Stephen Harper incarnates Richard M. Nixon and Watergate in Canada
Dr. Paul Gagné
In the British Guardian newspaper, Dimitry Anastakis and Jeet Heer compared Stephen Harper to former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon. The article titled "The Canadian Nixon" documents a Prime Minister who pursues an ego-driven agenda, bereft of ethics, and that is in contempt of parliamentary democratic institutions. That article can been published in response to Harper's contemptuous activities against Elections Canada back in April 2008. However, the Harper government's proroguing of Parliament, as an act of political gamesmanship, is reminiscent of Richard Nixon.
Indeed, Jack Layton also has testified that the Harper government reminiscent of Nixon, has been wire tapping Opposition parliamentarians, who have sought to pursue a Progressive Coalition, that would topple the Harper Government. Nixon's pursuit of such wire tapping against Democratic Party meetings in the Watergate complex of Washington D.C. during the 1970's would cost him the U.S. Presidency. However, the difference between Nixon and Harper is that the U.S. media investigated then President Nixon, as responsible journalists. In contrast, the Canadian media is in apparent league with the Harper government in its corresponding pursuit of Nixon-like wars against institutions of democracy in Canada.
It took a British media organization, outside of the control of Canadian elite-controlled mass media, to publish the following about the Harper government in the article titled "The Canadian Nixon".
Every prime minister has a modus operandi. Harper's is his utter contempt, shown not once but many times, for Canadian institutions. In fact, it is not a stretch to say that Harper simply sees many Canadian institutions - Elections Canada being simply his latest target - as illegitimate, not just in need of reform but worth attacking root-and-branch.
The historian Garry Wills once observed that Richard Nixon wanted to be president not to govern the nation but to undermine the government. The Nixon presidency was one long counterinsurgency campaign against key American institutions like the courts... Harper has the same basic approach to politics: attack not just political foes but the very institutions that make governing possible. The state for Nixon and Harper exists not as an instrument of policy making but as an alien force to be subdued.
Canadians have never had a prime minister who has literally made his career attacking and undermining the legitimacy of Canadian institutions; until now.
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The same article then further documents Harper's Nixon-like self-serving manipulations and contempt for institutions of democracy.
For instance, in his long-running war against the media, Harper has taken every opportunity to de-legitimise their role in holding his government to account. He refuses to take questions. He speaks only to friendly media outlets. He claims that "national outlets" are biased.
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Please see the YouTube video of Stephen Harper and Richard Nixon. Both videos depict the same bizarre paranoid complex of the media, similar to a criminal who fears being exposed by ethical cops that might be in the room.
The article further elaborates:
Remember, this is a PM who does not let cabinet ministers speak to the media, and even hides the place and times of cabinet meetings in an effort to avoid questions from the fourth estate.
Along with the media, another of Harper's favourite targets is the Canadian court system. Conservatives love to attack what they call "judge-made law", which really means any decisions that conservatives don't like.
Take same-sex marriage, for example. In 2003, Harper condemned the courts for saying that marriage laws were unconstitutional. He even personally attacked Ontario judge Roy McMurtry, and claimed a Liberal conspiracy: "They put the judges in they wanted," to get the result, Harper accused, even though McMurtry was appointed by Conservative Brian Mulroney.
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This anti-court animus is rampant within Harper's inner circle. His chief of staff, academic Ian Brodie, wrote that financially strapped and historically underrepresented groups such as women, ethnic and linguistic minorities, and gays, should have their court funding cut.
Presto -- one of Harper's first acts in office was to cut funding for those very groups so that they could no longer make their case at the supreme court.
Then there is the Senate. Harper and his allies hate the Senate. A long- held bugaboo of Harper's Reform party roots, our prime minister never misses a chance to attack the Senate. He'd like to see the Senate be equal, making it even more undemocratic than it is now. Should Price Edward Island (population 130,000) have as many Senate votes as Ontario (population 12 million)?
Harper actually made comments in Australia, touring in his official capacity as head of our government, attacking the constitutionally legitimate Senate, to a foreign audience. Is this standing up for Canada?
Now, many Canadians would like to see the Senate reformed. This is a worthwhile goal. But in the meantime, all Canadians understand that the Senate is a part of our Parliament, created by the 1867 British North America Act.
But Harper has attacked the legitimacy of the Commons, even. After the 2005 same-sex-marriage vote passed, Harper claimed, as leader of the Opposition, that the result was not legitimate because it included the votes of the separatist Bloc Quebecois.
Of course, he did not question the legitimacy of those same votes when the Paul Martin government lost the confidence of the Commons. Harper wanted an election. As for the functioning of the Commons itself, the National Post's Don Martin famously uncovered the Conservative's "black book" of procedural dirty tricks, designed to slow parliamentary action to a halt. Another way to de- legitimise another Canadian institution: paralyse committees, have your committee chairs run out and refuse to bring things to a vote - especially when they bring the government into question.
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Stephen Harper's proroguing of Parliament with the unethical support of a British Monarchy, through the Office of the Governor General, caught the attention of American journalists like Rachel Maddow, and comedians like Jon Stewart. It is apparent that Stephen Harper's Watergate is his government's pursuit of the North American Union (NAU) agenda, that is being executed in a Nixon-like clandestine manner. The NAU affair is Watergate multiplied. Whereas the American media sought to defend the constitutional integrity of the constitutional government in the United States, Harper's 'NAU affair', that remains supported by virtue of proroguing of Parliament, continues to be covered-up by Canada's corrupted and complicit mass-media.
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