[THS] Stephen Harper: The Canadian Nixon

[Peter Webster]

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dimitry_anastakis_and_jeet_heer/2008/04/the_canadian_nixon.html


The Canadian Nixon
Stephen Harper's feud with Elections Canada is just the latest front  
in his war against government institutions

Dimitry Anastakis and Jeet Heer

April 24, 2008 9:00 PM 

Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is in trouble with Elections
Canada, the government body that runs the vote in Canada. They've
accused him of overspending in the last election and have even gotten the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police to raid the Conservative party's
headquarters to find incriminating evidence. In response Harper and his
followers have lashed out against Elections Canada, accusing it of a partisan
witch hunt.

The whole sorry situation shouldn't surprise anyone who has paid attention.
Every prime minister has a modus operandi. Harper's is his utter contempt,
shown not once but many times, for Canadian institutions. In fact, it is not a
stretch to say that Harper simply sees many Canadian institutions - Elections
Canada being simply his latest target - as illegitimate, not just in need of
reform but worth attacking root-and-branch.

The historian Garry Wills once observed that Richard Nixon wanted to be
president not to govern the nation but to undermine the government. The
Nixon presidency was one long counterinsurgency campaign against key
American institutions like the courts, the FBI, the state department and the
CIA. Harper has the same basic approach to politics: attack not just political
foes but the very institutions that make governing possible. The state for
Nixon and Harper exists not as an instrument of policy making but as an
alien force to be subdued.

Canadians have never had a prime minister who has literally made his
career attacking and undermining the legitimacy of Canadian institutions.

Until now.

For instance, in his long-running war against the media, Harper has taken
every opportunity to de-legitimise their role in holding his government to
account. He refuses to take questions. He speaks only to friendly media
outlets. He claims that "national outlets" are biased.

Remember, this is a PM who does not let cabinet ministers speak to the
media, and even hides the place and times of cabinet meetings in an effort
to avoid questions from the fourth estate.

Along with the media, another of Harper's favourite targets is the Canadian
court system. Conservatives love to attack what they call "judge-made law",
which really means any decisions that conservatives don't like.

Take same-sex marriage, for example. In 2003, Harper condemned the
courts for saying that marriage laws were unconstitutional. He even
personally attacked Ontario judge Roy McMurtry, and claimed a Liberal
conspiracy: "They put the judges in they wanted," to get the result, Harper
accused, even though McMurtry was appointed by Conservative Brian
Mulroney.

This anti-court animus is rampant within Harper's inner circle. His chief of
staff, academic Ian Brodie, wrote that financially strapped and historically
underrepresented groups such as women, ethnic and linguistic minorities,
and gays, should have their court funding cut.

Presto - one of Harper's first acts in office was to cut funding for those very
groups so that they could no longer make their case at the supreme court.

Then there is the Senate. Harper and his allies hate the Senate. A long-held
bugaboo of Harper's Reform party roots, our prime minister never misses a
chance to attack the Senate. He'd like to see the Senate be equal, making it
even more undemocratic than it is now. Should Price Edward Island
(population 130,000) have as many Senate votes as Ontario (population 12
million)?

Harper actually made comments in Australia, touring in his official capacity
as head of our government, attacking the constitutionally legitimate Senate,
to a foreign audience. Is this standing up for Canada?

Now, many Canadians would like to see the Senate reformed. This is a
worthwhile goal. But in the meantime, all Canadians understand that the
Senate is a part of our Parliament, created by the 1867 British North
America Act.

But Harper has attacked the legitimacy of the Commons, even. After the
2005 same-sex-marriage vote passed, Harper claimed, as leader of the
Opposition, that the result was not legitimate because it included the votes
of the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

Of course, he did not question the legitimacy of those same votes when the
Paul Martin government lost the confidence of the Commons. Harper
wanted an election. As for the functioning of the Commons itself, the
National Post's Don Martin famously uncovered the Conservative's "black
book" of procedural dirty tricks, designed to slow parliamentary action to a
halt. Another way to de-legitimise another Canadian institution: paralyse
committees, have your committee chairs run out and refuse to bring things
to a vote - especially when they bring the government into question.

Most disturbing is Harper's continued attacks upon Elections Canada. The
recent raid on Conservative party headquarters is more of a reflection of
Harper's disdain for Elections Canada than any supposed "vendetta"
conspiracy-minded Conservatives might imagine. Harper's animus toward
Elections Canada goes back years, as do his attempts to circumvent
electoral law. As head of the right-wing National Citizens Coalition (NCC),
Harper fought for years against Elections Canada's laws around "third-party
advertising". The NCC, a murky organisation that does not release its
membership, brought a court case against Elections Canada, infamously
named Harper v Canada. Though Harper lost, during his time at the NCC
he took every chance to attack the legitimacy of Elections Canada and the
country's electoral law.

As prime minister, Harper's shocking comments about Elections Canada's
investigation of the "in and out" scam alleged by the agency are perhaps
the most alarming outburst by any sitting prime minister. Desperate to take
Canadians' focus off the Conservatives' allegedly illegal overspending during
the 2006 campaign, Harper actually publicly criticised the head of Elections
Canada for upholding the law over the non-issue of veiled voting (why
didn't he attack the 80,000 people who voted via mail?).

This is unprecedented in Canadian political history. Never has a prime
minister publicly attacked a non-partisan election official in such a manner,
essentially for partisan gain. The same goes for most of his party, which this
week accused Elections Canada of a partisan witch- hunt, being in bed with
the Liberals and the media and any other number of tin-foil-hat
conspiracies. Of course, unsurprisingly, Harper and the Conservatives have
blocked every other effort to examine the scheme in Parliament.

But then again, no one should be surprised. If it's not the media, or the
courts, or the Senate, or Elections Canada, it's the Wheat Board, the federal
government's own spending power, the bureaucracy, the gun registry ... .

Canadians should rightly wonder why their head of government has such a
problem with so many Canadian institutions.