-- Download Stephen Harper is Gordon Campbell in Paul Martin Clothing; Paul Martin is Gordon Campbell in Jack Layton Clothing as PDF --

Joe Clark was right to describe Stephen Harper as dangerous. He’s a neocon who wishes to undermine Canadian political sovereignty for harmonization with the United States and asserting economic freedoms over political democracy, thereby turning citizens into consumers. He supports the Washington Consensus of economics over democracy, including the 4 Horsemen of Structural Adjustment: Free Trade, Privatization, Deregulation and Foreign Direct Investment. He will do to Canada what Gordon Campbell has done to BC and what Klein and Harris perpetrated on Alberta and Ontario. But he pretends to be Paul Martin-ish in his concern for communities and “Canada”.

Paul Martin is no better. As a neocon finance minister for most of the last decade he cut social services, downloaded expenses to provinces and municipalities by reducing transfer payments and dropped the Red Book commitment to address child poverty. Being a sweatshop-steamship owning millionaire globalization advocate doesn’t help his likelihood of being a true man of social and economic compassion. He dresses himself up as one concerned for social good, but his track record is more like Stephen Harper’s plan than Jack Layton’s. Likely, if it weren’t for more social and economic centrists in the Liberal caucus, Martin would have gotten away with far more neocon bullshit. An election mandate for him would be as disasterous as for Harper. And while Martin tried to scare everyone during the English debate last week that Harper wouldn’t solve hospital waiting lists, the rest of the candidates who stated that Martin himself created that problem were quite accurate.

NDP or Greens or any ideologically progressive party. They are the only sound alternative. That and pushing for proportional representation in provincial and federal legislatures in the next election are our only real hope.

Finis

Questions, comments, feedback, gripes, thunderous applause? Email me…use the address at the bottom of the page. Please email me at the email address below if you would like to have each new blog entry emailed to you. For free, even. Archives are below these 10 most recent posts.

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Post-partisan eco-socialist. at Politics, Re-Spun

Stephen Elliott-Buckley is a husband, father, professor, speaker, consultant, former suburban Vancouver high school English and Social Studies teacher who changed careers because the BC Liberal Party has been working hard to ruin public education. He has various English and Political Science degrees and has been writing political, social and economic editorials since November 2002. Stephen is in Twitter, Miro and iTunes, and the email thing, and at his website, dgiVista.org.

Latest posts by Stephen Elliott-Buckley (see all)

• Goodbye, Politics, Re-Spun! Hello, WePivot.net! - October 21, 2016
• Fixing the Cleveland I*****s Racist Team Name - October 19, 2016
• What the BC Premier’s Reconciliation Smells Like - October 18, 2016