The CPC Went Full SoCon

The brief summary of yesterday’s policy votes at the CPC 2023 convention was published by CBC. Go there first, and read it - but I really think they missed more than a few things, so this is going to be a bit more of a deep dive into the policies they passed and how much worse for women and minorities it really is.

The Darker Side of UCP Policy

Welcome to Alberta's 2023 election cycle. Campaigning has effectively been going on for some time now, but the writ was issued yesterday and now it's official. We're in an election cycle. 

This is basically a two horse race. Alberta either elects the UCP, now led by Danielle Smith, or it elects the NDP.  There are a handful of other parties, but frankly between them they might be lucky to pull one or two seats - such is the nature of Alberta politics. 

But, voters need to be absolutely clear:  The UCP is not the PCAA - not even close. The PCAA had drifted a long ways away from where it was when the venerated Peter Lougheed was leading it, but the UCP is even more extreme. Under Klein, the PCAA went strongly towards the 'market fundamentalist' politics of the 90s, the frankenparty that Kenney mashed together is even further to the right with strong roots in rural social conservatism. 

The UCP under Danielle Smith is a much different creature again. Smith herself is a libertarian, but Take Back Alberta (TBA) is something else again, holding much stronger views on a variety of topics and they see Smith as a convenient puppet. 

Let's explore what a TBA controlled UCP seems to actually believe: 

You Do NOT Roll Over For Fascists

So, on Saturday, Jen Gerson published a column in the Globe and Mail titled “The Backlash Against Drag Artists Is Unfair, But It’s No Mystery Why It’s Happening”.  I read it on Saturday, it’s taken me the last couple of days to calm down enough to write a response to it. 

First, it’s the classic “tut-tutting” that the queer community has gotten over decades. More or less, it boils down to “don’t go too far, or you’ll upset someone”. I remember hearing that same argument being made in the 80s - which was basically “well, being gay isn’t a crime any more, you should be happy with that”. Now it’s “well, it’s (sort of) okay to be trans, but don’t let anyone know you’re trans because they might get upset about it”.

It’s condescending, and it’s garbage that basically boils down to “don’t do anything that will make the hardline religious nutcases upset” … and yes, it’s _ALWAYS_ coming from hardline religious nutcases. In my personal archives, the vast preponderance of anti-2SLGBTQ+ material comes from people who profess to be “Christian” (in particular) - and those archives now go back to the mid-1990s. The pattern is consistent.

The thing about these claims is that they tend to treat “rights as pie”, as if recognizing the validity of someone else’s existence is magically going to mean someone else “loses something”. That has never been the case. Never has recognizing the validity of another person’s rights resulted in someone else “losing” anything.

Gerson’s analysis basically says “well, fascism is on the rise, so you can expect to have your rights rolled back”. NO. WE. DO. NOT. History is abundantly clear what happens with movements like fascism. We should be clearly, and loudly demanding that our rights be respected, and our existence normalized in society.

Gerson might be willing to roll over to the fascists. I am not

The Transformation Is Complete

 With Pierre Poilievre the newly anointed leader of the CPC, Canadians can take a step back and breathe a sight of relief - the masquerade is over. 

Ever since its formation in 2003, the CPC has been a hardline right wing ideologue party that cloaked itself in the moderate nature of the old PCs.  They called themselves Tories, and under Harper’s leadership, they were more or less able to maintain the appearance of not being quite as radical as many said they were behind the scenes. 

Then they won a majority in 2011.  No longer fearing losing power by way of a confidence motion in parliament, Harper allowed the party to begin implementing its more aggressive policies - although there was some restraint because Harper still believed he could be re-elected.  

Major project impact assessment processes were gutted, agencies stripped of their power to make rulings on substantive matters, laws related to citizenship were modified, making many Canadians’ citizenship conditional, and they tried enacting what amounts to a voter suppression law (guess who wrote that little stinker?  - Oh right - they party just picked him as their leader).  

