Give Ben Harper’s old man his due: he got his son a better first job in Alberta than the elder Mr. Harper’s pop got him. Readers with functioning short-term memories will recall that not so long ago much was made of the fact Stephen Harper’s father got the former Conservative
Continue readingTag: National Citizens Coalition
Alberta Politics: Canadian market-fundamentalist right looks to ‘Super PACs’ like so-called Alberta Prosperity Fund to grab back power
PHOTOS: ‘Super PACs’ have access to corporate vaults, and very little control or oversight of what they do with the money they’re given. Below: Alberta Prosperity Fund Director Barry McNamar, APF Advisory Council members Dave Rutherford and Camer…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fate of Canadian Wheat Board a disturbing harbinger for Canada’s dairy, poultry and egg farmers
PHOTOS: Tractors in the streets of Ottawa on Tuesday, their drivers protesting the Harper Conservatives’ barely concealed plans to destroy the supply-management agricultural sector. (Grabbed from @amkfoote on Twitter.) Below: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and CCPA economist Bruce Campbell. GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alberta With the farmer-owned Canadian
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Canada’s anti-union lobby is at the heart of the deceptive campaign for more Temporary Foreign Workers – why’s that, d’ya think?
Canadians need not apply? Actual Canadian store displays may not appear exactly as illustrated. But the intent of the AstroTurf TFW lobby is to bust unions and weaken the bargaining power of Canadian workers. Below: Employment Minister and former Canadian Taxpayers Federation operative Jason Kenney; former Canadian Federation of Independent
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Alberta’s 13 most under-reported political news stories of 2013
Another aircraft takes off from Fort McMurray International Aerodrome loaded with CO2 captured from Alberta’s Athabasca bitumen sands. The gas will be stored in the basements of Russian buildings as part of a deal worked out through the province’s $2-billion “carbon capture” program. Actual Alberta carbon capture boondoggles may not
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Polishing a … tarnished reputation: the ‘National Newspaper’ as Stephen Harper’s pathetic enabler
Your blogger with Rev. Bill Phipps, former United Church of Canada moderator and, in 2002, the NDP’s challenger to Stephen Harper. Below: Harper doubters Andrew Coyne and Tim Harper. “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.” – Junius, published
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Newsflash: Canadian PM’s American Idol supports Stephane Dion-esque carbon tax shift
Note: for non-Canadian readers (or, indeed for Canadian readers who don’t follow politics) Stephane Dion was the milquetoast who led the Liberal Party of Canada to its then-worst-ever federal election result in 2008. He ran on a campaign of a carbon tax shift (“The Green Shift“), for which the Conservative Party mocked and savaged him. We’ll […]
Continue readingAlberta Diary: About Stephen Harper’s ambassadorial timeshare: maybe he missed the lesson on the Statute of Westminster!
Canadian and British Joint-Embassy diplomats work out their timeshare arrangements. Below: The young Stephen Harper on the day he missed his history lecture after lingering too long over Atlas Shrugged; Perfesser Dave feeds lines to Opposition leader Tom Mulcair last weekend; Mr. Harper at the NCC. Like Sir John A.
Continue readingCANADIAN PROGRESSIVE WORLD: Harper v. Canada: Stephen Harper Addresses Right Wing U.S. Think Tank
Understanding the Canadian prime minister’s war against our democratic institutions, freedoms and legitimate dissent Editor’s Note: In June 1997, Stephen Harper addressed a Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a right-wing U.S. think tank. His speech unequivocally foreshadowed his ongoing war against Canadian democracy. Harper described Canada
Continue readingCANADIAN PROGRESSIVE WORLD: Harper v. Canada: Understanding Stephen Harper’s War Against Canada
Welcome to Harper v. Canada, a new column that digs deep to understand Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s current war against our democratic institutions, freedoms and dissent. The column uses two approaches to unravel Harper’s phony commitment to making Canada “the best country in the world: a) exhaustive excavation of Harper’s
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Stephen Harper’s Pathological Hatred
While I stand by my comments about The Globe and Mail in my last post, the paper does have one real asset in the person of Lawrence Martin. Unlike other Globe employees who seem strangely constrained ideologically, Lawrence is consistently robust in his criticism of the Harper regime. Today’s column
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: If Stephen Harper Was Still a Libertarian he Would Hate Stephen Harper
There is a great site called 404 Systems Error, that functions much like Wikileaks, though with Canadian content. They have recently posted an old fundraising letter of Stephen Harper’s from 2001, when he was heading up the corporate funded activist group: the National Citizens Coalition. The NCC has always painted themselves
Continue readingCanadian Progressive World: NCC fundraising letter exposes Stephen Harper’s hypocrisy
Way back in 2001, Elections Canada charged a certain Paul Bryan for violating section 329 of the Canada Elections Act. Stephen Harper, then President of the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative lobby group that has …Read More
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Should the National Citizens Coalition Lose Its Tax Exempt Status?
When it was learned this week that Bob Rae is now polling 24 points ahead of Stephen Harper, many of us wondered when the Harper attack ads would begin. It took exactly 17 minutes and 43 seconds (Actually, they were already running them). Careful not to make it appear that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Environics’ polling on inequality shows over 80% of Canadians wanting to see governments reduce the disparity between the rich and the poor – even as the current federal government moves as far as possible in the opposite direction: More than eight in 10
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Not a Good Time for Stephen Harper to be Compared to Richard Nixon
The historian Garry Wills once observed that Richard Nixon wanted to be president not to govern the nation but to undermine the government. The Nixon presidency was one long counterinsurgency campaign against key American institutions like the courts, the FBI, the state department and the CIA. Harper has the same
Continue readingText of 1997 speech by Stephen Harper to US right-wing think tank
For anyone surprised by Harper’s moves and plans now that he has a majority, it is enlightening to read this speech our current PM made when he was VP of the ‘United Citizens Coalition’ to the Council for National Policy. Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by giving you a
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: NCC: Not Much Blood on Canada’s Hands!
NCC logo.jpg It's Christmastime in Canada – when all self-satisfied ideologues take a moment to lift the finger of blame and point it at somebody else. "Credit" for outstanding performance in this regard must go to National Citizens Coalition President andf CEO Peter Coleman. In ringing defence of the former NCC
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: A Half a Century Later and We are Losing Half a Century
The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country In researching the conservative movement on both sides of the border, one thing becomes clear. In the U.S. they don’t like to be referred to as Republican any more than Stephen Harper likes to be called a Tory. They are CONSERVATIVE,
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Not So Much Reform as Special Interest Groups
Jeffrey Simpson has an interesting column this week: Remember the Reformers? They’re still here In it he suggests that the Conservatives are now putting policies in place written for the Reform Party, two decades ago. However, while the cowboy law and order agenda was early Reform Party, most initiatives are
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