The Closing of the Canadian Mind

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The Closing of the Canadian Mind


By STEPHEN MARCHEAUG. 14, 2015

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Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, is creating a legacy of secrecy and ignorance. CreditMark Blinch/Reuters

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  "Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education."...
  
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  This article didn't even cover half of Harper's misdeeds. There are two reasons Harper wins. First: Our broken “first-past-the-post” voting...
  
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  Fortunately for Harper and the Conservatives Canadian voters historically split their votes between the Liberals and the NDP (New Democratic...
  
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  After the 2011 election, a Conservative staffer, Michael Sona, was convicted of using robocalls to send voters to the wrong polling places in Guelph, Ontario. In the words of the judge, he was guilty of “callous and blatant disregard for the right of people to vote.” In advance of this election, instead of such petty ploys, the Canadian Conservatives have passed the Fair Elections Act, a law with a classically Orwellian title, which not only needlessly tightens the requirements for voting but also has restricted the chief executive of Elections Canada from promoting the act of voting. Mr. Harper seems to think that his job is to prevent democracy.
  
  But the worst of the Harper years is that all this secrecy and informational control have been at the service of no larger vision for the country. The policies that he has undertaken have been negligible — more irritating distractions than substantial changes. He is “tough on crime,” and so he has built more prisons at great expense at the exact moment when even American conservatives have realized that over-incarceration causes more problems than it solves. Then there is a new law that allows the government to revoke citizenship for dual citizens convicted of terrorism or high treason — effectively creating levels of Canadianness and problems where none existed.
  
  For a man who insists on such intense control, the prime minister has not managed to control much that matters. The argument for all this secrecy was a technocratic impulse — he imagined Canada as a kind of Singapore, only more polite and rule abiding.
  
  The major foreign policy goal of his tenure was the Keystone Pipeline, which Mr. Harper ultimately failed to deliver. The Canadian dollar has returned to the low levels that once earned it the title of the northern peso. Despite being left in a luxurious position of strength after the global recession, he coasted on what he knew: oil. In the run-up to the election, the Bank of Canada has announced that Canada just had two straight quarters of contraction — the technical definition of a recession. He has been a poor manager by any metric.
  
  The early polls show Mr. Harper trailing, but he’s beaten bad polls before. He has been prime minister for nearly a decade for a reason: He promised a steady and quiet life, undisturbed by painful facts. The Harper years have not been terrible; they’ve just been bland and purposeless. Mr. Harper represents the politics of willful ignorance. It has its attractions.
  
  Whether or not he loses, he will leave Canada more ignorant than he found it. The real question for the coming election is a simple but grand one: Do Canadians like their country like that?
  
  A novelist and a columnist at Esquire Magazine who lives in Toronto.
  
  A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 16, 2015, on page SR7 of the National edition with the headline: The Closing of the Canadian Mind. Today's Paper|Subscribe
  
  
• http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/o...-canadian-mind.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

welp

 

[CHL]

nearly a decade?