I thought this was Canada we lived in, not Kanada, someone should tell PM Harper and the CPC that!

Thanks to the excellent work already done here by Dave at The Galloping Beaver, Dr. Dawg at Dawg's Blog here and the many others to which they both are linked I became aware of this issue. I have to say this is something that surprised me, even given my well known history of suspicion and distrust where the Harper CPC is concerned. This is also typical of a pattern with the HarperCPC/ government to ignore the way in which our government is actually set up and the respective laws which govern how it is to operate and how we elect said governments. We have seen recently for example that the CPC may well have spent over a million dollars above the limit in the last national election by funneling that money through dozens of candidates that had not reached their own spending limits as reported here and here, we have seen how they viewed the convention contributions in a manner no other party did which also appeared to provide them with additional monies for the last election that no other party had as I wrote about back here. We have seen how this government imposes absurd and unheard of levels of secrecy and hiding from the media as the making of when Cabinet meets a secret makes clear.

We have seen (as covered by bloggers listed at this post at Dr Dawg's place) in this past week reason to be worried that our government is using police infiltrators to try and provoke violence at protests which they do not want the protestors message taken seriously (and the Harper CPC clearly does not want people taking those concerns seriously given their on the record comments about paranoid conspiracy theories regarding the concerns of deeper integration in NA being done behind the veils of secrecy from the electorate), especially when the Public Safety Minister comes out to tell us that according to the video he has seen the only reason the undercover cops (who were initially denied as being such or that even such were even used in such a manner by the SQ and RCMP initially over the first 24 hrs) were outed by the protestors was because they would not commit violent acts unlike the other protestors who Day claims were so inclined when the original video which brought all this to light shows clearly the only ones carrying weapons were the undercovers (that rock), refused to disarm themselves (drop the rock) when demanded to by the other and real/actual protestors. So we are suppose to believe Day without his presenting to the public the video he claims supports his interpretations and we are not to believe our apparently lying eyes regarding the first video making clear the only ones with any appearance of looking to cause violence were the undercover cops themselves.

Taken with this latest development of appointing someone as supposedly the liaison to the federal government who is not the riding's elected MP because that MP is of another party and appointing the candidate for your party in that riding as somehow being the riding's official liaison to the government and this makes for a very disturbing pattern of disrespect and contempt for the fundamental principles and laws that define how we govern ourselves. Like Dr. Dawg I suspect this is unconstitutional, and even if it is not it still runs completely counter to how our federal government is set up to be run, as it is the elected MP for each riding regardless of political affiliation that has the legal and moral responsibility of representing that riding to the federal government. This shows at the very minimum a deep and profound contempt for the way in which this country has been governed since its creation, and quite possibly also shows an equally profound ignorance of the basics of how this country is designed to function by the current governing party's leadership. Neither of which is a recommendation of competence/quality of the Leader and party that takes such positions, as the last thing one should want from a Leader/party is that degree of profound ignorance of the basic civic knowledge of how the government is designed to operate let alone such a level of contempt for it and any MP not of their own party that they will set up independent "liaisons" for a riding like this whatever the political affiliations involved.

This strikes me yet again as further evidence that the Harper led CPC is not rooted in Canadian political principles nor has any interest in them, only in its own power and any and all ways they can think of to increase that power regardless of propriety, morality/ethics, or even legality. That they would transform this nation beyond all recognition if given the majority power to do so, as it is we have seen profoundly undemocratic behavior from this government from the outset (Fortier, Emerson) and even before (Grewal fraud and subsequent cover-up by Harper) . I find this tendency of Harper to prove my worst fears about him to be justified most upsetting/disturbing, there are some things in which it feels far better to be proven to be a wrongheaded fool about instead of Cassandra, and this is one of them IMHO.

It is good to see that Garth Turner's Blog has also picked up on this story here, and the questions that he raises in it are on par with what The Galloping Beaver and Dr Dawg among others have already raised. Anyone that is incapable of understanding why such an action is profoundly wrong, profoundly undemocratic, and profoundly anti-Canadian is in my view someone unfit to be taken seriously as a political commentator of any sort, because this strikes at one of the very foundations of how our elected system is designed to operate and placing the infrastructure and partisan interests of a party ahead of the infrastructure designed by our Constitution. Of course contempt for that Constitution is not a new thing where Harper and his coterie/inner circle at the leadership of the CPC are concerned as I and many others have noted in the past, usually to the derision of Harper/CPC defenders who appear to share Harper's contempt for the Constitution and all voters that do not vote/support the CPC.