lost a vote to become a member of UN Security Council (to Portugal in 2011). With Harper spending our military budget on second-hand jets (paying more than what they told us they would cost) and fear-mongering about ISIS, it's not likely that our reputation with the UN will be easy to repair as it is.
I'm not going to focus much attention on the Harper government's muzzling of federal scientists, because that's an issue that a new government should be able to rectify, but the damage Harper has done to Environment Canada and selling out Canada's environmental record oil interests in Alberta will be harder to untangle. It's easy to dump a whole province into corporate hands, but difficult to claw it back from them. (It's telling that members of his caucus have referred to environmentalists as "terrorists".)
Finally, perhaps the most irreversible damage is being done by his massive cuts to the arts & culture sector, including (although this is only the most high-profile example), the CBC, a treasured Canadian institution and a cornerstone of our national cultural identity. Aggressively de-funded, as it stands now, CBC is set to lose 25% of its workforce by 2020. I'd be very surprised if a new government that started right now could restore CBC to anything resembling what it used to be. (A fun side-note, Harper has also stacked the board with his ideological cronies, which could explain the broadcaster's move away from investigative shows to pap-business stuff like Dragon's Den.) The next institution to get the forced-to-fail treatment is Canada Post; recent changes to the otherwise profitable business jeopardize over 200 (union) jobs in Halifax alone. The clipped wings approach here is almost certainly aimed at forcing eventual privatization.
Another term is absolutely a risk for damaging Canada almost beyond repair.
Actually I would be much more restricted. Like for example making a long-term difference in social outcomes, say life expectancy, crime rates, inflation/deflation, infant mortality, pollution, GDP per capita, carbon emissions, likelihood of dying in a car accident, whatever you like(I'm assuming you care about some of these things). That is a hard case to make that Harper's two terms so far have even made a dent in those aspects. That alone should make one cautious about making such strong predictions about a third term. But it doesn't seem to make a difference to you. Which is telling. You then go on to assume I'm only arguing against the most extreme(short of apocalypse anyway) of disaster scenarios. Which again, is telling, because you don't need such extreme scenarios for your statement to still be over the top. Not even close.