Peter the Pathetic as Minister of Defensiveness

How much more obfuscation, evasion and denial does the Canadian public have to suffer from Peter the Pathetic? Peter MacKay has been tap dancing backwards faster and faster. He is now in retreat from is hollow assertions that Afghan detainees, under Canadian care, were never abused or tortured for about two weeks now.


The manipulation of the political process, the stifling and suppression of information and the positioning of Conservative politicians for plausible denial of facts is abhorrent to Canadian values of peace, order and good government.

As new evidence continues to come forward we see the Minister of Defensiveness moving from absolute denial to plausible denial to admission of mistakes being made but not by him. This is now so much more to all of this than an apparent "non-smoking gun" as the Harper Cons have tried to allege. We are seeing the absolute meltdown of the integrity and trustworthiness of the Harper government.  They are perpetuating the continued unfounded abuse of the public service and the manipulation of the governnance system to suppress evidence and an absolute full court press avoidance of anything close to doing the right thing.

The Harper government has and continues to be a Mini Me mirror of the former Bush-Cheney face political manipulation and machinations that only serves to destroys democracies. This detainee debacle is the Harper government self-inflicting wounds on its own integrity and veracity. It is destined to the defining drama that should be the tippping point for Canadians to realize these are not the kind of people who are worthy of our consent to govern us.

I am most impressed with the continuing quality coverage by the Globe and Mail on these issues and event. I am grateful to the 50 or so former Canadian Ambassadors who are reproaching the Harper government for the unfounded personal attacks on Richard Colvin for merely doing his job. This is starting to look like a Canadian Watergate where the rot in the political culture seems to have spread to the highest offices in the land.

Harper’s political free ride is over. His “success” is a function of an ineffectual opposition, a public disinterest in another election anytime soon and a low public expectation of Harper and his party. Anyone in Canada who values Peace Order and Good Government has to now realize that Mr. Harper and his partisans are not good for Canada in any way.

We need a public inquiry to get to the bottom of this and to restore Canadians faith in its government.

Harper the Deceiver

Harper the Deceiver! - The “report on human rights performance (meaning abuses) in other countries does not exist”...and then all of a sudden - voila here it is with the truth blackened out. Doesn't that make you want to reminisce about the "good old days" of the Bush administration in justifying Guantanamo prisoners without charges and no access to counsel and the final admission about other secret CIA prisons around the globe? Yup, and we western democracies are supposed to be the good guys.

We need to thank someone somewhere in or around the government for leaking to the Globe and Mail the complete unedited and unabridged version of the officially non-existent human rights performance report. Actually that is too euphemistic a way to describe what the Harper Cons have done here. We should call the Harper Cons "released" version of the newly discovered report for what it really is THE OFFICIAL CENSORED VERSION OF THE FACTS."

Harper and Co. can bring shame on themselves and their party (think Anders' "unanimous nomination" in Calgary West that was recently overturned by the courts twice, as a place to start) and I really don't care too much. Bring my country in disrepute and expose our military to war crimes accusations and the consequences and I care. Do it with such reckless abandon and with such and irresponsible attitude and I care. I really care.

The most generous explanation for this breach of trust and inexcusable dishonesty is wilful blindness and that is not governing, never mind good governing. Shame on the Prime Minister and his "brain trust" of Day and O'Connor. Foreign Affairs Minister MacKay is just lucky he was in China for much of this...and out of the loop, as usual!

We citizens are now being seriously played for fools by our federal government on this and so many other issues right now. I am including the Liberal and Bloc phony motion yesterday to force a pullout of Afghanistan on a deadline that ignores the reality of that situation too. The situational ethics of the NDP in this issue that was used to justify them supporting the Cons on this motion was also astonishingly cute by a half. We are not fools. We can see what is going on with our governance. It has to stop.

Get off the artificial sort-game election path and start governing for the future with a longer term sense of the difficult and serious situations we face in this country. Where is the honest leadership that will be straight with us and who will rise to the occasion with intelligence and wisdom?

Recommend this Post to Progressive Bloggers