Then there was the 2015 election.  Some very high priced advisors came in and the CPC introduced a series of policies that to be kind, most Canadians found appallingly racist at their core.  

That was just the party dropping the veil.  Way back in 2013, I wrote a piece on here comparing Harper’s governing style to the traits associated with modern day fascism (not Hitler’s fascism, but rather that fascists have become since the end of WWII).  I was surprised then by the number of boxes on that list that Harper ticked off.  It wasn’t just a few.  No, it was a lot.

Having watched the Reform party emerge from Alberta politics, I had always been suspicious of how easily that movement could slide into authoritarianism, if not into overt fascism.  There was an ugly underside to Reform that few outside of the “Alberta Bubble” seemed to recognize.  “Oh, they aren’t really that bad”, or “Once in power, the normal constraints on power will moderate their behaviour” were common refrains.  Then there was the reality of it - the radicalism, and fervent belief that they had the “Right of the Matter” in all things to do with government meant that they chafed at those restraints.  The 2015 election was merely where the party dropped any pretence of being “nice”.  

In selecting Poilievre, the CPC has signalled that the takeover is complete.  What remained of the old PCs is dead, done and buried. It was notable that on Poilievre’s “coronation night”, Peter MacKay declined to speak.  Even the last leader of the PCs couldn’t bring himself to say anything. 

The CPC may attempt to cloak itself in “reasonableness”, but that seems unlikely with a man like Poilievre being the public face of the party. He isn’t a man known for being reasonable to begin with.

Since the departure of Stephen Harper in 2015, the party has changed - the factions that Harper was able to hold in check through sheer force of will are no longer so easily tamed - they’ve seen how they can take a bigger slice of the pie - the MAGA movement in the US, and the Kenney-led UCP have shown them what they can do by being more overt.  

Poilievre has shown us through his run at this leadership that in fact he is perfectly willing to let the extremes off leash, and they have heard that message loud and clear. Expect the next policy convention to be a sharp turn even further right.  Topics that had been off the table under Harper will be on the table now - and it’s going to be ugly. 

You Don’t Think It’s Really Fascism?

If it’s not from Germany, it’s just sparkling authoritarianism, right? 

More seriously, way back when I first started this blog (in 2004), I wrote a piece about whether or not we were in an emerging Dark Age. That was 2 years before Canada elected a CPC government for the first time, 12 years before the US elected Trump, and just around the time the so-called “Tea Party” faction of radicals in the GOP took hold and showed us what they were (nasty).  

A lot has happened in the intervening 18 years that brings us to today.  I’ve written about how this new Dark Age contains a “corporate feudalism” that is designed to chain people to corporate jobs in order to survive at all.  I have worried about the signs of authoritarianism emerging among our right wing politicians both here and in the US. I have watched as Social Conservatives have gained ever more sway in our politics, and I have been appalled. 

Then, a week or so ago, a draft decision from the US SCOTUS was leaked suggesting that the court was preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade. The implications of overturning Roe v. Wade are far reaching indeed. 

On The Emergency Measures Act

If you've been paying attention at all, you are aware that the Federal Government has invoked the Emergency Measures Act to deal with the "Convoy". In this writer's opinion, this decision came a week late, and let me explain why. 

First, as much as the organizers have tried to make a carnival atmosphere around this protest - bouncy castles, hot tubs, bbq's etc to be found everywhere in the occupation zone, that is little more than a façade cover for what's really going on.  

Second, this is no ordinary protest where a bunch of people get pissed off about an issue and go and hold a rally on the steps of the Parliament buildings. Those protests have a pattern of organization and attendance that seldom lasts more than a few days at most. 

Structurally, there are several elements of this "protest" that indicate it is something else entirely. These range from blockading streets with heavy trucks to create what amounts to an occupation zone, setting up what are clearly military-styled bases for logistics and supply, coordinating actions with other units of occupation which had set themselves up at border crossings, and using sophisticated processes to raise funds to sustain the protest. 

