Ever since Steven Harper was elected to lead Canadian government in February 2006, his government has been plagued with scandal, misbehaviour, and down right cover-ups. The scandal in the Senate is just the latest and I will get to that last.
From his very first minority government there has been a series of misbehaviour by members of the successive Harper governments. Some of them have been as simple as Bev Oda charging tax payers for a 12.00 glass of orange juice (although to be fair she did have to change hotels because she smokes and she needed to be booked into a smoking a hotel), to much more serious issues. Members of Harper's cabinet have been seen throwing temper tantrums at airports, and have been caught lying to Parliament.
Not only have members of the Conservative Party been caught lying to Parliament, the Conservative Party has been found in Contempt of Parliament by the Speaker of the House. That is something that almost never happens.
Other issues that have arisen is that the Prime Minister has been drawing more control into the PMO and stripping certain aspects of Parliamentary Privilege from members of the opposition. He regularly denies access to documents to the opposition parties that they should have as part of their parliamentary privilege. One of those documents was as follows: Bev Oda (a former Harper minster), hand changed an official document, and then lied about it to the house. First she denied she changed the document, and then she said she did.
Prime Minister Harper has used the proroguation process whenever he feels threatened. He has even used it to by-pass a confidence vote. This completely circumvents the democratic process that exists in our Canadian democracy,
During the 2010 election, robo-calls were used to send voters to incorrect polling stations by the Conservative Party. This particular tactic actually suppressed some people's right to vote, although Elections Canada did not find that the effect was great enough to warrant any action.
After the 2010 election, one of the first things that the Conservatives did was to scrap the Long Gun Registry. He did this to appease his base (approximately 40% of Canadians). Most Canadians wanted to keep the registry, including many Chief's of Police. Quebec wanted to keep their data to create their own registry, but the Harper government fought them at every turn, showing his complete disregard for the Province of Quebec.
Prime Minister Harper also seems to have an issue with putting bills before the House of Commons. Instead of debating real legislation, he attaches many important issues to his budget bills, creating omnibus budget bills and then rams them through the House. Many of the items in these budge bills don't belong there and should be up for separate debate. Prime Minister Harper is not up for a real debate, so he uses the back door.
Recently, Peter Penashue lost his seat in Labrador in a by-election after it was discovered that he had accepted illegal campaign funds in the 2010 election.
Dean Del Mastro quit the Conservative Party in September after it was discovered he filed a false election document during the 2008 election.
CETA, the Prime Minister's latest achievement is not exactly what he touts it to be. It is not a free trade agreement with Europe. It is a FREE-er trade agreement. One of the details in this agreement is that the Europeans get a better discount on tariffs and duties than Canadians do. I don't know how that is helpful to Canadians, but it is not what Prime Minister Harper is claiming it to be.
... to be continued in the next post on the Senate Scandal
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