The Inconvenient Truth About Harper's Canada

Tomorrow night in Ottawa
Michael Harris and Donald Gutstein discuss how to undo the damage

I really really hope someone has arranged to tape this event and put it up online for those of us not in Ottawa.

Speaking at Goldman Sachs in New York last fall, Harper hinted at a greater military role ahead for Canada and leaving his mark on Canada :
"We've made it a policy of moving incrementally, but constantly, in our eight-and-a-half years in office," he said, citing changes to corporate taxes and a tougher law-and-order stance.
"I think that we've moved, and I think the country has moved with us."

Farley Mowat in "Party of One" : 

"Stalin had small balls compared to this guy. Harper is probably the most dangerous human being ever elevated to power in Canada. How the population has acquiesced in following this son of a bitch, and to let him take over their lives, I’ll never know. You have to create warrior nations, they are not born. They have to be made. It is the preliminary step of a tyrant. And this son of a bitch incited Canada into becoming a warrior nation."

Michael Harris :  

"Harper has simply made the calculation that if the way to give a chameleon a nervous breakdown is to put him down on plaid, the way to win an election in our disappearing democracy is to offer Canadians only two flavours — vanilla or chocolate.That means hitting the hot buttons, over and over. Before oil prices tanked, greed was the button of choice. Now it’s fear. It makes things starkly simple — black and white, good and evil.

As simple as War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery … and Ignorance is Strength. It’s a campaign designed for Idiot Culture. The only question is, are there enough idiots out there to put Harper over the top again?" .

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Are there no workhouses?

Some holiday cheer from the Canadian neo-liberal think tank, Frontier Centre for Public Policy :

 Transcript :

"Labour laws in Canada are supposed to protect workers from exploitation and ensure their safety. But they are not always helping teenagers who are entering the workforce for the first time. Most provinces require that anyone younger than 16 or 14 obtain a permit to work or have written permission from their parents. Children under 12 are almost never allowed to work unless they might be helping on a family farm.  Teens who do work face many restrictions, including how many hours and which hours they're allowed to work. 

Some of these rules seem rather unnecessary. In Alberta, 12 to 14 year olds are forbidden from working more than 2 hours on a schoolday. Two hour workshifts four days a week are more disruptive than 4 hour shifts two days a week.
Minimum wage laws also make it more difficult for young people with no experience to find their first job. In the UK there's a lower minimum wage for people between the ages of 18 and 20 and for those under 18.  

Teenagers who live at home are often able to accept lower wages than adults.
It's time for governments to show more consideration for the needs of young people when developing labour policies."

Yes, why aren't more 12 year olds working four days a week for less than minimum wage?

I first got interested in FCPP back in 2007 when the Cons tapped them for policy advice on electoral reform. This was amusing because FCPP didn't seem very keen on electoral reform, although they were pretty big on private health care, denying the existence of climate change, disbanding the Canadian Wheat Board, and promoting bulk exports of water to the US.

Harper liked them well enough to give a guest speech at one of their fundraisers in Winnipeg in 2009 . This was the same year FCPP and the Fraser Institute co-sponsored the first Canadian tour of Lord Christopher "Global Warming is a Hoax" Monkton 

Currently on their main page they are featuring one of their research fellows, Wendell Cox,  also a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Heartland Institute, and author of The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy.

Our media seem pretty comfortable quoting and reprinting them. From just the past few days :

CBC : 'Greenpeace dropout' Patrick Moore defends Kinder Morgan pipeline

   Climate change denier and not founder of Greenpeace Patrick Moore is environment chair at FCPP

Financial Post : When emissions disappear, so do jobs

 by a senior FCPP research fellow

while Global News is running a half-hour weekly podcast on Alberta politics with the VP of FCPP 

Yet somehow I'm not seeing any big media interviews and guest spots with Michael Harris of Party of One or Donald Gutstein of Harperism  - two authors who have recently written about how think tanks repackage neo-liberal ideas for easy public consumption through a media chain.
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RevCan : From Hayek to birdwatchers

The Broadbent Institute released a study yesterday suggesting Canada Con Revenue Agency tax auditors are targeting critics of the Harper government about their allotted 10% political activities while letting right-leaning groups off the hook. How very timely.

David Akin : 

"The group reviewed tax filings of 10 right-leaning charities, including the Fraser Institute, the Montreal Economic Institute, and Focus on the Family, and found that in each of the past three tax years, none of them declared spending anything on political activity."