These are major differentiators that show us that a level of organization and planning not normally associated with peaceful protest is at play here. I'm not saying that organization and planning don't happen with other protests.  It certainly does. However, it doesn't normally include this level of sophistication. 

We are already finding that there are connections among these protestors that are very concerning. Connections to white nationalist groups that want to start what they call a "race war" to found their bizarre idea of a white homeland (Vanilla ISIS anybody?).  Now, I'm not saying that the majority of the protestors _are_ connected to these various groups and movements.  I suspect most of them are what I would call "useful idiots" who got sucked into the emotional high of participating in something big.  They're being used by the core organizers as "cannon fodder".  They will bear the brunt of direct enforcement in the form of fines and criminal charges for harassment, property damage, and whatever other offences are happening within the occupation zone. 

However, let's not kid ourselves about the core organization of this "protest".  Their goal was never about "ending vaccine mandates" - that was merely a pretext.  The "MOU" that came out as they were driving into Ottawa made it quite clear that the goals had shifted to the overthrow of the government similar to that attempted in the Jan 6, 2021 assault on the US legislative buildings. 

Looking a little closer at this protest on the ground, it shows a disturbing shift. First, on the surface it looks a bit like the "Yellow Vest Convoy" a couple of years ago (complete with some of the same figures central to organizing it).  However, it also shifts in some very concerning ways.  First, while the the Yellow Vest Convoy certainly used heavy trucks as a symbol, this protest shifted to using them essentially as modern day siege warfare tools. Setting up logistics and supply bases at the edges of what became the occupation zone in downtown Ottawa is another hint of the emergence of a paramilitary/military mindset entering the picture. While they created a "carnival like" atmosphere in the occupation zone, they have actually engaged in a form of psychological warfare by using their vehicle horns to create a non-stop noise zone. 

Then there is quite a rogues gallery of people connected to organizing this "protest" (Seriously - read that article). They all hang out on the political far right, and move even further right when opportunity arises, but what's notable to me is the range of skillsets that they bring to the table. I do not think that is accidental, nor do I think that the connections to elected politicians are accidental. 

Then there is the funding for this thing. People started getting suspicious when the campaign on GoFundMe raised nearly $10M.  Let's be clear here - $10M is not chump change, and the GoFundMe campaign racked that up in weeks.  The quarterly donations to the CPC don't reach that kind of number even when they're doing well. When it shifted to a less well known Christian Evangelical fundraising site called "GiveSendGo", nearly $8M was raised in even less time. A data leak following a hack of GiveSendGo has made it possible to start building a picture of where this money is coming from.  Then the protest organization shifted to the much more shadowy world of cryptocurrency.  

Now ... does this sound like a "perfectly normal peaceful protest" to you?  Because to me, there's a ton of red flags going up here that say there are actors involved whose intentions are anything but. 

The Federal Government allowed this protest to go for a long time (3+ weeks) before moving to invoke emergency powers, and really this happened in large part because the US started pressuring over the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge (in particular) as a result of the economic impact of shutting down the automotive trade sector. 

Fair enough.  At 3 weeks in, there had been little to no attempt on the part of the conservative-led provinces to intervene in the protest and start to restore order. Premier Ford in Ontario eventually did declare a state of emergency, but even then refused to ask the Federal Government to assist with intervention. 

I suspect that the conservative politicians in Canada saw this as a golden opportunity to force Trudeau's hand into using the Emergency Measures Act.  So they quietly let Canada burn, and did virtually nothing. They were likely hoping that in doing so, the Federal Government would move with the military, and they would have all sorts of nasty video of the military moving in to quell the protests.  

Does this meet the standard set out in the Emergency Measures Act? While the Canadian Civil Liberties Association thinks it's a massive overreach, I think there is more than ample evidence that shows this goes beyond normal levels of civil protest and disobedience and has moved into being an attack on Canada itself. When the protestors themselves publish a document essentially demanding the duly elected government resign en masse, we have to consider that there is a reasonable probability that this protest represents a much more significant threat to Canada and its government than appears on the surface. 

