Scorpions for Xmas: more gifts from Harper

Scorpions for Xmas: more gifts from Harper
by RALPH SURETTE
Sat. Dec 19

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1158512.html

YOU’VE HEARD, of course, of the Harper government’s Afghan detainee muddle and about Canada’s sullied environmental reputation the world is sneering at in Copenhagen. Here’s a couple you haven’t heard of — scorpions handed out for Christmas by this increasingly ugly little government as Parliament takes its break.

Last week, on Thursday, the House of Commons voted to turn down a new treaty with the European Union for the Northwest Atlantic fishery — a document that would open the door to the EU having a say in how fish stocks are managed inside Canada’s 200-mile zone, one drafted by the EU and, according to Canada’s foremost experts on fish treaties, naively and incompetently accepted by the Harper government.

Then on Friday, one day later, the Harper government signed the treaty anyway in a casually arrogant defiance of Parliament.

Another one. The interchurch group Kairos, which works on human rights and environment issues involving Canada and the Southern Hemisphere, had its federal funding cut abruptly after a 35-year relationship. Like other non-government agencies, Kairos got a government dollar for every one it raises on its own through CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency. Its 2009-2013 budget had been vetted and approved by CIDA — then, from the top, and without explanation, the axe came down.

The logical explanation: Kairos has been raising questions around the tarsands, including initiating a tour by 17 church leaders there in the spring.

More explanation: A private member’s mining bill (C-300), close to passage by the opposition parties, would deny federal grants to Canadian mining companies that are in violation of human rights and environmental standards in developing countries. Despite the modesty of the bill, the government, at the mining industry’s behest, is apoplectic.

The bill originated with a campaign by Development and Peace, which is connected to Third World problems and is one of Kairos’ biggest members, and which gathered some 400,000 petition signatures in Catholic churches across the country over the past four years. Even the churches are apparently getting to the supposedly religious Stephen Harper.

Regarding the fishery bill, Bob Applebaum, leading a group of top fishery bureaucrats, now retired, who opposed the new agreement and have been involved with fish treaties in Canada and the UN since the era of the 200-mile limit in the1970s, says that they expected the government to do what it did but after allowing "a decent amount of time to pass, paying at least lip-service to the parliamentary process." Apparently, even lip-service is now out the window.

Also, since Newfoundland and Labrador, the province mainly affected by this, is totally opposed, is this the vengeful Harper getting back at Newfoundland’s prickly premier, Danny Williams, for past barbs?

The government has treated Parliament with flagrant contempt, says Applebaum, raising "issues of governance" that go well beyond the fishery.

Indeed, the Harper government merely gets worse: more controlling, angry, manipulative, contemptuous of Parliament, more suspicious of its own civil service — and more incompetent, in its Bush/Cheney way, on anything touching foreign affairs. It also represents a minority of Canadians.

The "issue of governance" is how to get rid of it — and what to replace it with. Although the Harper government has managed repeatedly to work its way up to the 40 per cent range in the polls, considered majority country by the pollsters, as soon as the cameras focus on that fact, something blows up and the lead sinks like a stone.

The problem is that when the cameras turn to the Liberals, they sink like a stone as well (in Quebec, more stuff has come out from the sponsorship scandal, giving the party more grief).

Unless I miss my guess, this looks like Nova Scotia some time ago, in which both major parties were dysfunctional and finally a third party busted through.

The NDP doesn’t look like that party federally, but I was intrigued about the talk of the party changing its name recently, perhaps signalling other changes — a broad social democratic party of Canada might in fact swoop up both Liberals and Progressive Conservatives orphaned by Harper’s reactionary Reform-Conservatives.

Remember, too, that we nearly had a coalition government last fall. These are signs that something is trying to crack.

The Liberals will have another shot at it at the next election. If they fail again, then something will really have to be done. Enough international humiliation and enough scorpions.

( rsurette@herald.ca)

Ralph Surette is a veteran freelance journalist living in Yarmouth County.