Wow – as the Canadian federal election carries on, the whoppers coming out of the Harper camp are starting to really pile up. Here’s a few of them:
The IPod Tax is Coming! The IPod Tax is Coming! The Conservatives have been running attack ads claiming that, if elected, the other parties are going to charge Canadians a $75 IPod Tax. Well, it turns out it’s an outright lie. Read Who Wants To Charge a $75 IPod tax? Uh, no one. (to view the attack ad, scroll to the bottom of this post)
Stephen Harper Knows How To Manage Our Economy! Harper, an economist, often proudly proclaims that he is, without a doubt, the best fiscal manager for Canada’s economy. Really, Mr. Harper? When the Conservatives came into power, our country had a healthy budget surplus. Now, Canadians are saddled with a $50 Billion deficit! We can’t afford much more of Harper’s economic “brilliance”. As Murray Dobbin recently pointed out in The Tyee:
The Conservatives’ only claim to fame is that our financial system did not melt down the way others did. Ironically, the only reason it didn’t is our banks remained regulated, so they could not take the kind of risks that their counterparts in the U.S. and EU did. Even here, Harper and Co. played with financial deregulation in the mortgage industry (allowing 40-year, no down-payment mortgages), and created a bubble that has yet to burst.
And speaking of poor financial management, the G-8 and G-20 summits were the most expensive 72 hours in Canadian history. The total cost was over $1 Billion! At the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, Harper spent $1.9 million building a fake lake and nearly $1 Billion on security for the 3 day event. (Incidentally, 1,105 arrests were made during that summit – the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Yet only 99 criminal charges were laid. So everyone else was arrested – why? Certainly not in the name of Canadian democracy!)
But what porkers have the Harper Cons been caught uttering recently? Turns out they quoted Auditor General Sheila Fraser as praising the Conservative’s management of the summit when in fact the quote they used was taken out of context. What she was actually doing was praising the Liberals for their spending on security after the 9/11 attacks. Last week, Ms. Fraser responded:
...the Conservatives inserted a 2010 comment she made during a CBC News interview on security spending by a previous Liberal government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“The comments attributed to me in the [Conservative] report are completely unrelated to G8/G20 spending,” Fraser writes in her letter.
“I would appreciate it if the report could be modified as it is clearly erroneous.”
And with regard to the G-8, it turns out that the Tories may have lied misinformed the Canadian Parliament about their spending on that meeting, and in doing so may have broken the law. We, the electorate, won’t know before we vote on May 2nd exactly what they were up to, because of the rules of Parliament only permit the release of this report to a sitting parliament. Hmmm – I wonder if this had anything to do with the timing of this election?
And, of course, Stephen Harper continues to dismiss the finding of “Contempt of Parliament” as a minor issue. That is the worst lie of all, in my books, because it so clearly shows with how little esteem he holds our entire parliamentary democracy. Here’s what a few Canadians had to say about Harper and his record:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQm0t1v2wOM]
More links:
ShitHarperDid.com
Tories Misinformed Parliament on G8 Fund, May Have Broken Law: Auditor General
Tories Used Praise For Liberals To Defend Summit Costs: Fraser
Reckless and Ruinous: Harper’s Economics
Anti-Harper Website Attracts Two Million Hits
Ballot Box Thief A Conservative Staffer. Oh My!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTP8qPY9ds4]