I suspect that as investigators start digging into the financial and organizational structures behind this, they are going to find a lot of very ugly things connecting this "protest" to some of the darker corners of conservative political activism, and it will likely as not be very problematic for some very highly placed conservative organizers - both in Canada and abroad. Conservatism is one thing, fascists are another matter altogether - and aligning with fascists is a danger to all of us.

Lastly, as a nation, Canada cannot justifiably allow a part, or the whole, of a city to be held under siege for any length of time. It has a duty to its citizens in such matters that requires action. The failure of local and provincial authorities to act on this threat effectively earlier made it a federal problem. The investigation into what happened needs to inspect not only the actions and organization of the protestors, but the actions (or lack thereof) of police, municipal authorities, and provincial governments as well.  Those who were willingly complicit in this debacle must be held to account - regardless of how prominent they are, or the public positions they may hold. 

In the meantime, we get to watch the CPC attempt to play "gotcha" politics with Trudeau in the House of Commons, while they madly scramble in the backrooms to destroy the evidence connecting them to the protest itself. 

Creeping Fascism in Alberta

My headline today is a little misleading.  There’s nothing “creeping” about the UCP government’s fascism - they’re practically steamrolling the province with it right now.  However, in the last 24 hours I’ve seen two things that really concern me. 

The first of these is a motion that I consider deeply dangerous from a whole bunch of angles - literally it attempts to create a “civilian militia” like structure. 

Let me quote this fully:

Be it resolved that the Legislative Assembly urge the Minister of Justice and Solicitor General to explore options to establish a voluntary civilian corps to assist law enforcement in Alberta.

We’ve had a few groups attempt to do this in the past.  Often with less than desirable results.  Often, it has basically degenerated into a small group of thugs roaming the streets looking for someone to attack in the name of “keeping the peace”.  In the deeper, darker past, these kinds of organizations have a nasty tendency to become political weapons.  Essentially they can become the next “brown shirts”.  

This is a downright terrifying proposition.  We have enough problems with policing right now as it is. Having a government seriously contemplating the formation of what amounts to a civilian militia which has been “deputized” to enforce the law is utterly terrifying.  This can be construed as the UCP government creating its own private army that it can use for its political ends.  

They’ve already experimented with this to some extent.  The “Yellow Vest” and “United We Roll” movements were clearly being encouraged and motivated by political actors.  At their height, they were clearly engaging in intimidation and implied threats to achieve their goals (I’ll point to the role that these groups have been playing in the Co-op Refinery lockout in Regina as a prime example).  

 

This is deeply concerning. 

The second bit I wish to rant about is a change that the UCP is making to our school system:

They want to introduce vocational streaming in elementary school grades.  Think about this for a moment.  That means that the school system as a whole is being re-jigged specifically to set a student’s career direction in primary school grades.  This literally puts parents in the position of having to decide their child’s direction far too early in life.  A child who is struggling to learn how to read, or do basic sums in arithmetic shouldn’t have their career path set for them based on who they are at that point in life. 

This is a very dangerous path for Alberta to walk.  Politically, it creates an environment where the government can suddenly start to restrict the material that is made available to students along socio-economic lines, reinforcing the socio-economic position of their parents as defining what will be available to their children.  

You can start to see the shape of using education to establish a rigid class structure in society.  The wealthy will be able to afford private schools which provide a rich pedagogy and prepares students for advanced study.  In the pseudo-private public system of Charter schools that Kenney is lining up to create, students will be carefully streamed according to the perceived worth of their parents.  Remember, Charter Schools can market themselves to very narrow demographics which will focus who is likely to apply to them.  A public system, such as remains, will be used to provide an absolute bare minimum to those who fall through the filters of wealth and privilege being set up.  Post-secondary opportunities are being tiered based on money, with tuition fees rising rapidly, and students being forced into increasing debt.  It won’t be long before you see a return to the indentured servitude of medieval style “apprenticeships” returning. 

