Cornwall ON – Is Stephen Harper a spent force? Yes, he’s Prime Minister of a minority government; but it’s been a maligned government which has done far too much to sow disunity in our country. So much disunity that the thought of coalitions start to make more and more sense.
Mr. Harper is going to get one more kick at the can to get his majority government, but the question is, is it too late?
Every time it seems within reach a new fake lake is built, and his government spends like wild jackals. His own team muzzled, which causes huge repercussions for its MPs such as Guy Lauzon in SD&SG.
People that run for office generally are bright. They have ideas. They’re committed to making things better. Yes there are Whips (and chains too if you look hard) in politics, but in my 46 years I can’t think of any Canadian government on such a short leash.
Mr. Harper may have rode into town on Adscam, but his Billion Dollar Boondoggle, Calls for tough on crime bills that could bankrupt the country while letting his people off the hook (see Rahim Jaffer) and throwing ministers under the bus (see Helena Guergis’ skid marks) choking of the media, and generally doing his best to destroy the Canadian economy, Medicare, CBC, and what unity we have in Canada are not the things that legacies are made of? At least positive ones.
So who is his heir apparent? The front runner has to be Peter MacKay, but there are others. And the good thing about muzzling his MPs is that he gets most of the blame when things go bad, and of course way too much of the credit for the small victories when they rarely occur.
To think that in the face of dithering Liberal opposition and a conservatively creeping NDP Mr. Harper hasn’t really been able to jump ahead of the pack does not bode for his long term political future.
What do you think Canada? You can post your comments below.
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Like an election, much of this money is going back into the community that provides goods or services, I do not think of it as a boondoggle, trying to do something to fast, maybe. Liberals seem to have a generous helping of teflon that other parties missed the boat on, but with 10s of thousands of employees in any organization, strange things will happen.
This Billion Dollar Boondoggle is a really stupid thing. In the middle of a recession with deficits when people lost jobs, many lost their homes, we are being told to tighten our belts , waiting lines for medical scans /surgeries, people burdened with debt and more!!!! The Harper Conservatives who preach fiscal responsability go and blow 1 billion dollars to get a photo opportunity with G8 leaders hoping to boost harpers image as a statesman on the backs of the taxpayer!!!!! Harper has no more fiscal credibility!!! How can he ask us to make sacrifices and endure cuts when he is wasting money like it is going out of style in these difficult economic times!!!!!
To try to go back and find other examples of other governments that did the same is a lame excuse to take the focus off Harper !!! We know about the mistakes of others and the other governments paid the price when we voted them out of office!!!!
Now that Harper has done the same if not worst , he should have the same fate as other incompetent governments of the past!!!
Totally with Denis on this one. Ill expand on that though, it could balloon to 1.1 – 2.0 billion dollars for this, absolute BOONDOGGLE! This makes ADSCAM pale in comparison. Let alone all the departments with no heads that are being funded still.
And absolutely right, the previous governments were voted out by the people for the way they handled things. There should be no finger pointing going on after the fact. But that’s what politics have become today. Instead of for the people, its point fingers at the other parties, blasting them, to make their own parties look better. Politics are now sad because of this.
Harper needs to go. They all need to go and people that actually work for the people of the country, need to be put in place instead!
Put a mustache on Harper and he passes for Hifler. A dictator and not a Prime Minister. Harper has no intention of permitting the voice of Canadians to be heard. He wants to spend zillions of dollars to impress the G20 an G8 group….using our hard-earned money. With the weak economy, he would be well-advised to stop trying to impress the “gang” of leaders who will be coming to Toronto to see the Eighth wonder of the wrold ….an artificial lake where the media can drink themselves silly. Nothing will be accomplished except the taxes we pay will be used for such foolishness. But what can you expect from Stephen Harper…..he preens in the mirror each morning and says, “I love you and Canadians better love me as well”
Roslyn while I’m no huge fan of Mr. Harper I can 100% assure you he’s no Hitler, or Hifler. He’s simply a man with an agenda and if we Canadians do not stop that agenda we’re all going to have to live with it.
The fact is there are two summits back to back requiring extraordinary expenses. The security is necessary and I suspect that the government has taken the advice of security experts. The rest is “stimulus spending”. Do you think that none of this has any benefit for the country and the communities including Toronto? Think of the economic activity that is being generated.
Like the Olympics where critics cried it was a waste of money they turned out to be great.
The summits will show Canada in a positive light and yes the government has spent money for what they see as economic acitivity. For this they need to be criticized?
