‘Harperman’ singer strikes chord with Canadians

“Harperman” singer and suspended federal scientist Tony Turner has been silenced for now, but his folksy protest song dropped its own political payload across the country on Thursday just the same.

Sympathetic musicians took up the cause at Queen’s Park and dozens of other locations, belting out the YouTube ditty laden with barbs aimed at making Conservative Leader Stephen Harper “gone, gone, gone” in the Oct. 19 federal election. “We know why we’re here,” MC Susan Wayne told a gathering of about 120 people, many of them with New Democrat ties, in front of the legislature under the baking noon-hour sun. After some warm-up tunes sung by the Raging Grannies and local choir members, seven-time Juno nominee and Genie Award best-song winner Ken Whiteley played guitar and led the crowd in a singalong of “Harperman.”

“It’s satire, it makes people laugh, and that’s one of the best ways to get people paying attention,” Whiteley, a volunteer in Jennifer Hollett’s University-Rosedale NDP campaign, said later. “The average person on the street may not have been here today but . . . Harper is not popular anymore and people start to get it, so they start to connect some of the dots even if they’re not into the minutiae of policy.”

The latest Forum Research poll, published Thursday in the Star, showed the Harper Conservatives in a tight election race but with up to 32-per-cent support nationally, ahead of Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats at 30 per cent and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals at 28 per cent.

An expert in bird migrations at Environment Canada, Turner was sent home from work in late August after writing and performing “Harperman.”