Who benefits from all this?  Strangely enough, it’s Kenney’s corporate owners that benefit the most.  They get a workforce that is specifically tailored to their whims, and one that is cowed by the presence of roaming bands of pseudo law-enforcement that will conveniently be just violent enough that no individual will dare cross them.  If that doesn’t tick off a ton of the boxes that describe fascism, I don’t know what does. 

Harper The Fascist Part MMXVIII

Remember in 2013, I wrote a rather lengthy post explaining the parallels between the Harper Government and fascism?

Yeah, that.

In the last week or so, the Harper Government has passed Bill C-51, which more or less turns the entire RCMP-CSIS-CSEC establishment into the PMO's private police force.  It grants the state extraordinary powers of surveillance, arrest and detention with virtually no oversight except for that of the Minister responsible for national security.  There is so much wrong with Bill C-51 and the structures it creates that I could rant about it all day.  If Harper creating a politically controlled police force doesn't terrify you, I don't know what will.

But it gets better.  Our strutting little "Dear Leader" is now threatening to go after Canadians who criticize Israel under the rubric of "hate crimes":

The government's intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a "zero tolerance" approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations. 

Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada's updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws "anywhere in the world."

Just think about this for a moment.  Harper is essentially saying that Canadians who are vocally critical of Israel's behaviour towards its Palestinian neighbours are committing a "hate crime".   If this doesn't strike you as creating a class of political dissident similar to what China, the Soviet Union and other totalitarian states have done, you're missing the boat.

We aren't talking about criticizing the Jewish peoples here, we are talking about criticizing the State of Israel, which is a political entity on the world stage.  Criticizing its actions as a nation and a political entity is not spreading lies and calumny about a particular people, and in no reasonable world would it be treated as a "hate crime" in even the most generous sense of the term.

Harper and his gang want to walk in lock-step with Netanyahu.  Fine.  As the Prime Minister of Canada, that is his call to make.  As citizens of this country, we all share the right to disagree with that, and to take steps to voice that disagreement.  Attempting to characterize opposition as "hate crime" is yet another attempt by the Harper Government to silence its opponents.

He has already turned the CRA on environmental groups that represent an obstacle to his "big oil" agenda, now he is looking to turn the police on to any who criticize his government's foreign policy.

I will go a step further and predict that the Harper Government is going to use the tools of Bill C-51 to gather evidence without warrant, and to move any trials associated with this behind closed doors under the guise of "national security concerns".

... and just to finish up today, I will point out to the "Conservatization" of the branding of our government - in the form of allowing the London High Commission to issue blue-and-gold business cards to Embassy staff.  Canada's colours are not blue-and-gold.  There are guidelines for this long established.  What is this other than the government screwing around with the image of Canada where it thinks it can get away with it.  Yet another piece of a government dancing around the realm of fascism by attempting to brand the government in line with the political party currently in power.  

More Totalitarianism From The Harper

Just as Harper has been tearing down the apparatus of scientific research that would ordinarily be used by governing parties to make informed policy decisions, the next prong of his attack on reasoned governance in Canada has begun.  

It really began in 2012, when the government rolled out a program with specific funding for the CRA to go after charitable organizations that the government suspects of overspending on "political activity".

The Future Of The CPC

Andrew Coyne made an excellent point in his column about the Manning Networking Conference that the Manning Centre is hosting in Ottawa:

So this is what a Conservative convention looks like.  After that bizarre lockdown in Calgary last fall - reporters harassed and penned in at every turn, the prime minister's defiantly empty speech, the air heavy with self-congratulation and paranoia - the annual Manning Networking conference exudes an altogether different spirit:  thoughtful, open, introspective and conservative.
...
The party that met in Calgary was not so much the Conservative party as the Harper party.  It was run by and for Harper loyalist - think Pierre Poilievre - people who are happy to do whatever the leader wants done, say whatever the leader wants said, even if that means abandoning every core conviction the party has ever held.  In its place is Harperism, less an ideology than a set of behaviours:  the nastiness, the ruthlessness, the almost universal gracelessness, of which the decision to exclude opposition parties from the mission to Ukraine was only the latest example.

