Senator Tommy Banks letter re Harper's gradual destruction of our Canada
Posted on April 14, 2011 by iamjema
There is a paragraph in the begining of this that allows me to put this on
my blog and I gladly do so. It is vindication of what I have been trying to
say for years now.
Thank you Tommy Banks, a senator for the people of Canada.
Jeremy
What Canadians have lost under this "Harper" Govt.
Tommy Banks,
Canadian conductor and pianist,
host of the CBC television's "The Tommy Banks Show" for 15 years.
-- Original Message --
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 11:33 PM
Subject: Tom Banks
A letter from my partner Tom Banks
by Sharman King on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10:39am
I apologize for this long re-post, but I'd like to share with my friends
this letter from my business partner and musical associate Senator Tommy
Banks. It's worth noting that Tom was a Conservative when he was appointed
to the Senate. If you agree with this food for thought please feel free to
send it to your friends of whatever political stripe. The bigger message
here is how we want our government to behave, no matter who forms that
government. Here's Tom's missive:
There is only one thing about the outcome of the May 2nd election on which
Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper agree. It is that one of them will be the Prime
Minister of Canada. Mr. Layton, Mr. Duceppe and Ms. May are not in the
running to form a government. They can't. It will be either Mr. Ignatieff or
Mr. Harper.
That is the choice, and it is a very clear - in fact, stark choice. We will
choose between openness or secrecy. Between listening or refusing to listen.
Between someone who respects Parliament or someone who disdains it. Between
things we can and will do now or things that, (provided of course that
everything goes well), we might do in five or six years. Between someone who
answers all questions from Canadians, or someone who won't accept any.
Between Mr. Harper who said "It's past time the feds scrapped the Canada
Health Act", or Mr. Ignatieff who said " . . . we don't want user fees. We
want universal, accessible, free-at-the-point-of-service health care, paid
out of general revenue. That's just bottom line. Otherwise we get
two-tiered".
Between buying jets or helping vets. Between real early childhood learning
and care or Saturday-night babysitting. Between respect for our great
institutions or contempt for them. Between helping families or helping big
corporations. Between the Canada that we think we have, or the way in which
Mr. Harper has already changed it.
Over the past few years Mr. Harper's government has quietly engineered so
many changes that there are some ways in which our country is barely
recognizable. Many of us don't yet realize the extent of those changes,
because many of them have been brought about very carefully and gradually -
almost imperceptibly in some cases.
This is diabolically clever. If these things had all been done at once,
there would have been loud protests and reactions. But moving just one
little brick at a time doesn't cause much fuss - until you realize that the
whole house has been renovated. And we've hardly noticed.
These are changes that are at the very heart of who and what Canadians are.
They are changes to the protections that used to exist against the tyranny
of the majority - or against a single-minded my-way-or-the-highway autocrat.
These changes are losses to our very Canadian-ness. Let me remind you of
some of them:
The Law Commission of Canada was created by an Act of Parliament in 1997. It
worked very well. It kept an eye in a sort-of avuncular way, on necessary
reforms of the law, including election law. The Commission couldn't actually
change law; but it was very good at letting governments and everybody else
know when changes needed to be made and why. It was our legal Jiminy
Cricket, and it performed a valuable service for Canada. The Commission was
created by an Act of Parliament, and any government wanting to shut it down
should have been up-front about it. It should have come to Parliament with a
Bill to rescind The Law Commission of Canada Act. That's what any of our 21
previous Prime Ministers would have done.
But to Mr. Harper, Parliament is an inconvenience. Somebody might ask "Why
are you doing this?" But he didn't want to go through all that Parliamentary
trouble; so, rather than proposing the abolition of the Commission (a
proposal about which there would have been pretty fierce debate on all
sides), they just eliminated all funding for it in the federal budget.
Governments can do that. Poof - no Law Commission.
Nice and quiet. Just one little brick. Hardly noticed.
Then there was the Court Challenges Programme, set up in 1994, which was the
means by which a bit of legal help could be provided to a private individual
or small organization who didn't have a lot of money, and who was taking on,
or being taken on by, the Government of Canada. It leveled the legal playing
field a bit. It was a perfect example of fundamental Canadian fairness.
