I admittedly know very little about Canadian politics, but I thought that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was supposed to be the more palatable choice for voters who were scared by the creepy evangelicalism of Stockwell Day and Preston Manning. But apparently he is going as far right as he can? What is up, Canada? You guys are supposed to be the sane ones! Can't you reanimate the corpse of Lester Pearson or something?
Where have you gone, Tommy Douglas?
CSIS may have the answer.
And who was the one who also drew those cartoons?
Oh man, I have a whole rant on this scene. People are getting upset up here and there are even rumblings over immigration and not-funding-aid-organizations-that-mention abortion...it's getting eerily Bush-league. I even went to a no-prorogue protest! When 25,000 Canadians get upset enough to make signs and go out and speechify then Something Is Up. And now since Harper will probably ignore his fixed-election law and only call elections when he thinks he'll win...
Well, he sure doesn't like the arts much.
http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca/
The horror when I found out that Yann Martel gave Stephen Harper a copy of Eunoia for as much as I hate my country's PM, even I would not do such a cruel thing.
Lol!
I just moved here from the US, and what I see and others have pointed out is that Harper is trying to introduce US-style, scorched-earth politics to Canada. The if-the-other-side-does-it-it-must-be-wrong habit is strong here, but there's an extra bit of nastiness from the Harperites, as in the 'Separatists and Socialists' tag line they used against the NDP and Quebocois when there was the possibility of a change in government (I wasn't here then, though...)
From what I've seen, he usually wimps out on hard-right positions almost as soon as he announces them, which is what I gather is going on with the contraception issue right now. He doesn't really care about anything, I don't think, except Stephen Harper.
Ibbitson in the globe has good examples of said wimping out. The social conservatism stuff doesn't fly here, and I think it's clear stevie baby likes being PM more than he likes social conservatism. That said, I didn't read the Paul Wells article in full and probably should.
Indeed Contra that recent article, he's going to fund sending birth control to Africa after all.
Well, this is a man who, when he was Opposition Leader, wrote an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal complaining that Canada hadn't joined in the war crimes in Iraq. And on becoming Prime Minister, stood in his place in the House to vote to make gay and lesbian Canadians second class citizens. So his extremist views are well known.
Curious that McLeans (which generally takes dictation straight from Harpers office on any political story) has a picture of Harper and the Missus with their story, given what's said to have happened there.
Stephen Harper is definitely not less creepy than Preston Manning or Stockwell Day, even when he is holding a kitten: http://canadawry.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/stephen-harper-kitten.jpg
And he has more power than Day or Manning ever did.
I was just about to post that!
I think part of the problem is that the left-leaning voters are split between three parties (NDP, Liberals, Bloc) whereas the Conservative party is the only viable party for right-leaning voters. If you lumped those three parties together, they'd handily beat the Cons. It's frustrating, to say the least. Even though I wasn't crazy about Stephane Dion, I thought last year's coalition idea was pretty good one that they should've had the balls to follow through on.
This. When people tell me I should actually like the Bloc in spite of their puerile nationalist raison d'etre because of their leftishness I remind them that Stephen Harper is PM.
Canada will never be as right-leaning (tilting, falling over) as the US. That said, there are huge swathes of the country that identify as capital 'C' conservative: Alberta & BC, for starters, and most of Ontario outside of Toronto and Ottawa.
I agree with @itskristina that Harper basically split the opposition. He definitely didn't win it on his charm, and there was no groundswell of support for his policies. I imagine his strategy is to keep a low profile, slowly nudge things to the right, and string together a couple of PM-ships before the other parties get their act together.
Stephen Harper is the turd dingleberries aspire to be.
You could do far more damage to social conservatives if you re-animated the corpse of the Progressive Conservatives and let it be clubby with the liberals.
This current government is practical joke Kelowna & Lethbridge have played on the country.
The central problem is that Canadians would _love_ to vore Liberal now, but theirleader, Michael Ignatieff, is seen as elitist and out of touch--so there is no alternative to Harper, who honestly, is Satan. And pulling policy pagesfrom George W. these days...
The other thing that helps to understand is that MacLean's is like Slate, but Canadian.