God's Wrath, and the Tories'
God's Wrath, and the Tories'
By Murray Dobbin
With the country well into its third year of minority government under Prime
Minister Stephen Harper there has been very little commentary on what may be
the most important driver of his policies.
No other prime minister in our history has so strained the fundamental edict
of the separation of church and state.
Perhaps that's because the church in question is not the Catholic Church or
the Anglican Church -- the ones that used to come to mind in such conflicts.
No, this church is the evangelical Alliance Church (the same one attended by
Preston Manning) and the implications for public policy are far more
dramatic.
Few Canadians probably even realize that the prime minister who is steadily
changing the nature of their country is a born-again, evangelical Christian.
Unlike his fellow born-again, George Bush, Harper has been careful to manage
his blending of church and state. But if you have any doubts, read Stephen
Harper and the Theo-cons , the meticulously
researched 2006 article by Marci McDonald in the Walrus Magazine.
Theocracy lite
There is lots of evidence to suggest that Harper has no problem creating a
theocracy lite in this country, partly based on his own religious
convictions and partly to ensure that he keeps his core constituency happy.
Some of Harper's policies -- from his aggressive support of Israel (taking
his lead from the Christian right in the U.S.), to legislation that would
take into account the death of a fetus in the murder of a pregnant woman
(encouraging his anti-abortion supporters) are pretty obvious.
But it is the extent to which retribution is at the core of this man that
strikes me as one the most disturbing aspect of his government, because it
is so at odds with the values of the vast majority of Canadians.
Whether its his war on drugs (and drug users), his obvious preference for
the death penalty, his refusal to register any complaint about the illegal
treatment of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo, his politicization of the procedure
for choosing judges or his appointment of Stockwell Day -- the man who
believes the Earth is just 6,000 years old -- as his minister of public
safety, Stephen Harper is making it clear that his god is not a forgiving
god. Forgiveness is for sissies.
Stockwell Day, the avenger
Stockwell Day was chosen carefully as minister of public safety. His
retribution credentials are impeccable. He has suggested
that one way to get around the lack of a death penalty in Canada might
be to release murderers into the general prison population so that "moral
prisoners will deal with it in a way which we don't have the nerve to do."
In 2004, when he was the Conservative Party's foreign affairs critic, Day
refused to issue any statement of condolence or sympathy to the Palestinian
people when Yasser Arafat died -- referring his befuddled colleagues to an
article by David Frum suggesting that Arafat had died of AIDS.
One of the most controversial issues that highlights the Tories' desire for
retribution is the government's determination to close Vancouver's safe
injection site for drug users.
The harm reduction project, called Insite, has been praised around the
world, positively assessed in 22 peer-reviewed papers and is supported by
the city, local police and the even B.C.'s right-wing Liberal government.
Health Canada recommended in 2006 that funding for the project be extended
and that similar programs be tried in other cities.
Faith over science
But for Harper and his party, their evangelical Christianity trumps science.
The International Journal of Drug Policy recently featured an article
charging that the Harper government directly interfered in the
work of independent scientific bodies, tried to muzzle scientists and
deliberately misrepresented research findings. All in the service of
ensuring that drug users retain their status as criminals to be punished.
Last September, Health Minister Tony Clement told the Canadian Medical
Association: "To me, prevention is harm reduction. Treatment is harm
reduction. Enforcement is harm reduction."
Dr. Keith Martin, a British Columbia Liberal MP and former Reform Party
star, is also a former substance-abuse physician. He admits that Clement may
succeed in closing Insite: "But in doing that they will be essentially
committing murder."
Other peoples' death penalties
It is no secret that the Harper government and its public safety minister
support the death penalty. But their preference has taken them to extremes
and revealed their contempt for democracy and the rule of law. Not content
with the current law, democratically arrived at, Harper and Day will do
anything they can to circumvent it, doing by stealth and administrative fiat
what they cannot do, yet, in Parliament.
In a stunning abuse of process, Day simply declared
that
they were no longer going to follow the policy of seeking clemency for any
Canadian sentenced to death who has "... been tried in a democratic country
that supports the rule of law." The new position was applied in particular
to Ronald Allen Smith, a 50-year-old Albertan scheduled to be executed in
Montana. Smith was convicted in 1982 for the brutal murder of two young men.
When it suits the government, however, it casually violates its own stated
principles and intervenes -- as it has done on the case of Mohamed Kohail,
23, a Canadian citizen sentenced to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia for the
death of a man in a school yard fight. In March the federal government
announced -- rightly, of course -- it would be seeking clemency for Kohail.
The rationale for the intervention was the patent lack of democracy in Saudi
Arabia. But it is difficult to resist the conclusion that on the minds of
these two crusaders was the political advantage of challenging a Muslim
state.
What principle was in operation for 18 months throughout which time the
government refused any action in the case of Brenda Martin, the Canadian
held two years in a Mexican prison without trial on charges of money
laundering? Retribution or incompetence? It's hard to know but politics soon
dictated that the policy was again flexible. After her conviction, the
government took the bizarre action of flying her home in a private
government jet at a cost to taxpayers of $82,767. No price is too high to
take political advantage -- the rule of law notwithstanding.
Judgment days
Retribution was front and centre early in the Harper government's term in
the new process for choosing federal judges. That was accomplished by two
fundamental changes to the independent provincial screening committees
advising the government. Harper added one more federal appointee to the
committees, giving the government a de facto majority but more importantly,
making that new appointee a police officer with the intent of ensuring the
judges appointed are tough on crime.
This so alarmed the Canadian Judicial Council that it issued a statement
declaring that: "This puts in peril the concept of an independent body that
advises the government on who is best qualified to be a judge."
There is much more evidence suggesting that retribution is a prime motivator
of this government. A Canadian citizen suspected of terrorist affiliation,
Abousofian Abdelrazik, has been in legal limbo for five years in Sudan,
courtesy of the Harper government's refusal to act.
Changes to the Young Offenders' Act to ensure that offenders are duly
punished has been a goal of Stockwell Day for years and the government
pursues the goal against all the scientific evidence and the admonishment of
the judiciary.
Harper has announced that the government will be cutting $26 million from
funding for community organizations that support people with HIV or AIDS.
His tax bill giving the government hands-on authority to prevent funding of
morally suspect films overtly punishes any filmmaker thinking of violating
Harper and his government's Christian mores.
The new crusades
Perhaps the most fundamental example is the explicit militarization of
Canadian political culture. Harper recently announced the commitment $40 to
$50 billion in additional spending for the military over the next twenty
years and this for a country with no identifiable enemies in that period --
other than vaguely defined "terrorists."
Retribution thus becomes one of Canada's principal exports as the Harper
regime eagerly awaits the next opportunity in the global crusade against
Islamic terrorism.
Conservatives govern this country by virtue of fewer than 25 per cent of
eligible voters. Yet this putative minority government status is treated
with complete contempt by Stephen Harper, in stark contrast with literally
every other minority government in Canadian history. The source of this
contempt, also aimed at the media, the civil service, political opponents
and the law itself, may not be simply the man's well-documented arrogance.
Evangelical Christianity has its own special disdain for democratic
governance.
When the Bentley (Alberta) Christian Centre was under Stockwell Day's
guidance (he was school administrator from 1978 to 1985), it featured
a social studies
lesson that declared that democratic governments "represent the ultimate
deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and totally alien
to God's word."
That about sums it up. Theocracy lite. But give these people a majority and
it will get much heavier.
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