Funny Canada has been attending summits for many years. Now it is our turn to host and somehow they are a waste of time and money. Only the leftards in the media think it is a waste of money when their favourite party is not in power.
hollinm, granted other parties have thrown summits, etc, but NONE with this kind of price tag.
They should have held this somewhere where security would have been cheaper. I do agree for the temporary time, it will benefit many, it will also be a MAJOR drawback to many.
They should have found somewhere secluded to throw this summit. I mean 18 million that Pittsburgh paid compared to 1.1+ BILLION????? Come on, you can’t be so far right to actually think thats reasonable..
What I think would be hilarious in all of this, is if absolutely nothing happens. No riots, not one can of tear gas, the sound cannon’s not being used.. etc.. it would be the best form of protest, do nothing bad. And show up these idiots in government for wasting 1.2 billion on the taxpayers backs!
Where else could handle 4,000 journalists, plus thousands of attendees, and worker bee’s needing food and accomodations?
The billion from E Health could have provided a couple of cruise ships for this purpose.
Grimalot, dream on. Admin, next election will result in you having to live with it another four years. Hollinm, you speak the truth as Canadians always complasin about everything when it’s their turn. It’s all about too much money being spent by others and not them!
Take a breath people……boondoggle, smoondoggle……your idiot premier, Mcninty, is the boondoggler….Harper is the Pm of a country hosting an international conference….there are islamic facisits out there who want to blow everybody up….most of them in Ontario and Quebec…..so you must protect your invited guests…..if it wasnt for Islam, there would be no need to spend so much on security…..
Another thought….this is federal money being spent in Ontario….Adscam went into the greasy hands of Lieberal syncophants, much of it ending up in Florida where quebec lieberals like to hang out.
John we were trying to decide whether to allow your comment or not. We chose to allow it this one time to illustrate what we really don’t want to see on the Cornwall Free News. There are places for hate and rhetoric of this nature. This isn’t one of them. If you can’t make your points without attacking a group in this manner please resist the urge to post here.
You can’t paint any one group with one brush. It’s wrong. It’s undemocratic. It’s evil. You can’t blame this mess on Islam. That’s an insult to everyone. I blast Stephen Harper and his government, but don’t think for a second that I realize there are some very good people who happen to be Conservative.
We can never move forward as a society unless we learn to communicate and work together; even when we don’t always agree.
As long as those who follow the playbook written by Antonio Gramsci, wittingly or unwittingly, refuse to admit that the principles Lenin had are more brutal than the principles Pope John Paul had, we are going
to see more and more needless friction.
Stephen Harper has accomplished some things. For instance a lowering in the GST, which, by the way, makes things like internet access cheaper. However, when it comes to a refuting that all cultures are equal, he does as poor a job in countering it as a corpse can punch its way out of a wet paper bag.
hollinm,
You obviously don’t know what is happening in BC after the Olympics or in our economy as a country at the moment. Take a real look at our national debt and the interest we pay on it every day.
Look at the spending ON CREDIT figures in BC and the rest of Canada. Time to wake up and stop reading/watching placatory mainstream news. Do some research!
$1B is a ridiculous amount of money to spend for a meeting. Security; you are dreaming! Do you have any idea of how much wealth that is in regards to the average Canadian (Paying the bills) and what it could do to fund real, honest, non Mc-jobs, or heaven forbid, reduce the principal/interest we pay on our national debt.
I came to Canada and became a citizen because I thought we were an honest and ethical country with a non corrupt government and now I’m thinking about taking my business elsewhere. There are as many secrets in our government as in the US. Why do we choose to ignore talking about these subjects as a nation????
Our politicians are making Canada the country I love into America, a cesspool of deceit and lies. Sad!
Keep on dreaming Dude.
By the way, I’m a retired Fleet St. Journalist.
Namaste
Ha! We have another pastor tom here… another Muslim hater anyways..
Stan, Im not dreaming.. I know something is going to happen, but it would be nice for it not to and for it to be a showing of absolute waste of our money.
John, you said “this is federal money being spent in Ontario”, WRONG – this is OUR money, Canadian Citizens money. And it is being wasted. I’m sure there are PLENTY of other cities that could house all the reporters and such and at the same time, this could be a much more streamlined process. Toronto was a nasty choice for where to throw this. Yeah, lets bring gridlock to basically our most major city in the country, that was a really wise decision..
