Even with a majority, the bullying goes on

Jeffrey Simpson, Opinion, The Globe and Mail:

Those who thought the Harper government would ease up a bit after winning a majority were wrong. Noblesse oblige is out, or, rather, was never in. If anything, the Harper government is more bullying, scornful of dissent, intent on controlling every utterance, contemptuous of the media and determined to carry on political war at all times and by all means.

The Conservative war machine engaged in what House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer called this week “reprehensible” conduct in the Montreal riding of Mount Royal. There, the Conservatives hired a firm to phone voters and tell them that Liberal MP Irwin Cotler was thinking of resigning.

This rumour was completely false, but it spread doubts. It was undoubtedly designed for the ears of Jewish voters, who are plentiful in that riding and who’ve been moving en masse to the Conservatives, who’ve lined up what passes for a Canadian Middle East policy with every desire of the Israeli government.

In the Commons, the government is using closure repeatedly. Faced with an adverse decision from the Federal Court against its legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, the government waved the ruling aside and said it would proceed.

Speaking of judges, the Conservative chair of the parliamentary witch-hunt committee into the CBC and its expenses – a committee egged on by the ravers at Sun TV and its owner, Pierre Karl Péladeau – had the audacity, presumably born of a mixture of ignorance and arrogance, to insist that a judge whose ruling displeased him be hauled before the committee to explain the ruling.

Still with the courts, the Quebec government asked for the records of the soon-to-be-abolished long-gun registry. The government so dislikes the registry that it wants to expunge every trace that it ever existed, the way certain authoritarian governments airbrushed from old photographs people whose views they didn’t like. As a result, the Quebec government is taking the Harper government to court so it doesn’t destroy the records.

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