Total Pageviews

Monday, November 25, 2013

Legacy of the Harris government

In Ontario, the Mike Harris government was the first in Canada to openly act as neoconservatives while calling themselves Progressive Conservatives. Ontario is still trying to recover from the hugely destructive policies and changes they implemented. Some of the main players are now in Ottawa under Harper: Flaherty, Baird, Clement.  

 After they were voted out, an analysis was done of their actions, their procedures, their lies. This is the summary from the U of T:


• “Create a crisis by maligning and demoralizing workers, describing them as overpaid and under -worked. Use lots of numbers and comparisons regardless of their validity to portray how lousy the system is.”
...
• Start bankrupting the system by ripping up the foundation. Start taking money out of the system and remove democratic structures, all of this too quickly for the system to adapt.”

• “Do not reinvest savings for reform initiatives, not even for a transition period. Use reform as a smokescreen but ensure reforms don't work, that they are strangled by an absence of time and money.”

• “Lie about your intent to take millions more out of the budget, and when the lie is exposed, trot out your finance minister to throw in totally misleading pension information and to lie again and say that you haven't really taken any money out of the system.”

IF that doesn't sound like what Harper is doing right now, then I don't know what could. It was no accident. It was a deliberate plan. Of course there was more to it like massive gerrymandering and voter suppression but that is the core of their plan, now being repeated for all of Canada.

No comments:

Post a Comment