Hell, im sure they could have built a building that would house 4000 people specifically for that, and it wouldn’t even come close to the 1.1 to 2 billion price tag for all this.
Eric, awesome point about the cruise ships… only we should overload our subs and let them sink… make sure Harper is on first..
David, forget not that it was the PC’s that shafted us with the GST in the first place.. Harper is just lowering something that a portion of their old party already dropped on us. They said the same thing then, that costs would go down to match, etc.. yeah right.. no, they need this HST to pay for this over billion dollar waste…
In fact, I think Harper ran part of his campaign on reducing the GST, because he already knew full well that the HST was going to be applied instead. Rather convenient don’t ya think? Let alone the transparency we Don’t have, fixed elections we didn’t have.. etc.. The guy has broken most of his promises just as bad as McGuinty…
admin, Thank You!
To suggest that his money spent for the 1 billion dollar G8 boondoggle is goo thing because it can stimulate the economy is insane!!! The money could have been spent on useful things and thus achieve 2 objectives( example: provide funding to hospitals to buy needed eqquipement thus stimulating economy and reducing waiting lines for much needed medical tests). Instead it was overspent on a Summit which not needed , and just a backdrop for a photo opportunity for Harper to try to project an image of him as a statesman taking pictures with other world leaders…..
If this summit was necessary, they could have organized those meetings at the UN , on a military base or even a cruise ship and take the 1 billion dollars to help those struggling .
They are telling us these are hard economic times and that they have to cut social programs , yet they waste money on Summits!!! But what is wost is that many of the contracts were handed out without going to tenders, money was wasted on artificial lakes and other stupid things. Most important of all is that the summit could have been organized in a more frugal manner ( Example -on a military base , at UN or other ) saving millions of dollars.
Stick to facts, guys. Fact #1: The Harper government is digging Canada into the deepest deficit in Canadian history. Fact #2: Mr Harper came into power promising accountability and transparency; once in power he has turned himself into the most secretive, unaccountable, and anti-democratic prime minister in Canadian history. He rules by fear and he doesn’t care. Instead of a black toothbrush moustache and black hair slicked down with a right-side part, he wears an impeccable nest of graying hair that looks, in the words of the Globe and Mail TV critic, as if it is kept in the fridge overnight. That’s the most noticeable difference between Mr. Harper and the man with the toothbrush moustache. The members of Mr Harper’s party and Canadians who vote for him are under a spell, much as most of Germany was in the 1930s. And we have to break the spell, if we want to keep Canada as a country of decency and fairness.
Ok Grimalot, let me explain to you how Harpernomics works, First i help cause an economic crisis by spending billions on an economic action plan that is mostly spent on doorknob replacements for government buildings with already new doorknobs, because otherwise id be wasting it on like.. food for the hungry, or subsidizing a reduction of hte national debt which also serves me no purpose. Then i suspend parliament to save my a$$ from being overrun by smarter politicians that see what a scam im running.. then i order troops to torture Afghan detainees which directly violate the geneva convention and pretend im building school (by which locals refer to as colonization and western schools but we pretend its “development” now.. then when people say HEY that is against the geneva convention!!!! i go.. POOOF suspend parliment again NANI NANI BOO BOO you cant catch me.. then i come back.. and break open the piggy bank and spend what little we do have on a fake lake and overpriced security when NO country EVER has spent more then 300 million on a meeting.. .. for the lonely 200 reporters we will allow in the standard for reference is only 50 million if you do your research… at at 2 billion thats 10k per reporter to get a good feeling about canada, although it would have been cheaper to just knock them out.. fly them to the bahamas, except i cant now because its all plugged up with oil… but grimalot, as long as people keep forgetting all teh awful stuff ive done i can keep doing it again and again…
Denis – Agreed!
Harpernomics – HAHAHAHA, awesome! 😀
PJR – Haven’t missed any of the facts and I also keep outlining those facts. But agreed with all you say.
Only a die hard reformer like hollinm would succumb to the stupidit yof the G8/20 boondoggle. He says that it’s money going into the economy. If so what is the legacy of this money? 1000’s of security people on overtoime and a bunch of fences that will be torn down. Oh and there is the remote toilets 20 or so KMS from the Huntsville site.
Mervin, you are way too blind to the ignorance and arrogance of this Harper culture of deceit and lies.
G’bye Steve – we sure won’t miss ya!
I join in with those regards Mic Wills!
Why is it that all the experts here, who know what to do with the money and how to run the country, etc,,etc., are not in a position to do so? If you are so smart then why aren’t you running the show? Don’t tell me you are with your votes because it’s not so! They were voted in and they run the show!
