There is nothing useful on this web site.
Even though the internet is the source of all truth, the only truth here is that everything else is a lie.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.- Oscar Wilde
Congratulations Mr. Harper, you won.
Forgive me for being a bit late with this, it's been a whole week now since the election, but I needed some time to mourn, some time to reflect, but mostly some time to enjoy the marvelous spring weather with our guests here in Holland. I mean really, there are more important things in life.
You were right, this really was the election we didn't need. Voter turnout took another hit, despite good numbers at the advance polls. But those nine months of negative ads, personal attacks, and bald faced lies (like the $75 iPod tax) seemed to have worked.
And that campaign of yours! A campaign of NOT answering questions. Brilliant! I marvel to your ability to charge each of the mainstream media outlets $50,000 for a seat on your campaign plane and then NOT allow questions. Let them know where you are and then scurry away at soon as they appear. I predict you will be studied in business schools around the world, or at least inspire a Dilbert series with Dogbert as the Prime Minister of Canada.
You now have your ring, your precious, that coveted majority. It only cost an election, a mere $300 million! Quite the bargain compared to that G8/G20 meeting that cost 3 times as much, required secret laws, a suspension of civil liberties, and a whole lot of police brutality.
I was wrong. I thought not one, but two contempt-of-parliament rulings against your government (with a third in the works), were pretty good reasons by themselves to to have an election. Your commissioner for Public Sector Integrity was run out of town by the Auditor General. And then there was Bruce Carson, your trusted advisor.
Can anyone in your circle of sycophants say bad judgement?
But now we can celebrate - no more unnecessary elections!
I was wrong. I thought an election might be a good time for a public debate on your plans to spend, uh what, $9 $20 $30 BILLION buying the latest Made-in-the-USA fighter jets? Tell me, are we planning to use them in that failed mission called Afghanistan, or for search-and-rescue missions in the high Arctic?
I also thought an election might be a good time to ask why the hell are we still in Afghanistan?
You were right, I was wrong. I thought a few years of minority government might be good for Canada, might inspire some compromise, civility or at least some interesting debate in the House of Commons. Boy, was I wrong! The complete opposite occurred.
Andrew Wherry, in his Macleans piece The House of Commons is a Sham, said it succinctly:
Between 1963 and 1968, Lester B. Pearson's minority governments introduced 285 bills and passed 245 (86 per cent) of those into law. Since Stephen Harper's Conservatives took power in 2006, just 117 of 279 government bills (42 per cent) have been… successful
Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize. Your Harper Government™ for another first in history, lost a vote for a seat on the UN Security Council (and to Portugal no less). Are you proud of that?
Why in the world are we still in Afghanistan? When will we leave?
Canada stands alone in it's support of Israel's illegal settlements, and labels criticism of Israel, an apartheid state by many measures, as racist or even as a hate crime. Why does Canada have a border security agreement with a country on the other side of the world that it shares no border with?
Or how about that new North America Perimeter Agreement with the US? How much information has already been handed over to the Americans to grease the wheels of commerce with our xenophobic, paranoid neighbor to the south?
We will never know, will we? National security and all that.
Your conservative party has deployed every tactic available to stall, disrupt, and hide the truth about anything that might tarnish their image or challenge their ideology.
You have shamelessly prorogued parliament for the shabbiest of reasons.
Those G8/G20 meetings last year resulted in secret laws, mass arrests and a disgusting display of police brutality and incompetence. Yet members of your government continue to kill any chance for a public inquiry.
So that inquiry will never happen now, will it?
I was wrong. Going into this election, I thought you were a sitting duck.
Your government is running a huge deficit, and you are not going to balance the books for another 4 years, just so you can cut taxes and create jobs? I don't believe for a moment that fighter jets from the US are going to create jobs in Canada. The US needs those jobs (and the money), more than Canada does.
And your stewardship of the economy? On our trip home last Christmas I was reading in the Financial Times that the British High Court had upheld a ruling by The Pension Regulator in Britain to put former employees and retirees of bankrupt 'self-funded' companies ahead of other creditors, like banks, bond holders and vulture funds. The Nortel bankruptcy affected some 43,000 pensioners in Britain.
That ruling came two weeks after your unelected senators on the Canadian Senate's banking committee voted down Bill C-216, which would have extended disability benefits to former Nortel employees for another year. Apparently the banks had issues with that. Not a problem Mr. Banker. Again, how many seats are there on your board of directors?
Just who exactly who do you Stand On Guard For Mr. Harper?
Our coddled monopolies in banking, phone, internet, media, and air travel (to name a few) mean that Canadians pay dearly for mediocre or limited service. Even some food staples, like eggs, milk or cheese, are more expensive then in Europe.
Canada has been called a hewer of wood and drawer of water. Maybe too quaint a phrase, but Canada's recent economic resilance owes more to being a commodity economy than any other factor. And there's the rub.
I'm from Calgary Mr. Harper. More than once I've watched the price of oil (or gold) drop by half quickly and then stay there for a long time. It can happen again. It will happen again. It may even happen under your watch.
What is most remarkable about the past five years was just how much you and the Conservatives have gotten away with. Accountability is a complete sham.
Ministers who lie to parliament are praised for their integrity. A totally discredited Commissioner of Integrity who displays no such trait herself is rewarded with a ½ million severance package to retire early and shut-up . The totally discredited RCMP now screens Facebook pages for attendees to your election rallies. Election financing fraud by your party is dismissed as a 5 year old administration error. And take Tony Clement, please, a case study in duplicity, hypocrisy and pork barrel politics (nice gazebo Tony).
The list is really staggering.
Your favorite phrase during the leaders debates seemed to be "That is not true!". But the reality is that almost all of it was true, and yet you got away with it!
As you are getting tough on crime and building more prisons, you may want to consider some basic criminal psychology - it's not the jail sentence that is the deterrent to committing a crime, it's the possibility of getting caught.
So I'm predicting more sleaze, more coverups, and much, much more pork barrel politics, driven by ego and ideology with damn little regard for anything else.
After all, what is stopping the Harper Government™ from doing whatever the hell it wants? You have the ring, you have the precious.
Nothing like a strong stable government for a better Canada!
But I've been wrong before.
Congratulations Mr. Harper, you won.