Neil Young is now on Stephen Harper's enemies list. Michael Harris writes:
In the thug state Stephen Harper is busily constructing, Young has become Stephane Dion with a guitar, or Michael Ignatieff with a tambourine – just another opponent of the prime minister to be torn down. In Harper’s one-opinion world, to engage is to destroy, never to discuss.
Young’s offence was to express his opinion and to make a donation. In normal democracies, that would be no big deal. You might agree with the rock-star, you might not. Ninety-nine percent of the time, most wouldn’t even notice.
But Canada is no longer a normal democracy. The evidence is everywhere:
- Governments in normal democracies don’t introduce legislation seeking the right to ask about your political beliefs when applying for a job;
- Governments in normal democracies don’t put through 40 per cent of the legislative output of parliament in one bill that effectively prevents scrutiny of its contents;
- Governments in normal democracies don’t produce endless commercials about themselves paid for by the public they are trying to indoctrinate rather than inform;
- Governments in normal democracies don’t use the full weight of official wrath against individual citizens who speak out against their policies.
People whose opinions do not jive with the regime's are enemies of the state and must be destroyed. The problem is that Young cannot be destroyed as Dion and Ignatieff were. And the people who Young speaks for cannot be shunted off into oblivion. They know who the prime minister is:
The PM promised to hit the re-set button in the Ottawa/First Nations relationship after his much-ballyhooed public apology to Canada’s Aboriginals for their treatment at residential schools. Then he refused to provide documents to the very Truth and Reconciliation Commission he himself had set up to get to the bottom of it. He went on to slash native funding, ignore the Idle No More leaders, and set the Mounties on native protestors trying to wake up the nation to their plight.
The PM’s idea of consulting with First Nations over resource development was to palm it off on corporate executives and pretend that his constitutional obligation was discharged.
Now the majority of Canadians are onside with the first nations. According to an Abacus poll, 68% of us think the prime minister is neither honest nor accountable. His personal attacks don't work anymore. Canadians know from whence they come.
And they know they've been had.