If you are looking at this and wondering if I've lost my marbles - I usually don't agree with much of anything that Coyne says.  Philosophically speaking, he and I live in different worlds.  However, he is very correct in saying that the CPC has very much become "The Harper Party".  This has been emerging since 2006, and since 2011 it has become much more pronounced.

Who is not here?  No one from the Prime Minister's Office, it appears, nor any member of the party hierarchy, nor any member of cabinet, other than those invited to speak.  The speaker's list, by contrast, features Jason Kenney, the Employment Minister; Brad Wall, the premier of Saskatchewan; Jim Prentice, the form Industry and Environment Minister; Michael Chong, the backbench MP and author of the Reform Act. 

It would be hard to categorize them as a group, except that they are all from outside the circle of Harperite hyper-partisans.  And they have not been shy about expressing their discontent with the party's direction, albeit in the coded indirect language that politicians employ when they do not want to be accused of disloyalty.

I've said for some time that Harper is a totalitarian, with healthy dashes of authoritarian and fascism thrown in good measure.

Mr. Prentice, for example, admonished Conservatives to "take back the environmental debate," saying "we cannot be in the business of providing our rivals with the opportunity to portray us as being out of touch" with environmental concerns. 

Sounds eminently reasonable, and in fact Mr. Prentice is one of the more reasonable members of the CPC.   That said while Mr. Coyne's article suggests a more reasonable wing of the party is meeting in Ottawa this weekend, there's a little more to it.

As PressProgress points out, the far right groups are very much in evidence too.  "WeNeedALaw.ca", Campaign Life (the people behind LifeSite News), Focus on the Family and The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada are all represented at this get-together.  There is no secret that Jason Kenney is closely affiliated with the "pro-life" social conservative wing of things (and was no doubt a key player in connecting these groups with the Manning Centre and its organizing committee for this conference).

Do not be fooled, once Harper's iron-fisted grip on the party weakens, I fully expect the coalition of fiscal and social conservatives that he has welded together by sheer force of will to once again start openly pushing for their particular agendas much more vocally.

Just because Harper has not been willing to open the Abortion debate, or touch gay marriage since 2006, does not mean that others are satisfied with that stance.  The far right desperately wants to push a social agenda forward that is just as insane as the Tea Party wing of the GOP is currently trying to sneak in.  I fully expect the upcoming prostitution law from MacKay will turn out to be a piece of "red meat" to the social conservative base.  It won't criminalize prostitution per se, but by criminalizing the consumption of paid sex, it will reinstate exactly the same conditions that made things dangerous under the laws the Supreme Court just struck down.

The post-Harper CPC may not be as authoritarian as Harper has been, but I would not be optimistic about it returning to the much more moderate roots of the PC party under more adult parliamentarians such as Joe Clark either.

... It Gets Darker

A break from analyzing Bill C-23 today, but not a break from covering the darkness that is Harper's shadow.

Today's instalment comes in the form of the obviously politically motivated witch-hunt that the CRA is engaging in with environmental organizations in this country.  This isn't particularly new, the Conservatives have been trying to paint the environmental lobby in this country as "terrorists" for years.

Finance Minister Flaherty announced today that the upcoming budget would contain more of the same:

"There are some terrorist organizations, there are some organized crime organizations that launder money through charities, and make donations to charities," he said during a media conference in Toronto on Friday. 

"That's not the purpose of charitable donations in Canada, so we're becoming increasingly strict on the subject. You'll see some more on Tuesday." 

What this does is create a double jeopardy problem for  charitable organizations.  Suddenly, they could find themselves in a position of having to background check donors - in theory to avoid being smeared with the supposition that the charity is necessarily involved in money laundering.  

