Government stumbles into summer
The clamour on Parliament Hill fell silent last Friday as the House of Commons adjourned for the summer, ending a session that was singularly unproductive.
When sittings began last January, one big issue was the growing crisis in grain transportation. The government had watched it fester for almost three months by then, and it just got worse. Official estimates pegged the costs and losses as approaching $8-billion — all borne by farmers, while the railways and grain companies chalk up big profits.
Nothing the government did actually helped the situation, beyond what would have happened anyway with the onset of spring. Everybody blamed everybody else, but the ultimate . responsibility has to lie with the Harper government — because they designed this dysfunctional grain logistics system with deficient capacity, no coordination, transparency or ac- countability, captive shippers and no genuine competition. It was doomed to fail.
February produced another federal Budget that kept cutting everything in sight, but provided nothing to drive economic growth. At a time when domestic consumer demand is tapped-out because of record household debt, and Canada’s international trade is chronically in deficit, and businesses lack the confidence to invest, the Budget settled for on-going mediocrity.
But the late Jim Flaherty did have a positive impact apart from that Budget. He candidly questioned the high cost and blatant unfairness of Income Splitting, sparking genuine scrutiny of that bad policy idea which only he could have triggered. His criticism was devastating.
In March, two big examples of Harper government malfeasance began to dominate the scene. One was their brutal legislation to amend the Canada Elections Act, making it more difficult for Canadians to vote and less likely that electoral fraud will get detected and prosecuted. A large public outcry forced the Conservatives to back off a bit, but their new law remains a debilitating blot on Canadian democracy that must be repealed at the earliest opportunity.
The other screw-up was the implosion of the Temporary Foreign Workers program. It had operated pretty successfully for more than 30 years, but then ran amuck entirely on the Conservatives’ watch. The numbers skyrocketed. Evidence emerged of Canadians being displaced, wages being driven down and foreigners being abused — without even the slightest government supervision, investigation or enforcement.
Canadian and foreign employees alike became victims of Conservative TFW incompetence, as have many legitimate Canadian employers who are now paying a heavy price for the abuses of others and government bungling.
April became “Infrastructure Month”. This was sup- posed to be when a big, new 10-year Infrastructure program got launched. But now three months later, it’s still not out of the gate. The flagship “Building Canada Fund” has been slashed by 90 per cent, stalled for five years and severely convoluted. Most of this construction season has been lost. Municipalities across the country are not happy.
May and June were dominated by “Stephen Harper vs. the Supreme Court of Canada”. In an effort to stack the highest Court with his own ideological favourites, Mr. Harper botched a perfectly simple appointment and then, to cover his tracks, he launched a despicable personal attack on the Chief Justice. His behaviour was so reprehensible, not a single voice in the entire country even tried to defend him.
This story could continue with two Conservative pipeline debacles, the Justice Minister’s arcane comments about female judges and Julian Fantino’s disrespect for veterans ... but there’s just not enough room.