I’ve been doing some reading today about Stephen Harper and I’m even more afraid of him now that I was before, if that’s possible. So far what I’m hearing from a lot of people is that they’re afraid of him as well. This seems echoed in the media quite a bit and I’ve never heard a person without that opinion yet, personally. But, there’s obviously the large undercurrent of unhappiness with Martin. I’m not advocating what the one correct course of action is right now, but what I know is the incorrect one would be Harper.

Some of the quotables I’ve found:

  • He wants the Supreme Court to “defer to parliament” rather than the Charter. This sounds like an echo from the neo-cons in the US who are unhappy with “activist judges” not ruling the way they’d want. This is A VERY BIG DEAL as it basically circumvents the Charter. Canada will no longer have a basic guarentee of rights and freedoms, it will depend on the party in power. And, we all know what will happen to minority rights if Harper was in power.
  • He uses religion to support his argument for self-entitlement. He seems to forget the vast amount of content in the Bible about helping the poor.
  • He understands “liberals” so badly that he equates them with nihilism. This is required to support his position of moral superiority.
  • He sees the fall of the Soviet Union as “depriving conservatives of all shares of a common external enemy.”
  • The guarentee of universal health care and womens rights horrifies him.
  • He equates the NDP to “the devil.”
  • He is in favour of discrininating against anyone who doesn’t fit into his personal traditional social and religious definitions.
  • His main policy adviser thinks of the people who lived in North America before they were decimated by the Europeans simply as “earlier immigrants” and therefore have zero claim to land.

Some of the articles I’ve been reading, which also link to other sources of information: