Why I'm not voting for Stephen Harper

Some people think you’re not supposed to get personal in your politics. They contend that what matters most in a political leader is whether he or she can run the country, not whether you like them.

Part of me agrees with that. Government has to be able to function like a business to get things done efficiently, and having leaders with a half-decent head for such things is pretty important.

But I’d argue that there are times when judging political leaders by the way you feel about them is perfectly sensible. When it happens in other areas of our lives, we call it “a gut feeling” and go with it. Why should it be any different when picking the people who will lead our country?

It’s something of a standing joke in Canada that women don’t like Prime Minister Stephen Harper. I’m one of them.

And I admit, it started out as a feeling.  But it grew to much more than that soon enough. My reasons for disliking Harper may have been visceral initially, but so many of his actions since then have confirmed my original gut call.

That’s the thing about gut reactions - there’s usually a reason for them. It might not be obvious in the moment, but give it time. Watch the video “Canadian Women’s Favourite Pick-up Line” on YouTube and you’ll see that women have all kinds of legitimate reasons for not liking Harper.

  His handlers tend to view that as an image problem. Maybe, but I’d sure hate to think it’s as easy as putting an argyle sweater on a guy and a baby in his arms.

But what do I know? Even I had a small, sweet thought for Harper when I saw the TV clip of him singing at the piano at the National Arts Centre gala in 2009.

And now he’s in line to be our prime minister again after Monday’s election. Something must be working for him.

I got into a brief back-and-forth on this issue recently with a Facebook friend.  Something close to despair has overcome me lately at the seeming inevitability of Monday’s election outcome, and in a moment of weakness I had posted a couple of anti-Harper links.

My Facebook friend took a pragmatic view of Harper: He didn’t like some of Harper’s positions either, but figured he was the candidate most ready to lead and with the most potential to do good things for Canada.

But is that true? Given the views that Harper holds and the policies his government promotes, could Canada ever end up thriving under his leadership? He represents certain kinds of Canadians very well, but there’s a significant contingent of us who he barely hides his contempt for.

Of course, I’m from B.C. I’ve long had the sense that B.C. doesn’t matter much to Ottawa and that the feeling is mutual. Beyond the occasional foray west to destroy our fisheries, we’ve learned not to expect much from the feds or to count on our votes mattering.

But then you get a prime minister like Harper and realize that it has to matter.  You go from feeling rock-solid certain and even proud about the progressive nature of Canada, to feeling embarrassed, worried and fearful about what your government might get up to next.

If Harper’s only fault was that he focused on Canada’s short-term economic performance more than he did on the well-being of its people, that would be one thing. That seems to be a standard flaw in conservative governments.

But Harper has those Reform-Alliance roots, and it shows. That segment of the conservative movement packs a lot of moral judgment into its decision-making. You end up with governments that are willing to make genuinely stupid, harmful decisions just because they think they have the moral high ground.

The argyle sweater has never been made that could convince me to like Stephen Harper after seeing his government in action - scrapping the census, wiping out women’s services, campaigning against same-sex marriage, threatening to close Vancouver’s safe-injection site.

Harper is the kind of guy who manufactures an entire fiction around youth crime just to scare uninformed voters into his corner. He prorogued Parliament, thwarting democratic process just because he could.  

So yes, things feel pretty personal between me and Harper right now. But not without reason.

    

There's some great information and Election 2011 toolkits out there on the Web sites of some of the big child/family organizations.

So if you're like me and wondering how the federal parties stack up when it comes to social and community issues, check out these sites before you head to the polls May 2.
National Alliance for Children and Youth
UNICEF Canada
First Call
Canadian Association for Community Living
Canadian Association of Social Workers

Grab the chance to change B.C. politics

These are glorious days for British Columbians who enjoy politics. I’m not one of them, but I admit to being just a little excited to see some life coming back to the B.C. political scene.

Politics are a lousy way to solve the real problems of the world. But they do get citizens engaged in passionate conversations. Politics ultimately push us to define what we really care about.

I certainly don’t care about Christy Clark donning a Canucks jersey or Adrian Dix tending to be tetchy and serious. So I’ll be glad when we pass through this initial phase of politicking as B.C.’s new party leaders jostle for position.

 But it would be great to see some sparks flying over issues again. We haven’t seen enough of that in the last 10 years, under a government that was much too certain that it knew all the answers. Our new political leaders have a major opportunity to be out there with a fresh agenda.

And the rest of us have the opportunity to be discerning customers, if you will. Unless Quesnel MLA Bob Simpson lives the dream and bursts onto the scene with a party of independents - and Bob, I’m still with you on that one - our next premier will be either Clark or Dix. Let’s make them work for it.

Clark and Dix are proof that ideology is a poor gauge of competency, having both been active participants in previous bad governments. All political parties seem capable of self-serving, delusional and sneaky behaviour.

On the flip side, any party has the potential for great vision and accomplishment. Nothing about the New Democrat ideology rules out economic prosperity. Nothing about the B.C. Liberal platform rules out smart social policy.