Immediately after reading the budget, preaching restraint to the peasants, Jim Flaherty jumped on a private plane costing $18,000.00, (Air Canada price, $850.00). Then King Stephen increased the PMO budget by $250,000.00 per week. This funding could open few beds at CCH.
Seems to me a Mr. Chretien said ” the GST, gone” how did that turn out?
Eric, how the GST turned out was the fact the Libs found the country to be dead broke after Lyin’ Brian got through with his spendthrift ways. We had a defict of over $40BB which would be an equivalent of around $100BB in todays money and it got paid off by good Liberal management under Chretien.
Eric: at that time the Liberal Party “Red Book” platform that they ran on said that they would replace or abolish the GST. Sheila Copps even said she would resign if they didn’t replace or abolish it. Unfortunately they saw how much money the GST generated and Chretien & Co. decided to keep it after all. Some time later Sheila Copps saw that she would be re-elected easily in a bye election and so she resigned her Liberal seat. Of course she was immediately re-elected. Thats the way the Liberals ran their thing. They were always “entitled” to their entitlements and they stole us silly!
Stephen Harper will win a third government precisely because Canadians will look at the alternative – idiots calling Harper, a leader of a minority government, a “dictator” and even worse, “Hitler”. However bad he is he cannot possibly match the stupidity of his critics. Hitler. Really. That’s criminal libel, not to mention evidence of serious mental illness.
And you think we’re sane?
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are Conservatives” (John Stuart Mill, author of “On Liberty”, 1806-1873) In other words, people who are either unwilling or unable to think. How would Mill have characterized neo-Conservatives and the people who vote for them?
Ok, just to make Harper Hat Trick happy, Roslyn, make sure to add that magical “I think that..” or “It is my opinion that..” before you say anything about Harper and then it becomes freedom of speech, or your personal freedom of expression. Then it removes any “criminal libel” from your statement. However, I see it is your opinion as I see Harper as more of a dictator as well then working democratically.
For Harper Hat Trick, heres a bunch of links for you to research, since I don’t have the time to want to bother listing to you all the crap that Harper has pulled, which leads to more evidence that he is acting exactly like a dictator, not currently at the Hitler level, that I agree with you on, but he’s definitely “In my opinion” heading on that track:
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/740829
with the following information contained within the above listing:
Where are those pundits when we really need them? Stephen Harper is centralizing power in the PMO on an unprecedented scale; defying Parliament (by refusing to comply with a Commons vote demanding the files on Afghan prisoner abuse); derailing public inquiries (by a parliamentary committee and the Military Police Complaints Commission); muzzling/firing civil servants; demonizing critics; and dragging the military into the line of partisan political fire.
The extent of Harper’s misuse of power becomes clearer when you realize that the Conservatives are replicating some of the worst practices of the Republicans under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney:
Consolidating executive power; eviscerating the legislative branch; operating under extreme secrecy (by keeping an iron grip on information, through endless court challenges and censoring/redacting documents); riding the coattails of the military and questioning the patriotism of political opponents; and forcing out public servants who refused to fall in line.
Count the heads that have rolled in Ottawa:
Peter Tinsley, chair of the military police commission, who initiated the Afghan prison abuse probe – refused a second term.
Paul Kennedy, chair of the Complaints Commission for the RCMP, who criticized the use of Tasers – refused a second term.
Linda Keen, nuclear watchdog, who insisted on safety at Chalk River – fired.
Kevin Page, parliamentary budget watchdog, who rattled the Tories with several revelations – rendered ineffective with a cut of $1 million from his $2.8 million budget.
Marc Mayrand, chief electoral officer, who probed Tory election spending – publicly attacked.
Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who dared criticize both the U.S. and Israel – refused support for a second term and publicly rebuked.
Jean-Guy Fleury, chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board, who opposed the Tory politicization of appointments to the tribunal – frustrated into quitting.
Similarly, groups that won’t toe the Tory line are being penalized.
And don’t forget Colvin.
And this link is really good as well:
http://www.dangrice.com/node/237
Have a read up Harper Hat Trick, but if you cannot see what is going on you are “in my opinion” letting the wool get pulled over your eyes!
Excellent post, Grimalot! The evidence is in and mounting.
Thanks PJR. 🙂 Fortunately for me, it took less than a year to see right through Harper and his little lapdogs.. Unfortunately for some others, they’ve got their head in the fog…