Our new normal: the mockery of democracy

Lawrence Martin, Opinion, The Globe and Mail:

Allan Gregg, the veteran pollster and commentator, caused a bit of a stir recently when, in a speech at Carleton University, he accused the Harper government of making an Orwellian assault on democracy and reason.

Mr. Gregg’s thesis got another lift with news of the impending arrival of another Conservative Trojan horse bill. We recall their recent omnibus budget bill, the one in which a multitude of non-budget measures were included so as to lessen democratic scrutiny of them. Critics on the left and right – even Sun Media – denounced it as a blatant abuse of process by a Prime Minister who once blasted the Liberals for bringing in a smaller omnibus bill.

No matter – it isn’t stopping him from doing it again. “Being flagrantly exposed as a hyprocite,” the Montreal Gazette bluntly editorialized, “seems not to bother Stephen Harper.” Instead, it appears to embolden him. He tends to double down, as when his government was found in contempt of Parliament last year and he responded with the imposition, in near record fashion, of closure and time limits on debates.

It seems Mr. Harper has concluded that he can continually get away with in-your-face provocations. The media and the opposition parties, he reasons, will move on; at some point, everything becomes old news. Although the latest poll shows Mr. Harper with just a 35-per-cent approval rating (while Barack Obama, with a dismal economy, gets 50 per cent), he may be right. People have short memories.

There’s been the introduction of a big brotherish vetting system wherein the Harper office controls all messaging. There’s been a muzzling of free speech that extends to some of our most distinguished scientists. There’ve been myriad moves, the latest on fisheries and the environment, to disempower regulatory and oversight bodies. The suppression of research and empirical data has become routine in this government, as has the taking of major decisions without public consultation.

The Privy Council Office and public service have become more and more politicized, there being no finer example than the fake citizenship ceremony wherein bureaucrats were used as political stooges. The once powerful committee system has been made more and more anemic. Parliament has been routinely misled, as in the G8 spending fiasco and the F-35 fighter jet deceptions. Lapdogs have been appointed as watchdogs. Sledgehammer tactics have been routinely used to limit debates and intimidate government critics.

Well, at least, you might say, we still have democracy’s holy grail – a free and fair electoral system. But even that’s in doubt, given the allegations, mainly against Conservatives, of vote-suppression tactics.

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