16 points on Mr. Harper
The following 16 bullet points are taken from a speach by Stephen Harper, the same Stephen Harper who wants to be our Prime Minister. He gave this speach to a US-based far right group who were meeting in Montreal in 1997.
Yes, 1997 was 8 years ago. However, Stephen Harper was already an experience politician, he had served 4 years in parliment, and was vice-president of the biggest right wing lobby in the country, namely, National Citizens Coalition.
Jamie Elmhirst, President Liberal Party of Canada in BC puts in very eloquently:
"First, every body knows that Stephen Harper was born without a sense of humour, so let's scratch tongue-in-cheek off the list right away. Secondly, Stephen Harper was VP of the biggest, most powerful right wing lobby group in Canada. Hardly a "private citizen". And even if he was, is that some kind of blanket defence against making asinine statements? I think not. Thirdly, when did eight years ago become some unbridgeable gulf in the space-time continuum?"
It is truly amazing, that this guy has the support he has in this country. I am all for fiscal responsibility (which is why I don't support the NDP), but these statements, made by Stephen Harper are startling to say the least.
Here are some of the highlights from the speech in question.
- First, facts about Canada. Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it. Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours, a massive brain drain of young professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the United States.
- In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.
- Let me just make a comment on language, which is so important in this country. I want to disabuse you of misimpressions you may have. If you've read any of the official propagandas, you've come over the border and entered a bilingual country. While it is a French-speaking city -- largely -- it has an enormous English-speaking minority and a large number of what are called ethnics: they who are largely immigrant communities, but who politically and culturally tend to identify with the English community.
- And we have a Supreme Court, like yours, which, since we put a charter of rights in our constitution in 1982, is becoming increasingly arbitrary and important. It is also appointed by the Prime Minister. Unlike your Supreme Court, we have no ratification process.
- In fact, before the Reform Party really became a force in the late '80s, early '90s, the leadership of the Conservative Party was running the largest deficits in Canadian history. They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially -- what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country.
- The Reform Party is much closer to what you would call conservative Republican, which I'll get to in a minute.
- The party system that is developing here in Canada is a party system that replicates the antebellum period, the pre-Civil War period of the United States.
- That's not to say -- and I would never be quoted as saying -- we're headed to a civil war. But we do have a major secession crisis, obviously of a very different nature than the secession crisis you had in the 1860s. But the dynamics, the political and partisan dynamics of this, are remarkably similar.
- The Bloc Québécois is equivalent to your Southern secessionists,
- If you look at the surviving PC support, it's very much concentrated in Atlantic Canada, in the provinces to the east of Quebec. These are very much equivalent to the United States border states. They're weak economically. They have very grim prospects if Quebec separates.
- Obviously, the issue here is not slavery, but the appeasement of ethnic nationalism. For years, we've had this Quebec separatist movement. For years, we elected Quebec Prime Ministers to deal with that, Quebec Prime Ministers who were committed federalists who would lead us out of the wilderness. For years, we have given concessions of various kinds of the province of Quebec, political and economic, to make them happier.
- The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things.
- So that's where you get the strong support for the United Nations. Canada contributes a great deal to the UN relatively, and takes a great deal of pride over always being praised by UN bodies.
- This distresses conservatives like myself quite profoundly, but I will warn you, it's a widespread view, and I will always say, one that could only be maintained as long as you basically provide us with military protection.
- The country Canada should be modeling itself after in all kinds of ways is Switzerland. When you have a multilingual state, particularly one where, thankfully, the language groups are geographically divided, you cannot run language policy at the national level.
- A country like Canada will never have as strong a national identity as you do in the United States. You just have to accept that and get questions of ethnicity out of the national government. It's just a recipe for disaster otherwise.
Comments? Do you want this guy to be our Prime Minister?
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