In the spirit of this request by Buckdog asking all Progressive Bloggers to list all the promises that Stephen Harper told the Canadian people and not kept, I start you on this day appropriately with the one made by Harper and the Cons about Fixed Election Dates:
Fixed Election Dates
“A Conservative government will: Introduce legislation modeled on the BC and Ontario laws requiring fixed election dates every four years, except when a government loses the confidence of the House (in which case an election would be held immediately, and the subsequent election would follow four years later).” (”Stand Up For Canada”, Conservative Party of Canada Federal Election Platform 2006, p. 44)
He and the Cons. technically kept this promise by passing it into law, but that hasn’t exactly stopped him today, now has it? Here we have Harper deciding that it is in his party’s interest to completely ignore that law which he and they passed.
UPDATE @ 11:23 am: This theme will be repeated a fair bit about what Deceivin’ Stephen said about this, I suspect.. but here’s Professor Chet Scoville at Vanity Press reinforcing that theme with even more examples.
Danielle does an excellent job at her blog of of listing a whole plethora of “promises made, promises broken” , including the 2006 Conservative Platform (you remember - the “Stand Up For Canada” crap). Danielle also said at her site there are at least 100 promises made that weren’t kept by Harper and the Cons. We’ll have to see if that’s the case or not, so for reference and research purposes, I’ve helpfully downloaded the document and put it here for your perusal at the bottom of the updates - in case it mysteriously disappears off the Cons homepage.
UPDATE 2 @ 11:37 am: Very impressive - this blogsite went to the trouble of printing up over 50 promises that Stephen Harper broke.
UPDATE 3 @ 12:49pm: Another blogpost on the fixed election date promise. I suspect you’ll be seeing a lot of that. Plus, this post isn’t about a broken promise Steve did, as it is showing what utter gall this guy has in claiming the opposition would be engaging in personal negative attacks, when he and his party have been initiating it on the airwaves and in the Parliament for the past 2 1/2 years.
Super idea: spend the entire campaign talking about the guy that’s the main asset to the Tory campaign. That’ll work just swell.
While you’re at it, perhaps you can compile a list of those other, secret plans that Harper was going to implement that the Liberal campaign made up out of thin air, and how many of those he followed through on.