Stephen Harper Gets No Respect

Although voted in with a majority government, reading the newspapers and watching the pundits and experts on television, it's easy to come to the mistaken conclusion that Stephen Harper is a wildly unpopular Prime Minister.

Among his media opponents and those citizens who didn't vote for him, it's certainly is the case, as they bristle at the scope of the conservative agenda and the speed at which the Prime Minister is rushing it through Parliament.

For them, it is excruciatingly painful to see the liberal / bilingual / government interventionist polices of these last forty years being taken apart brick by brick.

On Wednesday, some readers misconstrued my piece as a knock on Mr. Harper for going through a bit of a charade to help sell the decision to shut Quebec out of the ship building contract, by dumping the responsibility for that decision on a committee of neutral civil servants.
Since the Davie shipyard bid was clearly inferior, my conclusion was that whether it was Mr. Harper or a committee who made the decision, the conclusion was going to be the same.
I was just trying to point out that the clever bit of gamesmanship proved that the PM had matured into a more skillfill politician, graduating from his bull in the china shop reputation.
Far from being critical, I was duly impressed.
 
At any rate, it seems that Stephen Harper is the Rodney Dangerfield of Prime Ministers, who just can't seem to get any respect.

Day after day, the Press hounds the Prime Minister over his conservative agenda as if everything he is doing is completely out of sync with the wishes of Canadians.

Of course nothing of course could be more false. 

Perhaps the best example of this gulf between the Press, the opposition  and the majority of Canadians who side with Mr. Harper, is the proposed omnibus crime law, Bill C-10;

"As it speeds through Parliament, the federal government's omnibus crime bill C-10 is gathering a storm of critics across Canada and even in the United States....“The whole legislation is completely outrageous,” said Orangeville criminal lawyer Carrie Bellan. “It’s completely punitive. There is really nothing there that addresses the social issues that cause crime.”" Orangeville Citizen

The so-called experts and liberal Press tell us over and over again that the Crime Bill won't alleviate crime, will cost too much and that longer sentences will lead to more crime, not less.
As they say....mebbe, mebbe not.

Yet all these experts fail to understand that Canadians want criminals punished more than they want them rehabilitated and that they are willing to bear the cost. That's the Canadian reality.

A Google search of Bill C-10 indicates that almost every single story written about the proposed law is negative....

Crime bill penalizes logic,    “Bill C-10 will guarantee that aboriginal women remain in prison ...
Don't get locked up, Harper    Conservative crime bill takes a 'flawed approach,' critics say
Crime bill cost estimate is inadequate, budget officer says      C-10 is going to be costly

 Crime bill unfairly targets women, aboriginals, critics say    Critics continue to slam feds' omnibus crime bill    

Bill will only increase fear, not reduce crime‎
‎

.....Yet Canadians favour tougher sentences by a whopping 79% and even in Quebec where opposition is the fiercest, the vast majority of citizens disagree with the experts.

"However, a recent Leger Marketing survey reveals that the majority of Quebecers believe that criminals are not punished severely enough (77%). Moreover, over three quarters of Quebecers want our justice system to be tougher on adult criminals  and nearly half of Canadians want tougher penalties for young offenders. " Journal de Quebec{FR}

What Mr. Harper understands and what all the so-called experts fail to realize, is that Canadians are tired of lenient sentences and are wiling to pay the price to see criminals punished, damn the consequences.

And so it seems that the Prime Minister has taken his agenda directly from the people and for the people, ignoring liberal Press criticism to the silent applause of most Canadians.

This same scenario is playing out over and over again, with Harper brushing off complaints from a liberally-biased press corps to enact legislation that most Canadians want.

While the experts are in favour of the long-gun registry, the wheat board, coddling illegal immigrants, taxpayer subsidies for political parties, enforced bilingualism and maintaining an even hand between Israel and its Arab enemies, Mr Harper and the Conservatives are unashamedly not.