The finance minister did not offer specifics on what measures would be taken, but said he's not concerned about suggestions that changing rules for charities would be perceived as a way to silence critics of the government. 

"If the critics of the government are terrorist organizations, and organized crime, I don't care," he said.

Then there is the next part of the story - namely the fact that in essence, Flaherty's own comments suggest that there could be a connection between criticizing the government and being a "terrorist" (at least according to this government).

This is the only government I have ever known which has used the language of "othering" to suggesting that their critics are somehow part of a greater conspiracy, or that they are engaged in "illegal" activities somehow.  This kind of propaganda and the implicit lies and aspersions are straight out of the playbook of totalitarian regimes throughout the world in the last couple of centuries.

If nothing else, Canadians must treat this government and its utterances with even more skepticism.  If there isn't corroborating evidence from multiple sources, then it must be assumed that the government is lying.  There are few other choices available to us.

Papers, Citizen!

As if it couldn't get any worse, the ridiculous paranoia of the Harper regime has surfaced once more in the wake of a sneaky, but peaceful protest in BC.  Senator Runciman wants a law so that protests like this can't happen again.

"People who sneak into these kinds of events, using phony ID, impersonate others, or conspire with others to do the same, should face indictable offences with serious fines and/or imprisonment," said Senator Runciman in a written statement sent to the parliamentary press gallery. 

"The decision not to charge two individuals who impersonated wait staff, avoided RCMP security and got to within a few feet of Prime Minister Stephen Harper trivializes a serious security breach and highlights the need for new laws to deter future improper attempts to gain entry to events where designated persons such as the prime minister or Governor General are present."

Nothing says democracy like a government willing to create laws to inhibit peaceful protest, and here we have another Conservative with his knickers in a twist over a relatively harmless protest of the Harper Government.

If you don't think it's bad, consider the following piece of data.  From 2006 to 2012, the cost of PMO Security from the RCMP has ballooned to $20,000,000.  That's right, we spend more on security for the PM than a lot of small companies make in a year.

This combination of world-travel risks and the increased threat level at home has seen the transformation of the security detail from a cozy enclave of the RCMP into a tightly run tactical squad, insiders said. 

It is also expensive: Overtime has gone through the roof, and the budget of the PMPD, as the unit is called, is set to reach $20-million this year, or twice the 2006 cost. The Prime Minister’s Office and the RCMP say the increase in costs is justifiable, since security concerns are growing and threats are now taken more seriously.

We are spending how much on this?  So the least accountable Prime Minister in Canada's history can blissfully move about in his bubble and not have to hear a protester or two?  Considering the amount that the Harperites have cut from programs that benefit average Canadians, perhaps the PM needs to hear more from the population rather than from the people living in his bubble.

 

Of "Porn Filters" and Agendas

Remember July this year, when Joy Smith stood up in Canada's Parliament and suggested we should follow the UK's example and implement a "porn filter"?

Well, Cameron's filter is about to go live, and as one might have expected, it's blocking a heck of a lot more than just "adult content" websites:

Included in O2's "parental control blocklist" are such hotbeds of hardcore porn as Slashdot, EFF, Linux Today, Blogspot, No Starch Press, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and, of course,Boing Boing. 

A more complete investigation is here.

None of the sites listed above are exactly hotbeds of porn.  In fact, more worrisome is that in the list of "blocked sites" are civil liberties groups like the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), and a stack of open source technology sites.

I smell an agenda at work here.  This isn't controlling access to pornography.  This is an attempt to control access to information and technologies that enable people to sidestep the government's surveillance programs, and access to information that could cause people to challenge the government.

The only governments that engage in this kind of activity are the totalitarian regimes that feel they have to control their citizens and fear access to information.

Now... Ms. Smith, would you care to explain to Canadians how this is a "good thing"?

[28/12/13 Update]
Someone has already built a Browser Extension to Chrome that bypasses the UK Porn Block.
[/Update]

More on Baird and Iran

People, even the media who watch such things, seem mystified by the Harper Government(tm) stance on Iran.

