Canada and Right Wing Politics

Canada under Harper has lurched to the right in its efforts to please the United States. As a consequence, Canadians have less protection from their government. Not only does the Canadian government herd Canadians together and ship them off half way around the world to fight a "war" that ordinary Canadians do not believe is necessary, the country has now systematically devalued its own citizens:

• If you are dark skinned and "look like a terrorist" then the Canadian government will wash its hands of you, refuse to recognize your Canadian passport, and allow a foreign country to jail you. That is the experience of Suaad Hagi Mohamud. From a press release by the Liberal Party:
  

  "Today Prime Minister Harper claimed that getting Ms. Mohamud on a flight home was the government’s “first priority.” But the facts show that Canadians cannot count on the Harper government to protect them while travelling abroad; in fact, Canadian officials gave Ms. Mohamud’s passport to Kenyan immigration officials for the purposes of prosecuting her.
  
  Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan and Parliamentary Secretary Deepak Obhrai have been unresponsive for over two months while Ms. Mohamud was detained in a Kenyan jail after Canadian officials gave her passport to Kenyan immigration officials, facilitating her prosecution and imprisonment."

• If you are dark skinned and have fled Sudan because of your political beliefs, then you can expect the Canadian government to turn its back on you and allow you to be jailed, "interrogated", and abandoned in Ethiopia for six years. That's the experience of Abousfian Abdelrazik.


• If you are 15 years old but are unfortunate to have a crazed militant Islamist for a father, like Omar Khadr, then you can expect your country, Canada, to abandon you to the US and its torture specialists in Guantanamo to let them work their "magic" on you for seven long years (and counting). This despite Canada being a signatory to a UN convention on the rights of children. (And your brother, Abdurahman Khadr, can collaborate with the CIA and he still gets dropped in the middle of nowhere and has to struggle to contact the Canadian embassy only to be told "thanks but no thanks" and is forced to use the media to get help in getting back to the country of his citizenship, Canada.)


• If you are an innocent Canadian citizen who happens to be an immigrant from the Middle East, like Maher Arar, you can expect your country to hand your name over to the US and allow the US to kidnap you from an international flight and ship you off to a dungeon in Syria where you are tortured for a year. And when you innocence is established, you can expect your government to drag its feet in repatriating you. You can expect that the highest police officials and government officials to "look the other way" when issues about the illegality of your treatment are raised.

These are the "benefits" of Canadian citizenship under a right wing government that doesn't believe in the rule of law. The Harper government looks at the world through a ideological spectacles and sees what it wants to see. So if you are a corrupt but rich financier, you can expect to be lauded and have government services thrown at your feet and government functionaries to grovel pleading for you to use them. But if you are the wrong skin colour, come from a "suspect" part of the world, or have political views that are left of Genghis Khan. Then you can expect this government to lose your file, announce that you are no really a citizen, declare your case so complicated it might take hundreds of years to get on top of it, etc. In short, you have no rights if you are not blessed with membership in the Conservative Party or have flashed a wad of money to bribe the Conservative Party. The only rights Canadians have are what they can buy from the government in power. The "rule of law" under Harper comes down to who you know and how much you are willing to pay.

I thought this "lurch to the right to please the US" was an aberration that reflected having the right wing ideologue George Bush in office. But now that Obama is in office and Harper's government continues its abysmal record of treating Canadian citizens with contempt, I've been forced to accept that this isn't a position imposed on Harper to please Bush. This is in fact the real Harper. Just as Bush liked to be a "good old boy", Harper likes to feign a "nice guy" image, but his actions reveal a cruel, cold, black heart that treats any Canadian who doesn't huddle under the protective shield of the Conservative Party with contempt and meanness that is simply incredible. It is disgusting.