The Question of His Question

The [neo]Conservative Party is at it again. Many people have seen the recent TV adds directly attacking the Liberal Party on questionable grounds. They are disturbingly familiar to the current plethora of American political smear and propaganda campaigns, complete with spinning cut-out heads of Liberal Party leader Stephan Dion. This time however, the Tory’s have changed their approach slightly. Instead of blatantly attacking other political parties as a hole, Harper has singled out one member of the Liberal Party, and it isn’t a co-incidence that he happens to wear a turban.

In a story carried by the Vancouver Sun, Harper’s government attempted to link the Liberal Party’s stance on the extension of the current anti-terrorism laws with that party’s apparent objective of protecting the father in-law of Ontario MP Navdeep Singh Bains from questioning related to the Air India bombing. If the anti-terrorism laws [which are about to expire next week] were extended, the RCMP would have the authority to force Bains’ father in-law to testify against his will. By making it seem like the Liberals are protecting a possible terrorist, Harper’s government is attempting to brand the Liberals as ‘soft on terrorism’. The fact that MP Bains happens to look like what the media have labelled as a ‘typical terrorist’ makes it a whole lot easier.

In question period today, MP Navdeep Singh Bains stood up and politely asked Prime Minister Harper to at least justify the slandering remarks he made in the Sun article, and, should that not be possible [which it very clearly is not], would the Right Honourable Steven Harper please retract the offending comments. Harper dodged the question by simply replying "I'm not sure precisely what remarks he's referring to". MP Bains tried again, just as politely, amidst an uproar of anger from both sides of the floor. Again, Harper dodged the question. In the end, MP Bains was forced to resign himself to never hearing the apology he quite probably deserves, and Harper launched directly into his by now very rehearsed tirade about “protecting innocent Canadians” and “providing justice” for the 300+ Canadians who were killed in what was the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. It was all very patriotic. I mean, its hard not to be moved to sympathize with the families of all those victims. But one point was quite obviously left out.

To date, these anti-terrorism laws have done nothing effective in preventing terrorism in our country. Oh, but you say there were all those terrorists arrested in Toronto in the summer? Not a single clause from the ant-terrorism amendments were used to make those arrests because they simply were not needed The only accomplishment that the Harper government can claim is that these laws were directly responsible for the deportation of numerous Canadian citizens, against their charter granted rights, with no trial, evidence or even charges for a crime. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sum total accomplishments of these laws. If [and can not emphasize the hypotheticalness of this next sentence] MP Navdeep Bains’ father in-law does know anything about the Air India bombing, and aside from the fact that as a rational, compassionate human being he would most likely come forward on his own, these laws are still not needed. There are entire law school courses dedicated to teaching would-be lawyers how to get testimony from a witness through entirely constitutional means [which these laws are not]. Apart from the US and Canada, no other G8 country has enacted laws that are contrary to its charter of rights, constitution or whatever document it uses as its stamp of democracy. They are simply not needed. The only reason they were enacted in the first place was because the country, indeed the entire world, was in shock of the 9/11 attacks. It was a knee jerk reaction, just as the carpet-bombing of nearly an entire country by the US was a knee jerk reaction. It was also just as useless. The problem now is that the government and law enforcement agencies have grown to like these new laws because it makes their jobs easier…but at the expense of the Canadian citizens rights. The Liberals [who enacted the laws back in 2001] have realized their mistake and are trying to fix things. Its just a shame that that would upset the US government…and that’s the one thing Harper fears most of all.

As for Harper, his shameful smear-tactics, and his obvious plagiarizing of Bush’s re-election strategy of ‘scare them into submission’, I sincerely hope that the public is not as dim witted as this scheme requires.