(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)
Friday, April 29, 2011
by George Elliott Clarke
The Harper Conservatives are not Canadian Conservatives. They are U.S. Republicans in Tim Horton’s photo-ops.
If you opposed what George Bush did to America (i.e., ruined it), you cannot support the Harper Republican program for Canada. Tax cuts for the rich, prisons for the poor, and war for foreign policy, is no practical program for a great, good, and decent country on the face of this earth.
The proof of just how bad Harper is, is his war against Parliamentary supremacy; his acts of outright contempt for OUR Parliament – and, thus, by extension, for us. When President Nixon tried such maneouvres and shenanigans in the U.S., he was forced to resign from office. And Bush’s Republicans were trounced in 2008.
The genius of Parliamentary Democracy is that the greatest good is served the greatest number of people by always making it possible for the opposition parties and the Crown representatives (the Governor-General and the Lieutenant-Governors) to act as checks and balances to governmental authority. Harper has tried to erode and dismantle these restraints.
For that reason alone, he deserves defeat and dismissal. Vote for candidates who respect us, the Canadian people.
— George Elliott Clarke
George Elliott Clarke, a seventh generation African-Canadian, was born near the Black Loyalist community of Three Mile Plains, Nova Scotia, in 1960. A graduate of the University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University, and Queen’s University, he is now the inaugural E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. A prolific poet, playwright (Whylah Falls, Beatrice Chancey, Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path), novelist (George and Rue), anthologist, critic, and screenwriter, his many honours include the Portia White Prize for Artistic Achievement (1988), the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry (2001), the National Magazine Gold Medal for Poetry (2001), the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award (2004), and the prestigious Trudeau Fellow Prize (2005). He has been inducted as a member of the Order of Nova Scotia and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He lives in Toronto, Ontario and owns land in Nova Scotia.