So rather than waste time belabouring the usual left/right comparisons, how about Dix and Clark just skip the trite stuff and get down to the work of figuring out what B.C. needs most?

Dix obviously envisages a crankier style of Opposition than we’ve seen in recent years. But harassing Clark about her lack of substance is hardly the place to start. He needs to be out there right now with carefully considered plans if he’s serious about winning our hearts and minds.

We citizens owe it to ourselves to call the party leaders on the stupid stuff that gets passed off as political engagement.  We should be relentless in pushing for more substantive discussion about the things that matter to us.

This is a critical time in B.C. Everything has been thrown for a loop on the political front in recent months, and the major parties appear to be working much harder than usual to connect with us.

There’s new blood at the top, and renewed promises on all sides to be more accountable to the people of B.C. It’s been a long time since a political leader made that promise.

So it’d be crazy to let this moment end up as just more hot air from the election machine as to who loves business, unions, families or poor people more. This is the time for British Columbians to be writing the letters and asking for the meetings, and working our own spheres of influence as a reminder to the leaders that every one of us can flex political muscle when we need to.

Surely we’ve had enough of the knee-jerk cliches of Liberals as right-wing business boosters and the NDP as tax-happy union lovers. As we know after decades of up-and-down political fortunes in B.C., we need a little bit of all of it to make a happy, healthy province. Nobody’s got a lock on the One True Way.

Yes, the unions developed an unhealthy sense of entitlement under the New Democrats. But privatization under the Liberals ceded B.C. services to big multinationals at a significant price to jobs, wages and service quality.

And yes, the NDP did show disregard for the business community and the economy. But the Liberals cut social programs well past the point of smart governance. Neither can claim the moral high ground, that’s for sure.

I’d like to hear more assurances from Dix and Clark that they’ll get back to treating the province’s 85 MLAs like the community resources they are. How nutty is it for political leaders to intimidate and silence the very people who keep them in touch with the real issues facing B.C. communities?

Get real and go deep, candidates. Enough time wasted in the shallow end. 

I was inadvertently caught up in the closure of the Malahat this weekend, seeing as my two oldest kids, their five children and my ex-husband had all popped down to Victoria from Courtenay for a "quick" visit with my ex's new grandson.
The plan was to bomb to Victoria and back to Courtenay on the same day. Alas, the 22-hour closure of the Malahat nixed that one. Plans go awry in this world, of course, but watching the ridiculous situation on the Malahat unfold through their experiences really underlined for me how poorly prepared we'd be for any real disaster.
It's never going to be good when the only major route closes down. But what was worse was the inability of those doing cleanup at the scene of the diesel-truck crash to provide any kind of workable estimate of when the highway would reopen, or to quickly provide an alternate route.
For instance, skinny little Finlayson Arm Road was an alternate route, but highway crews didn't get around to allowing passenger cars on it until well over 20 hours after the Malahat crash. The long Port Renfrew-Lake Cowichan route could have been a possibility, but we all know how rough that road is due to years of stalling on fixing it - plus reports were of a three-hour delay for those trying to travel that route.
Travelling via the Mill Bay ferry (four hour delay) or Saltspring Island could also have worked - but only if travellers could have had a decent estimate that helped them gauge whether the extra distance and expense was worth it. From the very start, the updates around when the highway would reopen were way off the mark.
Right after the crash, the estimate was that the road would reopen at 1 a.m. Sunday. Then it was 6:30 a.m. Then it was 9 a.m., then 1 p.m., then 3 p.m. It was after 4 p.m. when traffic was finally allowed through. How was it that nobody had any real idea how long it was going to take to clean up after the accident?
For my kids, it was an inconvenience and a pain in the neck.
For other travellers, though, that delay might have cost them an expensive holiday flight. A long-awaited surgery date. A missed wedding or funeral or other big one-off family event. A day at work, not to mention the expense of a hotel room (in very short supply in Victoria on Saturday night) and meals.
Some would have had no access to medication they left at home, never dreaming their quick trip in or out of Victoria was going to be a long one. Others might have even left a youngish child or a pet at home for a couple hours, only to have it turn out to be an overnight odyssey.
We've got to be able to do better.Who was in charge, anyway? If I didn't know better, I'd suspect FEMA.
As for the driver of the overturned fuel truck, he was uninjured, but reports are that he's being investigated for drunk driving. Certainly you have to wonder when a truck jackknifes in a speed zone of 60-70 km/h. 

Grizzly-bear status under review


What do you think, should we finally do something to put more protection around Canada's grizzly bears? This writer thinks so.  They're magnificent animals, and it's pretty surprising that we've put so little thought into the pressures they're under, what with urban sprawl drastically shrinking their territory and gun-toting trophy hunters coming to B.C. from all over the world to hunt grizzlies.
We tend to fall back into the usual kneejerk stuff around hunting whenever we try to talk grizzly bears - an issue that's nearly as polarizing as abortion. But it's not just about hunting, seeing as the research has found that urban sprawl is a primary pressure on grizzly populations. It's really about the collective impact of the human species on the bears, and how we might mitigate that before it's too late.
It's not too late yet, thankfully. I hope we don't plan to wait until it is.