Today the Prime Minister cleverly weighs media criticism and reacts and adjusts his conservative agenda accordingly. When his plan to add thirty seats to Parliament without any to Quebec went over like a lead balloon in that province, he skillfully tweaked his plan and threw Quebec a bone by way of a couple of unexpected seats.

But when it comes to criticism over core policies, a conflict between conservative and liberal values, Mr Harper has stayed the course, perhaps taking inspiration from an American naval officer who in the face of danger said;  "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

And because he pursues this conservative political platform with a vengeance, policies which he never hid from the public during the campaign, he is being pilloried in the Press for doing what he said he would do.

When it comes to standing on principle, no Canadian Prime Minister has shown more resolve.

In 2001 the United Nations held a conference in Durban, South Africa. The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance turned into an antisemitic Israel bashing hate-a-thon that left a profound impact on the Prime Minister.

Outraged at the spectacle of tin-pot dictatorships and repressive Islamic states ganging up on what he perceived as the only democracy in the Middle East, he resolved that as Prime Minister, he wouldn't allow our government to lend credence to the next scheduled conference which was to take place in Geneva.
When Canada announced that it would boycott the conference, it sent shock waves through the United Nations.
Slowly other western democracies gathered courage and followed Canada's lead.

"Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, and the United States. The Czech Republic discontinued its attendance on the first day, and twenty-three other European Union countries sent low-level delegations. The western countries had expressed concerns that the conference would be used to promote anti-Semitism and laws against blasphemy perceived as contrary to the principles of free speech, and that the conference would not deal with discrimination against homosexuals. European countries also criticized the meeting for focusing on the West and ignoring problems of racism and intolerance in the developing world." Wikipedia

The latest conference, held this last September in New York was also boycotted by fourteen western democracies, thus discrediting and removing any perceived legitimacy of the extremist views put forward.

Today the practice of boycotting United functions that are clearly hijacked by extremist countries has become established, thanks to our Prime Minister, who led the way.

Back in Canada the Press never acknowledged the Prime Minister's bravery, choosing to pooh-pooh his actions because they involved the very unpopular Israel.

Today Mr. Harper is in Australia to attend a moribund Commonwealth conference and where he has already warned participants that Canada will not attend the next scheduled meeting in Sri Lanka unless that government confronts and deals with its actions against the Tamil minority in events leading to the end of the civil war.
Readers are reminded that in the final onslaught of the Tamil rebels, 25,000 were killed, the vast majority civilians and without any real condemnation by the world. Link 


Opponents will argue that Mr. Harper is just trying to curry favour among Canada's burgeoning Tamil community, but his actions in relation to the Durban conference puts paid to that contention.

Then Mr. Harper had the temerity to demand that the Commonwealth deal with homosexual discrimination which has risen to dangerous heights in some Commonwealth countries, especially Uganda, where newspapers have called for hanging homosexuals, actually printing the names of targets. 

Ugandan newspaper calls for 'hanging' of homosexuals

"On Australia’s western shore, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is upsetting the Commonwealth tea party.

It’s not just that he declared that Sri Lanka’s human-rights record, so far, would make it an unfit host for the 2013 Commonwealth summit. It’s that those statements have made Sri Lanka something of an example for the broader debate on whether the Commonwealth will enforce standards on human rights and democracy. Link

The usually staid and boring Commonwealth is being challenged by the PM and unlike support for Israel, can anyone argue against his defence of homosexuals or the memory of slaughtered civilians in Sri Lanka?
Whether conservative, liberal or middle-of-the-roader, I'm sure the vast majority of Canadians support the Prime Minister's latest initiative.

So where is the Press?
Where are the editorials supporting his efforts on behalf of all Canadians to bring much-needed changes to the Commonwealth?

For the left-wing press, it is just too painful to give the Prime Minister credit where credit is due.

And as for our Prime Minster, just like Rodney Dangerfield, he just can't get no respect.