By convincing a tough panel of judges of the reasonableness of your cause,
you could get a little help in paying for some lawyers to go up against the
phalanx of legal beagles that could always, and forever, and at public
expense, be brought to bear against you by the State. In other words, if you
weren't rich, and if you were taking on or being taken on by the Feds, you
might have had a chance. But Mr. Harper doesn't like being questioned, let
alone challenged. It's so inconvenient! Solution? Quietly announce that the
Court Challenges Programme is being, er, discontinued. Poof - no Court
Challenges Programme - no court challenges.
Hardly noticed.
The Coordination of Access to Information Request System (CAIRS) was created
(by a Progressive-Conservative government) in 1989 so that departments of
government could harmonize their responses to access-to-information requests
that might need multi-departmental responses. It was efficient; it made sure
that in most cases the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, or at
least what they were saying; and it helped keep government open and
accountable. Well, if you're running a closed-door government, that's not a
good idea, is it? So, as a Treasury Board official explained to the Canadian
Press, CAIRS was killed by the Harper government because "extensive"
consultations showed it wasn't valued by government departments. I guess
that means that the extensive consultations were all with government
departments.
Wait! Wasn't there anybody else with whom to extensively consult? Wasn't
there some other purpose and use for CAIRS? Didn't it have something to do
with openness and accountability? I guess not. Robert Makichuk, speaking for
Mr. Harper's government, explained that "valuable resources currently being
used to maintain CAIRS would be better used in the collection and analysis
of improved statistical reporting".
Right. In other words, CAIRS was an inconvenience to the government. So poof
- it's disappeared. And, except for investigative reporters and other people
who might (horrors!) ask questions, its loss is hardly noticed.
And the bridge too far for me: Cutting the already-utterly-inadequate
funding for the exposure of Canadian art and artists in other countries.
That funding was, by any comparison, already laughably miniscule. Mr. Harper
says that "ordinary" Canadians don't support the arts. He's wrong. And his
is now the only government of any significant country in the world that
clearly just doesn't get it.
All these changes were done quietly, cleverly, and under the radar. No fuss.
No outcry. Just one little brick at a time. But in these and other ways, our
Canadian house is no longer the kind of place it once was. Nobody minds good
renovations. Nobody even minds tearing something down, as long as we put up
something better in its place. That's not what has happened.
Mr. Harper fired the head of the Canadian Wheat Board because he was doing
his job properly. He removed the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety
Commission because she wanted to make sure that the Chalk River nuclear
reactor was safe.
Hardly noticed.
There are many more things that were hardly noticed: Cuts to funding for the
Status of Women, Adult Learning and Literacy, Environmental Programs,
museums funding, and more. All quietly, just one brick at a time.
Hardly noticed.
As to campaign promises, everybody in sight on every side is guilty of
breaking those. Except the Federal NDP of course, who haven't yet had the
opportunity. (It's very easy to make promises that you know you will not
likely have to keep).
But the government promised to end wait times in health care. They didn't.
They promised to end, once and for all, the whining of some provinces about
the non-existent "fiscal imbalance". They didn't. They said they had brought
final resolution to the softwood lumber problem with the U.S. They haven't.
They promised to create thousands of new child-care spaces in Canada. They
haven't. They promised not to tax income trusts ("We will NEVER do that!"
they said). They taxed them. They promised to lower your income tax.
They raised it.
They said they had a good "made-in-Canada" plan to meet our obligations on
climate change. They don't. Mr. Harper has said plainly that whatever the
Americans do is what we'll do too.
They campaign on a platform of transparency and accountability; but they're
now trying to discredit the Parliamentary Budget Officer that they created,
because he's trying to do the job that they gave him. Mr. Harper said that
our form of government, evolved over centuries from the 900-year-old British
Westminster tradition, was all wrong. We had to have fixed election dates,
because otherwise, democratic principles would be trampled. "Fixed election
dates", he said, "stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They
level the playing field for all parties".
So Parliament (remember them?) at Mr. Harper's insistence, passed a law
requiring fixed election dates, which Mr. Harper promptly broke.
Somebody once said that we get the kind of government we deserve. What did
we do to deserve Mr. Harper? He once said that we should all "Stand Up for
Canada". Well, let's do that. We just have to decide whether the present
version of Canada is the one that we'll stand up for. Or stand for.
Thank you
Tommy Banks (an Alberta Senator.)
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