Dear Mr Harper

Open letter to Steven Harper. Please share.

Dear Mr. Harper.

It’s the last straw.

You, the Prime Minister of Canada, are teaching Canadians to hate. You are saying it’s perfectly O.K., in fact it’s a good thing for a white, Christian Canadian to hate another Canadian who isn’t. It’s fine to deny them freedom of choice and to snitch on them.

Well, hate is not an emotion I have much experience with. But you have indeed taught me to hate, Mr. Harper. I hate you. I have a long list of reasons. They all add up to the dismantling of the country I love. I invite my fellow Canadians, whatever colour they are, whatever language they speak, and whatever they wear, to add to it.

Here’s my list. It’s in no particular order. I’ve already mentioned hate-mongering. (Hmm, didn’t Keegstra go to jail for that?)

1. Bill C-51. Being spied on doesn’t make me feel any safer.

2. Lousy fiscal management. Saying that you and your party are good fiscal managers over and over again doesn’t make it true. One balanced budget out of ten?! Looks like you can’t do even simple math cause you just got 10% on your exam. And squandering Paul Martin’s surplus and reducing taxes so that you can justify cutting programs that benefit disadvantaged Canadians doesn’t seem like good fiscal management to me. Rich Canadians are richer because of you. Poor Canadians are poorer.

3. Abdul Abdulrazik, Maher Arrar, Omar Khadr and Mohammad Fahmy are Canadians. You did not lift so much as your pinky on their behalf. It was in your power to do so.

4. Palestinians as well as Israelis deserve self-determination, peace and a good quality of life. Believing that does not make a Canadian anti Semitic. You can deplore Israeli policies and still think Jewish people are perfectly nice. Understand?

5. How many scandals? I’ve lost count. And nobody believes that paying off Duffy wasn’t your idea all along. There’s nothing that goes on in the STASI head office (sorry, that slipped out, I meant to say PMO) that you don’t know about. And wasn’t it your idea for Duffy to fraudulently state his residence as P.E.I in the first place?

6. Cutting funding to all womens programs. And denying the need for an inquiry into murder and disappearance of First Nations women.

7. Gagging the scientists.

8. Gagging your MPs.

Now, don’t even talk about democracy. I cringe when I hear that word come out of you mouth.

9. Suppressing open and free parliamentary debate about what concerns Canadian citizens.

10. Suppressing free speech. I have friends, now, after the “Harperman” song, who won’t even click on Facebook items for fear of losing their federal jobs. Big Brother is watching (see “Bill C-51”). People are afraid to speak out against you for fear of recrimination, and sadly, that fear appears to be justified. Hearing you talk of freedom of speech makes me retch.

11. Election Fraud – overspending scandals

12. Election Fraud - robocalls

13. Did I mention Election Fraud?

14. Proroguing parliament three times? Four? Every time only in order save your sorry ass.

15. Your 200 page instruction manual which taught your MPs how to subvert and obstruct Parliamentary committees.

16. Making it legal for your government to rescind citizenship.

17. Handing over Afghan detainees to be tortured.

18. Selling off the CBC.

19. Starving health care.

20. Refusing to engage with all Canadians - only admitting card-carrying Conservatives to your rallies.

21. Not taking any questions from the media that aren’t vetted beforehand.

22. Your foreign policy. You have destroyed our cherished reputation for being a peace-loving, peace-keeping people. I used to be so proud of that – Canadians were committed to doing good in the world. Bombing people over in the Middle East doesn’t make us safer over here. Quite the reverse, actually.

23. Omnibus bills.

24. Shutting fisheries and agricultural libraries and destroying the contents.

25. Harpering on “the economy” (read: oil, gas, and pipelines. Can you even talk about anything else? Ever? The weather, even?) Look, it’s not about the economy, stupid. It’s about survival. Survival of a great many species, humans included. Unless you believe it’s a moot point because you and your Christian Missionary Alliance Pre-Millennialist cohorts will be raptured up from Jerusalem, leaving the rest of us to burn to a crisp, get swept away in floods or die of thirst.

26. (Ironically) lack of transparency. Funny isn’t that what you pilloried the Liberals over?

27. Halting the immigration of Syrian refugees so that the PMO can vet them before Immigration Canada is permitted to admit them.

We can only hope you’ll have your epiphany eventually. When you actually wake up on the road to Damascus and see what you have done to what used to be the best country on the planet, you won’t need to die to be in hell. Our problem is, you’ve brought us along with you.

Christina Smith