Harper's Record, Recorded
Two months past the election, I cannot express how relieved I am that we avoided another Harper majority.
I am not a huge fan of Trudeau's majority, but his approach to governing highlights just how authoritarian the previous federal government had become. Harper is a tactical genius, and unlike others I think he was largely a pragmatic centralist. But he was also more authoritarian and divisive than any other ruling government I can remember, and his tactics were toxic to our democracy. I will not forgive this government for muzzling scientists, for cancelling the census, for defanging Elections Canada, for the robocall shenanigans, or for its lust for holding on to power at any expense.
In four years people will be calling for Trudeau's head, and we will all have forgotten just how bad things were under Harper. (Who among us remembers the legacy of George W. Bush?) It is important that we do not forget.
Fortunately, people had been paying attention, and during the election campaign there were many reports and resources documenting Harper's legacy. I will document some of the more interesting ones here. Some of them will disappear from the Internet over the next few years, but I have archived them on my hard drive and will make them available to interested parties. (Unfortunately many of the secondary links within the articles will go stale, and I am not archiving those. Let's hope the Wayback Machine comes to the rescue.)
I am also interested in other tracking reports -- in particular those that cover ground not already included in these reports.
Reports
- http://voices-voix.ca/en/document/dismantling-democracy-stifling-debate-and-dissent-canada
- Dismantling Democracy report by Voices-Voix. Makes lots of allegations about specific people who were targeted by the government. I do not consider this document definitive (a lot of footnotes refer back to the organization's own website, for example) but this provides a good set of starting points for further confirmation.
- http://24percentmajority.blogspot.ca/2015/10/2011-2015-harper-government-wrap-up.html
- Opinionated (and somewhat profane) indictment of the government's record from 2011-2015. He breaks down his accusations by topic, in contrast to some of the chronological summaries elsewhere.
- http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment/
- Enormous chronology of (alleged) War on Science by the conservative government. There is a related article that goes into more detail about specific points: http://www.academicmatters.ca/2013/05/harpers-attack-on-science-no-science-no-evidence-no-truth-no-democracy/
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/robocall-ridings : A list of 57 ridings that reported receiving robocalls. This is important: The Elections Canada investigation focused on Guelph because there was not a sufficient density of complaints from other ridings. But there were reports of these robocalls from all over, further undermining the Conservative claim that Michael Sona (or the Guelph riding association) was acting on its own.
Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZcpNJxB4Mk : "Watch 13 Conservative MPs drone on like robots reading the same script" by Press Progress. I could have done without the Picard and Johnny-5 interludes, but this clip illustrates the degree to which MPs were compelled to conform to their talking points. Features former Kitchener Centre MP Stephen Woodworth.
Articles
- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/15/stephen-harper-master-manipulator
- A fairly comprehensive summary of claims against Harper in particular and some of the tactics he used to stay in power.
http://www.thestar.com/news/federal-election/2015/08/26/tory-candidates-told-to-avoid-debates-media-during-campaign.html: One reprehensible practice of the Conservatives was that their candidates kept skipping all-candidates meetings. This is confirmed evidence (albeit from an unnamed source) that skipping debates was indeed an official Conservative strategy.