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Stephen Harper: Wanted, for crimes against democracy (includes WANTED poster download!)

By rabble staff
| January 22, 2010

No Prime Minister in the history of Canada has demonstrated such contempt for democracy and its institutions as Stephen Harper.

The list is shockingly long –- proroguing Parliament twice for strictly partisan reasons, interfering and with and slashing the budgets of numerous Parliamentary watch dog agencies, abandoning Canadian citizens in jails overseas whole ignoring court orders to repatriate them, producing a guide for Conservative chairs of Parliamentary Committees to help them thwart the opposition, abusing their power by cutting funding to groups they don’t like, breaking their own fixed election law, the list goes on and on.

rabble is of the conviction that Stephen Harper has demonstrated such open contempt for Canadians, Parliament, the media and the whole concept of democratic governance itself that he is unfit to govern.

We should therefore treat Stephen Harper as a man guilty of crimes against democracy.

In recognition of this criminal behaviour, we urge you to download and post this WANTED poster in your city and neighbourhood. Click here to download.

The poster is formatted to be printed on 11X17 paper, in black and white (at this size it also works well rally placards...). Note that you can adjust your printer settings to also print it on 8 1/2 X 11 paper, or other sizes.

Please distribute widely.

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For details of Canadians Against Proroguing rallies happening across the country on January 23rd, please click here.

(updated Jan 22)

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Tags:
prorogation notoprorogue Harper democracy coalition Canadian politics

Comments

Submitted by Polunatic2 on January 20, 2010 - 6:09pm.

Great poster! Harper was last "seen" at the CD Howe Institute on Yonge Street in Toronto. 

It sometimes to help see the company one keeps to try and see what they may have up their sleeves. Ontarians experienced high levels of abuse of authority during Mike Harris’ “Common Sense Revolution” (1995 – 2003). Many of the players from that time are now with Stephen Harper in Ottawa – John Baird, Jim Flaherty, Tony Clemens, Guy Giorno, their republican advisors and many others.  With a majority government, the Harris government was brazen, ruthless and mean-spirited in implementing its agenda.  

On the democracy front, the anti-democratic agenda of the “Common Sense Revolution” included:

  • - Continued centralization of power in the Premier’s office at the expense of elected representatives;
  • - forced municipal and hospital amalgamations (reduced local democracy);
  • - forced amalgamations of school boards and stripped trustees of powers;
  • - diminished workers rights to engage in fair collective bargaining;
  • - took food out of the mouths of the poor with a 20% cut in welfare payments;
  • - deregulation and privatization (less  public control);
  • - gutting of the Ontario Women’s Directorate;
  • - changed Legislative rules to limit parliamentary debate;
  • - cut back on advocacy groups funding;
  • - reduced the number of ridings and representatives in Ontario by about 25%;
  • - used the OPP to suppress First Nations land claim demands at Ipperwash resulting in the death of Dudley George and to attack striking workers at Queen’s Park;
  • - set up the permanent voter’s list which helped disenfranchise enough students and tenants to help them to squeak to a second “majority” in 1999 with less than 10,000 votes province-wide in 9 ridings and only 45% of the popular vote despite a citizens’ campaign for “strategic voting” to defeat the government.

The PM has already given us a “minority government” taste, an “appetizer” of what’s to come if he achieves a (phony) majority in the next election – the “main course”.  

 

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Submitted by M. Spector on January 22, 2010 - 4:59pm.

Harper's "Crimes against Democracy" are the least of his offences.

Harper is wanted for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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Submitted by dwatch on January 22, 2010 - 8:18pm.

To see the full list of changes needed to close the undemocratic and accountability loopholes in the federal government, and an Action Alert for sending a letter calling for the loopholes to be closed go to:
http://www.dwatch.ca/camp/SummaryOfLoopholes.html

To see all reasons why the loopholes need to be closed, and links to many key reports, go to:
http://www.dwatch.ca/Clean_Up_the_System.html

Hope this helps -- oh, and a small note about the poster, Harper called a snap election in September 2008, not November 2008 -- see details about Democracy Watch's court challenge of Harper's snap election call (which Democracy Watch is appealing to the Federal Court of Appeal) at:
http://www.dwatch.ca/camp/Fixed_Election_Court_Case.html

Hope this helps.

Take care and bye for now,
Duff Conacher, Coordinator
Democracy Watch

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