Long time Conservative sympathetic editorialist John Ibbitson recently wrote an article for the Globe and Mail which I thought deserved some righteous and vitriolic bashing. This article is titled: Harper’s Omnibus bill is the result of the Democratic Process.
Instantly, the article starts off with a contentious title. The budget is democratic! Nevermind the fact most Canadians did not vote for Steven Harper or the Conservatives. It’s democratic! Nevermind the fact the Conservatives are limiting Parliamentary democracy, debate and discussion (again) through time-limits and other tricks. It’s democratic to explicitly ignore every suggestion from the opposition parties, that the majority Canadians just so happened to vote for, Mr. Ibbitson must think.
He quotes:
“It’s regrettable” that the Conservatives are pushing through such a large bill, said Jean-François Godbout, a parliamentary scholar at the University of Montreal. But “if they’re not doing anything illegal, we can’t really blame them for getting their agenda across.”
Sorry Jean-François, but who should we blame, exactly? It’s the Conservatives who are introducing this enormous budget – over 400 pages – and expect less than a month for this monster to be studied and passed. Who should I blame, if not the very people who are pushing this giant through Parliament?
There are valid complaints of this budget over the impact on public workers and services, over the impacts on environmental regulation, and other concerns. Maybe I should blame the public workers, or the people who receive public services, or environmentalists or, perhaps, the environment itself. The environment is always making the Conservative look bad! There might be a conspiracy…
John Ibbitson explains, some more, why the bill is democratic:
The bills would probably have been better for such consideration. Flaws would have been caught and fixed. But the government’s agenda would have been delayed by a year or more, with future priorities pushed back to 2014.
I think this is what it all comes down to, for him. The Conservatives want this passed, so it should be passed. End of story. Any objections are invalid, null, void and possibly makes you unCanadian and anti-democracy.
This argument will easily work for you if you’re already a Conservative hack. It’s some simple, because it comes from the easy to trace root: what Harper wants must get done. If you obstruct that, you obstruct Democracy.
Democracy isn’t about listening to opposition, or the people. It’s about adherence to your leader. Legislation, from the duly “elected” (we already know they cheated the 2006 election and 2011 election) government overruns any other intelligent, moral and practical consideration.
Democracy is letting Steven Harper do whatever the hell he wants.
He concludes:
That system isn’t perfect, either. But it’s what we’ve got. The omnibus is the result, for good and for ill.
John, you’re outstanding. As a public figure, you do great for progress and humanity. You don’t have moral outrage, or intelligent analysis, you have your “cynicism” as a justification for propaganda for the Harper Conservatives. This argument is tantamount to “Son, that’s just the way it is, so you have to tolerate my unfair, and possibly abusive behaviour”. Child abuse, ill or good, but it’s the system we got.
“For good and for ill” Huh. You don’t offer one substantive bit of coverage of the budget in this whole post. You offer your non-arguments for the bill, somehow. It’s just pro-state rubbish. Maybe you should try writing something useful, or quit your day job. Or just get fired. Whatever works.
