Danielle Takacs: Galloping Around the Golden Horseshoe: Is a Government Elected Based on Deception Legitimate? < read me for the whole post.
Excerpts:
I’ve seen a lot of talk about how a Liberal-NDP coalition would lack legitimacy in the eyes of the public, but I think an honest look of the whole picture should ask as well is what kind of legitimacy does Stephen Harper have? In the real world if you applied for a job based on a falsified resume and the people that hired you found this out, you’d be fired in an instant. And the company probably wouldn’t start a whole new job search, they’d probably go to their next choice of applicant and ask if he/she was still available to take on the job.
While politics isn’t the business world, since Stephen Harper used the
CEO metaphor in a very stretched attempt to frame the Liberal platform
as irresponsible (he said if Stéphane Dion were a CEO he would be fired
for his platform), I’d like to run with it for a minute to lay the
stage for the context we face this week in Parliament. Let’s say
Stephen Harper was made CEO of a major Canadian company in January of
2006 but at least in theory remained accountable to a board of
directors (MPs) and occasionally shareholders (the electorate). So he
starts off making some bizarre and costly decisions that sap up a good
portion of the company’s revenue arguing that “target markets” will
love it and that profits (surplus) remain high anyways so there’s no
reason for the board to worry. Besides Harper says “who needs profits,
that just means we are over-charging consumers”. And so this continues
for a couple years and while many on the board grumbled that he was
driving the company into a ditch as profits were finally starting to
steadily decline in 2008, they were comforted that he would face a
review by shareholders. When the shareholder review came Harper spends
most of his presentation railing against his main competitor to replace
him as CEO arguing that he’s proposing all sorts of crazy schemes and
that while the other guy would ruin the company, Harper would bring
large profits and continued success. So Harper wins the review and
carries on. However, his first major act following the review is to
propose to cut the salaries of all the majority of board members that
he deemed disloyal. The majority of the board finally revolts but then
Harper cancels all board meetings for 7 weeks and vows to come back
with a real plan this time to rescue the company and at that time the
board can vote on whether he gets to continue as CEO. Right after he
cancels the board meeting Harper pronounces that the profits he said
the company was going to have won’t pan out after all, instead the
company is billions in the red, but he hopes the board can forgive that
oversight because “no one could see it coming” (despite the many
warnings Harper received BEFORE his review). So in that situation what
should the board do when they have their vote of confidence?
...
But I do believe we’ve once again seen a cover-up of the deficit by
some of the same people that did it in Ontario and we can’t let that
slide easily. My honest belief is that Stephen Harper went into the
election knowing the books were a mess and hoped he would get a
majority so that the public would never find out and he could just
cover it up like the Ontario PC’s did. He had access to civil service
forecasts none of the oppositions parties did, I’m sure he knew more
than he let on. Yet he portrayed an image that the Canadian economy and
government finances were in sound shape when literally days after the
election he was singing the opposite tune. For that I feel this was a
government elected based on deception and since Harper wasn’t given the
majority he wanted, it’s the duty of the majority of the House of
Commons to hold him to account. It’s the duty of Stephen Harper to do
everything he can to ensure he enjoys the confidence of a majority of
MPs the public elected and so far he’s done the opposite of what’s
necessary to do that.
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