The key goal in 2007 must be to send this Conservative government packing its bags and out the door. Harper and his brand of conservatism must be stopped and sent back into opposition whence it came in 2006. Seeing what they’ve done while in a minority government and surmising what they’d do if they had majority government status should be enough initiative for every progressive-minded person in Canada to make that their ultimate goal.
An op-ed was published in the Star today detailing what Harper aims to do. What he’s been doing so far and what his ultimate goals are is scary stuff for a social liberal like myself (and should be to anyone else in the progressive camp - be they Greens, socialists, social democrats, feminists etc), who believes that government is more then just providing military defense - it can be used for instituting social reform and social justice in society. As you see in the article, Harper is aiming to neuter the federal government’s ability to do that:
The most important part of the article is the end statement:
Personally, I strongly believe that if it can be communicated to Canadians what Harper is attempting to do by changing Canada to his neo-conservative vision, they will throw him and his government out on its ear. We can already see from the polls that Canadians have become increasingly uneasy at this strong right-wing Republican-style turn Harper is attempting to take Canada on. The onus will be to effectively bring that message across to people in a 6 week election campaign and do it without being accused of fear-mongering.
Over-dramatic statements aren’t need here; reminding Canadians simply what programs he has decided to cut based solely on narrow-minded ideology as well as his continuing inability to do anything on the environment and his government’s skepticism over “so-called” greenhouse gases and global warming should be more then sufficient, as well as providing to Canadians what your specific alternative to his style of government is.
Simply put, the question should be framed as this: Do you want neo-conservativism (with a touch of social conservatism thrown in) espoused by US Republicans and used to such disasterous effect in Mike Harris’s Ontario in the 1990’s (with many of those ministers not coincidentally in the Harper government), or do you want a government committed to, as Thomas Axworthy put it in another great op-ed article today, “a coherent, progressive alternative to the neo-conservative ideology of market dominance. A market economy, certainly, but a market society never, is the stance that should distinguish progressives from conservatives.”
Effectively market that message, and the Conservatives reign in power will mercifully come to an end (and not a moment too soon).
In the 1996 Speech from the Throne, (Chretien) the federal government gave a commitment to work closely with the provincial and territorial governments on renewing the social union,
**and expressed its desire to limit its power to spend on social programs.***
That announcement marked an important change in the federal government’s approach to the social union, and suggested that a more cooperative federalism might be practised.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/prb0031-e.htm