Prime Minister Stephen Harper must be a bully who has never grown up. He seems to be a misanthrope: a person who dislikes other humans. He shows narcissistic tendencies with his vanity over that hairpiece that is always so perfectly in place. He has always been stuffy, vain and demanding of power. His hairdresser is always on hand to fix his hair, make-up or take the lint off his suit. He has turned on all his mentors and has no close friends.
But it is the bully that is most dangerous to Canadians. You would accept the vanities and narcissism if the man worked for you. What you cannot accept is his using you. And he has used Canadians unmercifully from back when he wrested the Reform Party from Preston Manning and cajoled Peter MacKay to bring the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada into the fold. With that, his march on Ottawa was in progress.
Harper bullies his staff and their only outlet is to bully the news media, the civil servants and the lesser acolytes of the Conservative Party. By micro-managing the government from the Prime Minister’s Office, he has created a reign of terror throughout the Ottawa-based government. He browbeats the Governor General to do his bidding. He prorogues government at his whims. He obfuscates in the Parliament of Canada. His underlings create confused and mixed omnibus bills to keep the laws from those who might scoff at them. He fights with Supreme Court judges instead of working with them. He runs foreign affairs as a personal fiefdom picking his own travels for his extravagant tourism while sullying Canada’s world-wide reputation.
Most serious in foreign affairs are attempts to bully President Obama of the United States. Harper moves with the extremist Republicans challenging the Democratic President. He tries to work around Obama to get the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline built. Obama is expected to deny this effort soon because the only purpose of the pipeline is to ship Alberta tar sands bitumen around the world. Harper has blocked all efforts in Canada to control this tar sands pollution. He seems to want the most polluting synthetic oil in the world as his legacy.
Harpers legacy will also be his attempts to bully his political opponents. His recent election act was passed to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Canadians who might not want to vote for his lacklustre candidates.
And like any bully, he can dish out the advertising slurs on others but cannot take it himself. Just one advantage he sees in an early election call for the October 19 election is that the union advertising against him will be stopped once the writ comes down.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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