Photo courtesy of the Huffington Post Canada. URL http://i.huffpost.com/gen/375296/thumbs/r-HARPER-large570.jpg
There are many things that the conservative Harper government is currently doing that get on my nerves. The introduction of the word Royal ahead of the term Canadian Forces, now known as the Royal Canadian Forces, was a bit of a stretch, but hey, we can let this one slide as just a waste of money. The replacing of Quebec artist Alfred Pellan’s modern artwork with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd in the lobby of the Department of Foreign Affairs was a slap in the face of course, more so for Quebeccers than English speaking Canadians. The attempt to introduce a private member’s bill to make impeding someone to fly the Canadian Flag illegal, a non-problem in Canadian society but nonetheless a problem in the conservative mind, was a waste of our time and resources as a country. And finally a plump 28 million in spending for Canada’s bicentennial and remembrance of the war of 1812, is in my opinion kind of OK. After all the war of 1812 is part of our heritage, regardless whose side we were fighting on.
All of these patriotic initiative seem to just take into account our British heritage, leaving out our French and multicultural history. But to tell you the truth, I think Harper is just doing what he’s doing for two most important reasons:
First, I think he’s tired of speaking French in the House of Commons, constantly switching back and forth between English and our other official language, in my opinion, leaves Harper kind of wanting to cut what he thinks is the dead weight of those pansies in Quebec. Oh long have Albertans loathed the attention the Liberals gave Quebec, and after feeling left out for so long, now they are finally taking their revenge.
Second, Harper seems to despise not just individual liberals themselves, but everything liberalism stands for, including but not limited to liberal achievements in Canada. If he could wave a magic wand and make it all go away like a bad dream, he would do it in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately for him, he cannot wash away all of these things from our history books all at once, instead, what he is hoping to achieve is a measured increase in the conservative blood cell level in our systems. In other words, make us more conservative in such a way that he hopes we won’t notice until it’s too late. Unyielding patriotism, unflinching allegiance to a near dead monarch and an old and decrepit institution, aggressive military initiatives over peacekeeping, loathing of things deviating from moralistic and societal norms, loathing of others because they are different and ass kissing are conservative traits after all.
It is in my opinion that conservatism of the Tea Party flavor, the Canadian Harper version being a bit more decaffeinated of course, is a dying kind of conservatism simply because it’s self destructive in nature. As time advances, old societal norms are inevitably superseded and forgotten and any attempt at reviving them is usually met with failure.
Thus the two reasons I mentioned above I think are accurate descriptors of why Harper and his conservatives are doing what they’re doing. This loathing of liberalism is a sentiment shared by most of Harper’s conservative caucus, including the female ministers.
Unfortunately, we cannot change how Mr. Harper feels about Canada and what he thinks is right for our country, but neither can he do the same thing to us. So lets not let him solely set the tone for how Canada should be and what it should represent on the world stage anymore.
For more on this story check out this article in the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/10/12/canada-bicentennial-tories_n_1007877.html and this older article in the Globe and Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-embassies-have-till-sept-15-to-hang-the-queens-portrait/article2156792/