 As
I predicted, the new right-wing minority Prime Minister has moved
quickly to abandon environmental protection in Canada and to try to
force-feed Canadians his long-held neocon ideology.
One of
Harper's first moves was to renege on Canada's commitment to Kyoto, and
he did so in the typical neocon weaselly way: Rather than withdrawing,
he simply announced that the extremely modest baby-step Kyoto targets to stem global warming were 'completely unattainable', and so his government would not even try
to meet those targets. Fifteen Kyoto programs that were in place have
already been scrapped by the new government. A scientist who has
written a novel on the dangers of global warming was prohibited by Harper from launching it, because he works for the Department of the Environment. Gag rule.
Instead, Harper has joined a toady US/corporatist group which promotes technology-change-only
solutions -- in other words, pollute all you want until someone comes
up with a better pollution control technology, and then adopt it
voluntarily. This is not only irresponsible, it is inconsistent with
his party's election platform. The lies have begun.
While Harper
fiddles, critical environmental issues in Canada keep burning, and are
now likely to be ignored completely. As I've reported before, the
Alberta Tar Sands project is nothing less than an environmental
holocaust, and is almost entirely 'self-regulated' by the Big Oil
companies clearcutting huge swaths of Northern Alberta forests and
leaving behind toxic swamps. Regulations over forestry in all five
Canadian provinces with significant forestry industries are woefully inadequate. Last week the Sierra Legal Defence Fund published the results of its survey of municipal sewage treatment
-- Montreal and Vancouver, two of Canada's three largest cities, are
decades away from proper treatment, and Victoria & St. John's, at
opposite ends of the country, continue to have no treatment at all,
dumping a combined 67 billion litres per year of raw sewage into the
Pacific and Atlantic Oceans respectively.
A recent special study covered extensively last week in the Toronto star showed the average Canadian has in their body 28 carcinogens,
24 hormone disruptors, 18 respiratory toxins and 46 reproductive and
developmental toxins, in quantities significant enough to have an
adverse effect on health. Most of the test subjects in the study had no
known work-related exposures to these toxins -- this chemical soup is
in all our bodies.
And don't even get me started (again) on Canada's disgraceful animal welfare, hunting and fishing laws and regulations.
As
the environment and public health are abandoned, Harper instead is
dutifully doing the bidding of the Bush neocons, introducing new
'protocols' even before he starts enacting regressive legislation. In
his most shameful act, Harper has prohibited government buildings from lowering flags to half-mast when Canadians are killed in the futile war in Afghanistan, and has prohibited the media from attending or reporting on military funerals.
The Canadian media, not used to strongarm tactics from our governments,
are likely to meekly obey the new restrictions. They have already
acceded to the new, more restrictive, formal, 'spin'-focused contact
protocols Harper has mandated between media and federal ministers.
"Don't call us, we'll call you" if and when we have something to tell
you, is the message.
And, also as I predicted, with each new bill he introduces (starting, of course, with tax cuts) Harper is openly daring
the opposition to bring down his minority government, in the hopes that
Canadians, fed up with too many recent elections, would give him a
majority if they were forced to the polls again. He is wrong.
Unfortunately the leaderless opposition Liberals are in such disarray
that they are likely to allow Harper to continue this brinkmanship
politics to introduce more and more neocon 'protocols',
deficit-producing handouts to rich friends, and non-enforcement of
regulations (you know, the Bush way), until the Liberals' leadership
convention in December.
An ideological extremist, even with a
minority government, can do a lot of irreparable damage in six months.
Oh Canada, what have you done?
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
