Sunday, July 01, 2007

Harper: How far will he take petty partisanship?

Scott has a good piece on Deceivin' Stephen, as he calls him, (hey, I like that) resorting to petty partisanship, even on Canada Day of all days. Here's Scott quoting Harper and responding.


Prime Minister Stephen Harper told party-goers on Parliament Hill that Canada is once again a player on the world stage. By contributing to the security of Afghanistan and Haiti, and by becoming an energy and resources superpower, he said Canada has resumed its role as a world leader… “The news is spreading throughout the world: Canada’s back,” Mr. Harper told the Ottawa crowd Sunday.

Excuse me, Mr. Harper, Canada was never “gone” to begin with, and did not just “get back” from anywhere, notwithstanding your attempts to make it sound like all of this coincided with your election victory last year. Furthermore, Canada was both in Afghanistan and Haiti long before you showed up on the scene, and definitely not under a Conservative Government.

I also caught that snide remark about the “energy and resources superpower”. That’s code word saying to the public “if you go green like those environmentalists and opposition politicians want you to, you lose our superpower capabilities that oil gives us”.


Canada Day is a day that should unite us as Canadians. A day where we should try anyway to put our differences aside. It should be sacred in that respect. That Harper would break that tradition suggests to me how desperate he is to score political points. Hopefully, it will backfire. And criticizing Harper on this day is fair. He made himself fair game.