Patronage in the name of democracy

Stephen Harper is a hypocrite. If a person says something is wrong and then does that very thing, he or she is a hypocrite.

Two weeks ago I, Mr. Cody Jack, wrote an article titled “Patronage in the name of Democracy”, a title I stand by. In the article, I described how the Right Honourable Prime Minister recently made new appointments to a variety of positions to a variety of governmental bodies, from the civil service to the senate.  At least 20 of the Civil Service/ Crown Corporation positions went to past/present Conservative Party members, supporters or promoters. The nine senators who were appointed by Mr. Harper were also past/present party supporters.

This is a practice Stephen Harper has been against in the past. He disapproved openly in the House of Commons with the Liberal patronage while he was the leader of the opposition, something I am sure he was proud of at the time.
Thus, his recent actions can be fairly deemed hypocritical.

Last week, Mr. Dave Larrett objected to some of the points I made about the Conservative track record on various issues and my interpretation of the Senate appointments. I will now address the points made by Mr. Larrett.
Mr. Larrett felt that I was incorrect in my date of when a vote had occurred. I was referring to the non-confidence vote that should have occurred in December had Parliament not been prorogued by the Governor General (GG) at the request of the Prime Minister. To prorogue Parliament means to close Parliament for a period of time, and only the GG has the power to do so.

His interpretation of the December’s events was grossly misinformed. Whether I agree with those events is irrelevant; they were justified and democratic according the Canadian Parliamentary Tradition. The GG would have had two options in the event of a non-confidence vote: to dissolve Parliament and call an election, or to dissolve Parliament and ask the Leader of the Opposition to form a Government with the confidence of the other parties.
Either of these options is part of our parliamentary tradition and the latter would not be a “coup” as Mr. Larrett claims.

It is true, as Mr. Larrett points out, that the Conservatives technically did win the October federal election. They won 143 seats in the House of Commons. However, the opposition parties won a combined 165 seats. This, in Canadian Parliamentary Tradition, results in a Minority Government. The Conservatives hold less than 50 per cent of the seats in parliament and, democratically speaking, do not represent “the will of the people”. If they did, they would have formed a Majority Government and hold over 50 per cent of the seats.

Let us now look at the economy, this being the one thing that Mr. Larrett felt I had incorrectly dubbed as a “fumble”.  It is true that StatsCan did report that, at the end of June, our GDP was at 0.1 per cent, technically signalling an end to the recession.  This however was not due to any actions by the Harper Government, whose “Economic Action Plan” is only now taking effect.  We were praised by other G8 countries, the World Bank and the IMF for having a sturdy, well regulated banking system, which Harper had very little to do with.

When I referred to him fumbling the economy, I was referring to his lack of action in areas that matter.  Jim Flaherty, Federal Finance Minister, announced that unemployment would continue to rise. There might have been 27 000 jobs created, but sadly most of these were part-time jobs. These jobs are mainly in the customer service and wholesale industries, and do not make up for the manufacturing jobs lost since the beginning of the recession.

Jobs like these pay less than their manufacturing counterparts.  It is nice to offer re-education programs for those workers who are newly unemployed, but only if new jobs requiring education are created. No emphasis has been put on saving our manufacturing industry, no advanced planning of a new direction for the economy, and no real help for students.

I give praise where it is due, and Mr. Harper is not deserving.

Lastly, the Senate. I am glad that Mr. Larrett acknowledges that Mr. Harper has put forward, in the past and present, reforms to make Senators elected officials. This is a point I made as well.  Harper wants elected officials in the Senate, so why not put them there? Why not put nine of his elected MPs into Senate positions? This is what I was referring to when I mentioned “an elected individual”. If he did appoint an MP, there would be an opening in that MP’s seat and a byelection would have to be called in order to replace that MP.

I was pointing out that this would be a way for Mr. Harper to stick to his ideals, instead of being a hypocrite and appointing nine patrons of his own party.  My mention of the NDP in reference to Mr. Trudeau and Mr. King was that they had appointed NDP Senators. It was in relation to having senators who represent the “will of the people”.  That way the Senate would look similar to the House of Commons or recent polls.

It was said by Mr. Larrett that uninformed articles do a “disservice to the public” and that the writers of such articles should reconsider the information they’ve based their articles on. In this spirit, I feel I have served the public well and hope they have learned something from my writing.