It's no big surprise, really.  When I took this blog out from under wraps in May, I wrote a lengthy essay describing the "Modern Fascism" that Harper has been cultivating.  On foreign affairs, I wrote the following:

Naturally, he would play on this in such a manner as to play up the idea that Canada is being marginalized on the world stage and use that to build up a form an nationalism not unlike what happened in Germany in the post-WWI years as a result of the isolation and restrictions that the Treaty of Versailles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles ) created.

With Iran, The Harper Government has done something which only makes sense in the context of Harper trying to isolate Canada on the world stage.  Like his position on Sri Lanka, Harper takes an absolutist "all-or-nothing" approach to the issues, and then withdraws any support for compromise - thus removing Canada's voice entirely from the discourse.

In the context of Canada's role on the world stage, he is taking a stance which is the polar opposite of where Canada typically plays well.  Where Canada has historically been the voice of compromise and reason, Harper's voice on the world stage is one of bluster and hostility.  We all know that Canada hasn't got the economic or military muscle to back up this belligerent stance that Harper is taking, so for the world, Harper's voice on the stage is easily ignored.

Here in Canada, we cannot ignore it.  At first, I assumed that Harper's approach to foreign affairs was merely a result of his lack of awareness.  That was in 2006.  Since then, I have become convinced that not only is it deliberate, but that it is part of a larger strategy on Harper's part to dismantle everything that he loathes about Canada's history.  If it serves to isolate Canada on the world stage in the process, so much the better for his propaganda campaigns.

It will take years to clean up the mess this nasty little man is making.

The Pseudo Fascists Surface

When I took this blog out from under wraps a few short months ago, I wrote a fairly long piece accusing Harper of being a form of fascist.  I still stand by that position - nothing the man has done since changes my perspective on that front.

One of the interesting features of fascism is the manipulation of the symbols of the state.  In recent weeks we have learned about Harper rebranding Canada's military with "Royal" - returning to WWII era nomenclature and ranking.  There was no good reason to make this move, except possibly as a propaganda move of some kind.  Harper knows that most Canadians like the Royal Family, and frankly probably hold the Queen in far higher regard than they do Harper.

He has already made it clear that his "branding" of Canada includes a great deal of faux admiration of all things military.  The recent overplayed anniversary of the 1812 war being an excellent example of the way that Harper has been trying to play up all things military in his propaganda campaigns.

Most recently, the CPC Party Mouthpiece (Sun Media Papers) published a piece about a Calgary condominium owner who was not being permitted to fly a Canadian flag outside his home.  While there does appear to be some questionable acts on the part of the condominium's board of directors, I am somewhat suspicious of the article for several reasons:

1)  The journalist who wrote it does not appear to have taken the time to contact the Condominium's board of directors for their side of the story.

2)  Most of the story is toned along the lines of "isn't it awful that this patriot can't fly a flag on his own home?".

3)  It seems to me that the person who is making the complaint has been seeking confrontation.  His side of the story seems to be missing some details of the overall interactions that took place with the condominium association.

If you buy a condominium, you sign up to living with the rules of the condominium association - no matter how ridiculous they may seem.  If you don't like them, get involved with the board and work to change them.  That's the way it works.

However, given that the piece comes from the Sun, AND the Sun has been madly trying to make us all believe that Harper is the best thing that's ever happened to Canadians for quite some time now, I am inclined to suspect that this is more of a propaganda piece than a real story.  The CPC has in the past complained that Canadians don't fly the flag as overtly as our cousins to the south.

At a time of year when politics goes silent, and most stories published are local interest or human interest stories, we find the Sun publishing a puff piece about a "patriot" who is being "oppressed" the the "evil condo board".

To me, this sounds like it is more of an emotional manipulation piece, intended to stir up feelings about the trappings of patriotism in the same way that other fascist regimes in the past have worked to create a sense of ultra nationalism.