The May election showed that many Vancouver Quadra voters care about the quality of Canada’s democracy, and therefore rejected the Conservatives for these abuses of power. Educated, dedicated and ahead of the rest of Canada?
- Joyce
Jaunuary 5, 2012
By Lawrence Martin
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was updated at 6:40 p.m. to correct and clarify that while Conservative Party officials were charged with having wilfully broken election laws, they ultimately pled guilty to lesser charges of having violated financing provisions under the Elections Act.
Back in the days of the Chretien government when myself and other electron-stained wretches were vigorously reporting — much to the delight of the Tories — on abuse of power under the Liberals, we wondered how long the Grits could get away with it.
Today that same question is being asked, with good reason, as regards the Conservatives.
Of the many remarkable political moments in 2011, one of the most telling, for me anyway, came after the prime minister was found in contempt of Parliament. That finding, which followed a probe by the Speaker of the House, was significant enough in itself. It had never happened to a prime minister before.
But even more noteworthy was Stephen Harper`s reaction to the unprecedented condemnation. He was dismissive. Canadians “don’t care” about that kind of thing, he said. What he was saying essentially was that the process doesn’t matter. The people are concerned only with the results.
This was a point Conservatives made frequently in defending their flaunting of democratic norms in 2011. But can it be the case? Do voters not really care how the system functions?
Didn’t people in this country and around the world spend decades or in some cases hundreds of years fighting for honourable process, for the establishment of democratic systems?
Following the contempt indictment and his casual dismissal of it, the prime minister led his Conservatives to their first majority victory. His view on the functioning of democracy, as cynical as it was, could be said to have been vindicated. For evidence our system is broken, it was a fine exhibit.
If the contempt charge was just a one-off thing, it wouldn’t have been so noteworthy. But there were so many other examples showing that the system no longer serves as a check on executive power. The examples and the mild public response to them are worth recalling because what they suggest is that we have a prime minister who can get away with pretty much anything.
To start the year, there was the document-altering imbroglio in Bev Oda’s department over the controversial cutting of funding for the faith-based, aid group Kairos. Under normal due democratic process, the minister would face the music and answer questions in the Commons. In this case, it didn’t happen. Oda ran for cover.
Document-altering, no small matter, happened again. The Conservatives were found to even have altered a statement by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser. It was on fiscal management. The altering made Team Harper look better. The AG was not amused.
The Oda affair was followed by the contempt ruling which came as a result of Harper’s refusal to release to the Commons basic information on the costing of programs. That triggered the election.
Early in the campaign, Conservative operatives were caught forcibly removing citizens from rallies. The sin of the attendees was to have past ties, however marginal, to other parties. Late in the campaign, a top Harper campaign official, as if working for the Nixon White House, was caught leaking bogus photos in an attempt to incriminate Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff as an Iraqi war planner.
Also at this time, more light on the Conservatives’ operating style was shed with the leak of an Auditor-General`s report. It revealed that $50-million allocated by parliament for border infrastructure improvements was used instead as a slush fund by Tony Clement for projects to decorate his riding.
In the same period of time time, Bruce Carson, a former top Harper official, was put under investigation by the RCMP for alleged influence peddling and a number of Harper’s top campaign officials were charged with wilfully exceeding spending limits in the 2006 election campaign. In November, the party, agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of incurring election expenses exceeding the maximum allowable and filing election records that didn’t set out all expenses. (The more serious charges of wilfully breaking the laws were withdrawn.)
Following the successful election, the Conservatives showed no sign of changing their ways. With the return of the House, they used with frequency the sledgehammer tactics of closure and time allocation to limit parliamentary debates. The government blocked a bid by an opposition member to get accredited to attend the Durban summit on climate change. In Question Period, the minister then upbraided that same member for not being in Durban. Meanwhile, cabinet ministers like Clement who were involved in controversy or alleged scandals refused to answer questions.
Others, like Peter MacKay and Jason Kenney, faced allegations of abuse of public funds. Helena Guergis was excommunicated from the party on charges that didn’t hold up and has since sued.
Monitoring the government’s moral behaviour was the office of the Commissioner of Integrity. After the Auditor-General found that this office was essentially whitewashing every charge of abuse that came before it, the Conservatives replaced the disgraced commissioner — to screams of outrage from the opposition — with the former deputy commissioner, one who had been party to much of the handiwork.
In addition to time allocation and closure, the government took further undemocratic steps such as moving committee meetings in camera. The all-powerful Privy Council Office was increasingly politicized. The prime minister`s office denied it had ordered civil servants to use the term “Harper government” instead of “Government of Canada”. Emails obtained by the Canadian Press gave the lie to the denial.
Late in the year, the Conservatives, alleging it was unrepresentative, ignored the results of a plebiscite by farmers saying they wanted to maintain the Wheat Board. They then moved ahead with legislation to effectively kill the Board despite a Federal Court ruling saying it was unlawful to do so.
In December, a ruling by the speaker of the Commons came as a fitting capper to the year of moral bankruptcy. The Speaker, a Conservative, ruled that the Conservatives had behaved reprehensibly in planting rumours in Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s riding suggesting he was going to resign. The harsh words brought on no apology from the prime minister’s office. It was only a matter of process and so, in the PMO view of things, it didn’t matter much. They had the polls to prove it. They showed the prime minister’s standing had not been effected by authoritarian governance. He was doing quite well, benefitting from the broken system while breaking it some more.
