Originally written on May 4, 2011.
Two days ago, 40% of Canadians who cast a ballot carried Stephen Harper and his Conservatives to a majority government. The Liberal Party was humiliated, the Bloc Quebecois was destroyed, the Green Party was legitimized, and the NDP were elevated to new heights.
But the Conservatives still gained a majority. Over the next four years, they will have the power to act with impunity, implementing whatever policies they want without any real opposition. The same master/slave relationship between corporations and the government that has been so prominent in American political spheres have now been firmly certified in our once proud nation. Private-interest groups and lobbyists posing as community representatives have brainwashed our fellow citizens into buying into this Ponzi scheme; this most elaborate of scams.
What can we expect of the newly minted Conservative majority? If you believe what Stephen Harper detailed in his victory speech, we can expect real collaboration between the Conservatives and the other major political parties, and a continuation of the embattled public health care system each of us holds so dear.
Don't be fooled. Look beneath the sheep's clothing to find the wolf in hiding. Harper and his Conservatives have been waiting for this opportunity for a very long time. They will no longer have to contend with a somewhat capable opposition that can sweep their draconian policies off the table through force of numbers. Now, the Conservatives have full reign to implement the entire system of free-market policies that Harper has so vehemently advocated for throughout his career.
Corporations will be given a blank cheque to do as they please after having their corporate income taxes slashed and burned. Although these cuts don't mandate the spending of these tax savings, the Conservatives ardently believe that corporations will nicely invest them back into the economy, lowering prices and creating jobs. The ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest, coupled with the realization that these tax cuts don't create meaningful jobs at all, will have a sobering effect on more and more Canadians waking up without heat in the dead of winter.
Our skies will blacken with soot and smog as manufacturing giants are allowed to freewheel their smokestacks without limit. Temperatures will rise as the tar sands are pounded by drills, releasing ozone-depleting methane into our atmosphere. Canada will win Fossil of the Year annually for the next four years, and we'll no longer be looked at with wide-eyed admiration while backpacking the capitals of the world.
Bomber jets will patrol Arctic skies to the tune of billions of our hard-earned dollars, only to be tasked to rain death on whatever fledgling nation America has decided to invade next. If the Russians ever invade our north, they will wonder why they are dogfighting against machines clearly armed to drop bombs on unarmed civilians and not to engage in aerial combat. Our military will be injected with steroids to fatten the pockets of the military-industrial complex, campaigning under the guise of geopolitical strongmanship to fulfill the wet dreams of our young men who have grown up playing video games where the blowing away of anyone sporting a different accent than our own is the coolest fad.
To finance our imitation of big brother across the developing world and the enriching of Bay Street tycoons, the Conservatives will cut, cut, and cut social programs until we're left with a patchwork of empty promises and smouldering husks of once envied organizations like Kairos and Planned Parenthood. We will all wonder why we are less happy, engaged, and healthy while Stephen Harper leer at us from his media strongholds on corporate tv.
As a nation, we once held ourselves superior to the Americans in the way we went about governing ourselves. We ensured we were all healthy through a public health care system. We ensured our elderly had the means to survive their twilight years after long service to their fellow citizens. We ensured that cruel conflicts across the world were tempered by our firm yet gentle hands. We ensured that the downtrodden people of the world had a shining beacon of hope in the warm folds of the red maple leaf and our immigration system. We ensured that the disenfranchised, the fringe, the minority, was to be understood and embraced, not ridiculed on the basis of gender or their youthful mistakes.
How do we compare now, after electing the most vile politician this country has ever seen? The next cabinet will surely reflect the sentiments of its leader. Having a different opinion is punishable by termination in this administration. How then does Mr. Harper expect us to believe his proffers to collaborate with the NDP or the Liberals, the Bloc or the Greens?
Friends, we need to take back this country. You must recognize within you, as I do, the drive to create a better Canada for all Canadians. We must plant the seeds of doubt about this Conservative majority that will culminate in their defeat during the next federal election. Once these seeds take root, they will be hard to remove.
With that in mind, I urge all of you, for the next four years, to post at least one article a day exposing the Conservatives, or the Right-Wing Libertarian movement in general, as the fraudsters that they are. There are plenty of independent sources out there to feed this initiative.
If each of us posts at least one article every day highlighting the injustices committed by the hard-right, we can plant seeds of doubt across Facebook, across generational, gender, and social divides. Imagine two, three, five, seven stories popping up on our friends' News Feeds on Harper's latest attack on our civil rights or our pensions? If you can't find anything newsworthy, simply repost another friend's articles or recycle one of your older ones. Nothing in Harper's attack on Canada becomes dated. Feel free to repost mine. I guarantee at least one new article from my end every day.
I hope you'll all join me in taking back our Canada. Let's recreate the true north, strong and free.
With a photo of Parliament Hill by dugspr.
The site for the Toronto local of The Media Co-op has been archived and will no longer be updated. Please visit the main Media Co-op website to learn more about the organization.