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Originally Posted by Jay[neX]
ok, fact 1: Harper was for the war:
CTV.ca News Staff
Opposition leader Stephen Harper has told Fox News in the U.S. that most Canadians outside Quebec support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, despite our government's decision not to take part in the war.
In an interview with the American TV network, Harper said he endorsed the war and said he was speaking "for the silent majority" of Canadians. Only in Quebec, with its "pacifist tradition," are most people opposed to the war, Harper said.
Fact 2: He was supportive of the "star wars" missile defence system and is for increased military spending
June 1, 2004
OSHAWA - He is smooth. Very, very smooth. Stephen Harper released his party's defence policy yesterday (first in a flurry of policy drops this week) stressing the need to assert our sovereignty with a serious military force, chastizing the Liberals for years of neglect and avoiding any comment that might be construed as bellicose.
Without providing details, Harper suggests he would be more generous with the military than the Martin Liberals -- upgrading equipment on a more ambitious schedule, committing to an 80,000-strong force at some future date -- but nothing he said yesterday suggests he would embark on a radically different course.
Whatever he is saying now, Liberals hope more Canadians will be disturbed by those old quotes than mollified by Harper's more nuanced current approach. Their second line of attack is to insist Harper can't finance an expanded military without deep cuts to other spending -- including health.
It is a plausible argument and Harper is making a tactical error in not producing contrary evidence. (He says there's enough money to cover his priorities -- modest tax cuts, increased military spending -- without reducing spending on health. But if not health, what?) We can assume that culture, the CBC, any sponsorship-like spending will be given short shrift in a Conservative regime, but that magnitude of savings doesn't begin to cover the new military expenditures.
The only un-proven fact is the liberties issues - but if you're smart you'll figure it out. He's aligned with the U.S. and is far to the right
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If anyone needs confrimation of Harpers extreme right wing stance do a litte research on something called the "Calgary School"
Here are a couple of Articles that do a reasonable job of explaining just how disastrous Harper would be for Canada.
http://mr.open-publishing.be/news/20...51_comment.php
"The Man Behind Stephen Harper
The Walrus Magazine, October 2004
by Marci MacDonald
Consternation rumbled across the country like an approaching thunderhead. For aboriginal leaders, one of their worst nightmares appeared about to come true. Two weeks before last June's federal election, pollsters were suddenly predicting that Conservative leader Stephen Harper might pull off an upset and form the next government. What worried many in First Nations' circles was not Harper himself, but the man poised to become the real power behind his prime ministerial throne: his national campaign director Tom Flanagan, a U.S.-born professor of political science at the University of Calgary.
Most voters had never heard of Flanagan, who has managed to elude the media while helping choreograph Harper's shrewd, three-year consolidation of power. But among aboriginal activists, his name set off alarms. For the past three decades, Flanagan has churned out scholarly studies debunking the heroism of Metis icon Louis Riel, arguing against native land claims, and calling for an end to aboriginal rights. Those stands already made him a controversial figure, but four years ago, his book, First Nations? Second Thoughts, sent tempers off the charts."
http://wrf.ca/comment/article.cfm?ID=137
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The Calgary School and the Future of Canada
September 2005 - V. 24 I. 6
by Dr. David T. Koyzis
Half a century ago, Harvard political scientist Louis Hartz (1919-1986) wrote The Liberal Tradition in America in which he advanced an intriguing explanation for the unique political culture of the United States. According to Hartz, because immigrants from the British Isles tended to come disproportionately from the poorer and marginal classes, they brought with them only a fragment of the total political culture of the old country. While Britain's political life was dominated by the dynamics of a fading feudalism, America was populated by those for whom feudalism was an increasingly remote memory. As a consequence, while a collectivistic conservatism persisted in Britain, and while socialism would come into its own there by the turn of the twentieth century, the American political culture would be monolithically dominated by a fairly narrow slice of Lockean liberalism, with its individualism and suspicion of government and the welfare state."