Say, what? Focus on the FamilySpankingGaysAbortion Canada has forsworn all political lobbying out of their $9.4M mansion of many rooms in Langley,BC? When did that happen? Must have been some time after FotF CEO Darrel Reid left them to become Steve's director of policy and deputy chief of staff in the PMO from 2007 til 2010, followed up by his two year stint as VP of the Manning Centre. Easy enough to overlook FotF's public support in 2013 for Mark Warawa's abortion reach-around I guess. 

And Charles McVety's Institute for Canadian Values? No political activity there at all last year : 

“We, the undersigned, appeal to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Minister of Justice, Peter MacKay, to create legislation to protect our country’s little boys and girls from the horrors of prostitution.” 

they said in a petition protesting the Supremes having shot down previous anti-prostitution legislation. There was also another petition and presser to protest against Christian schools being forced to have "homosexual clubs" if anti-bullying legislation was passed.

Who else we got in the "No political activities" check box ?

Fraser Institute : Political activities? Ha ha ha ha.

Energy Probe Research Foundation? Hey, that's the tanky run by National Post columnist Lawrence Solomon!  Self-described as “one of Canada's leading environmentalists”, Mr. Solomon wrote a book called "The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud" based on his many denier NaPo articles.
Broadbent Institute quotes EPRF :

“Energy Probe was one of only two ‘pressure’ groups cited by the inaugural edition of The Canadian Encyclopedia for being effective in influencing our country’s policies. …EPRF also influences policy decisions. Our views are heard by provincial and federal legislative committees, environmental assessment boards, and other regulatory agencies when we testify at hearings on a wide variety of pressing issues.”

Macdonald-Laurier Institute : New kids on the block and Hayek devotee Brian Lee Crowley's other venue. Reducing business taxes, reducing government spending, privatizing the healthcare system, and "working toward a common security perimeter with the United States". Jim Flaherty did them a start-up fundraiser in 2010.

Montreal Economic Institute. Teamed up with the Fraser Institute a few years back to co-sponsor "International Leadership by a Canada Strong and Free", written by Mike Harris and Preston Manning :

" no reason to avoid action on our urgent national interest in pursuing a formal structure to manage irreversible economic and security integration with the United States."

As it happens, five of those ten think tanks the Broadbent Institute says the CRA is averting its eyes from - the Fraser Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the MacDonald Laurier Institute, the Frontier Center for Public Policy, and the Montreal Economic Institute - all receive funding from Peter Munk of Barrick Gold through his Aurea Foundation. The heads of those 5 tanks are all members of the Mont Pelerin Society,  aka Hayek's "dealerships" , or what Donald Gutstein explains as the think tanks that repackage neo-liberal ideas for easy public consumption through a media chain: 

• Michael Walker, founding Senior Fellow of the Koch-funded Fraser Institute; 
• Brian Lee Crowley, founding President of Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute;
• Peter Holle, President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy;
• Michel Kelly Gagnon, CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute

Now I know what you're thinking - Jeez, Alison, a grand unified field theory conspiracy of birdwatching and Hayek? Is the Mont Pelerin Society going to become the new Bilderberg boogieman? Birds of a neo-liberal or libertarian feather flock and fund together - so what? 

Well, given that Harper has shuttered research stations, closed science libraries, muzzled scientists and public servants, gutted StatsCan, frozen FOI requests, and sidelined Parliament, his own MPs, and the national press -- given all that, if he is also successful at chilling out any organized charity opposition in the public sphere, then Hayek's so-called "dealerships" will be one step closer to entirely pwning promedia for forming public opinion.

My own theory? Whereas the rw tankies all marked the box "political activities" with "0%", the birdwatchers et al dutifully filled theirs in - making life just that much easier on CRA auditors.

FYI - Here's the CRA's guidelines for what constitutes political activities :

• i. explicitly communicates a call to political action (that is, encourages the public to contact an elected representative or public official and urges them to retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country);
• ii. explicitly communicates to the public that the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country should be retained (if the retention of the law, policy or decision is being reconsidered by a government), opposed, or changed; or
• iii. explicitly indicates in its materials (whether internal or external) that the intention of the activity is to incite, or organize to put pressure on, an elected representative or public official to retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country.
• iv. explicitly no bees

Ok, so I made that last one up.

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