By Arthur Weinreb
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been taking a lot of heat in recent days; something that is not unusual for a prime minister or any politician in government. The opposition is having a fun time crying "gotcha" over broken or perceived broken promises.
One of Harper's main five promises during the last election campaign was to reduce hospital wait times. Recently the prime minister announced that wait time guarantees have been agreed upon by the federal government and the provinces and territories and implementation of these guaranteed wait times will begin by 2010. But according to these agreements, only one of a number of areas that have been determined to be medical priorities has to be met in each area of Canada. That is not what we thought when Harper promised that he would reduce medical wait times. If you happen to have a priority condition that isn't the choice for wait time reductions, you won't be any better off.
Promise made; promise broken.
Stephen Harper had also promised that provincial non-renewable natural resources would be excluded from the calculation of equalization payments to the have-not provinces. Instead of completely omitting these resources, a complicated formula for equalization payments appeared in the federal budget that was handed down on March 19, leaving room for disagreement between the feds and some of the provinces. While Harper maintains that he kept this promise, Danny Williams, Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert strongly disagree. Williams, the fiery PC premier has vowed to work to defeat the Harper government and to wipe out Tory members from Newfoundland and Labrador.
In other words, Harper and his ever aging "new government" are taking a lot of flak for breaking their promises. He's become like every other political leader – getting dumped on for breaking promises. When Paul (this is my top priority) Martin was the prime minister, he promised everything and delivered nothing other than same sex marriage and a bunch of anti-American tirades. And then there's Dalton McGuinty, the premier of Ontario; a province where it is doubtful its students can count high enough to determine the number of promises that he has broken. And Quebec now has its first minority government in over 100 years because Premier Jean Charest didn't do what he promised he would do.
So if all the opposition can do is criticize Stephen Harper for partaking in the age old political tradition of breaking promises, he must be doing something right. Whatever happened to Scary Stephen or as he is now known, Scary Steve? Remember him? It was said that if Canadians were ever dumb enough to elect him to form a government, the country as we know it would disappear. Canada would become a xenophobic, homophobic, racist wasteland that would rival Zimbabwe as a good place to live. But it's now been over a year since the Conservatives have been in power and none of that has happened. The air is still the same; the trains are still running (okay so CN's back on strike but you get the idea), the country's gays and lesbians have yet to see the insides of a concentration camp, and unfortunately, taxes are still way too high. So much for all that silly Liberal Party rhetoric.
The anti-Harper forces will argue that Scary Steve is just waiting until he gets a majority before jailing women who seek out abortions and imposing his right wing neo con beliefs on the helpless citizenry. That of course won't happen. If and when the Tories obtain a majority they will keep on the same course in order to get a second majority. As the saying goes, power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely and loss of power corrupts even more. The threat of losing power will keep the Conservatives from moving too far to the right.
The opposition is going to have to face the fact that Steve is about as scary as he's ever going to get. Stephen Harper has become mainstream. If he wasn't, there would be far better things to get him on than breaking some election promises.
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