Harper 2.0: abortion, corporatism, Israel, free speech, secrecy & God

Contributor: "Ron"

If you thought things were bad under a Harper Minority, you haven’t seen nuthin’ yet !

Expected changes to Canadian landscape under the Harper majority:

1) elimination of government vote subsidy to political parties (spells certain death for Liberal Party of Canada)

2) elimination of gun registry

3) confirmation of $35 billion contract for F-35 fighter jets

4) elimination of funding for planned parenthood

5) curtailment of all parliamentary inquiries into Afghan prisoner abuse, the Soudas-Accurso scandal and G-20 police brutality

6) elimination of CIDA funding for all NGO’s which promote human rights and women’s reproductive rights

7) more prisons, harsher sentencing

8) Harper majority control of CRTC will require all cable carriers provide Peladeau’s SUN TV NEWS as part of core offering

9) To balance budget saddled by increased military and prison spending, social programs will be cut primarily through cutting transfers to provinces for health care. The resulting deterioration in public medical care will give rise to a (corporate media promoted) call for more access to private medicine (coupled with private insurance lobbying for modification of single payer)

10) A move to push provinces to include creationism on equal footing to evolution in public school education

11) Elimination of legal access to abortion

12) Harper majority control of all government committees will result in total secrecy concerning government programs and an erosion and eventual termination of access to information program

13) Increased surveillance of dissident groups within Canadian society

14) Elimination of funding for all feminist groups

15) Elimination all funding for global warming scientific research

16) Elimination of all funding for Arab and Muslim community groups

17) Introduction of federal laws to criminalize criticism of Israel and the use of the term “Israeli Apartheid”

18) Crackdown on student groups and university programs which promote independent thinking and socialist politics

19) Elimination of gay marriage and of all funding for gay events

20) Further erosion of Indigenous rights with resulting further corporate theft of resources from native land

21) Further trade deals with repressive regimes

22) Canadian participation in any and all US military adventures abroad

23) Privatization of CBC

24) Increased imposition of “temporary laws” ala G-20 to restrict and criminalize public protest

25) Increased government demonization of groups and individuals who oppose government positions

And the above is just for starters. The fact is that Canada outside of Quebec is an extreme far-right wing country. As a consequence, Canada will get the religious right, misogynist, imperialist, pro-war far-right government it deserves.

The only silver lining to this is that Canada’s lurch to Harper’s neo-Duplessis Right may push left wing Quebec to separate from a nation with which it has nothing in common – and this will be done not only for linguistic and nationalistic reasons, but for more broad based political, social, economic, cultural, environmental, ideological and rights reasons as well.