Stephen Harper, Give me back my Country!

How have I come to be in this strange place? The world is changing and it is happening in strange ways.

Countries that for decades and longer were Dictatorships of all different stripes are becoming Democracies in different ways and the Democratic Nations seem to becoming less Democratic by the day.

In Canada we have always appeared to have an open Government. Whether one agreed with the Governing Party or not there was always communication, conversation, and debate. When the Parties comprising the House of Commons met there was rhetoric and rancor but it was Political. It stayed in the House.

The Press was also a part of this, back when they were for the most part independent they were free to ask questions of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries and their Opposition counterparts, but that seems to have disappeared too.

Now when the Government wishes to announce something it seems to just be a press release or a Photo Op far from the House of Commons, far from the questions of the Opposition and neatly packaged for the Press so they don’t even need to ask a question. Not that they get much chance of that. Between their Corporate Bosses who want the Harper Party shown in the best light possible and the Harper Party’s unwillingness to speak outside of their talking points there isn’t much to report.

Here’s the speech, here’s the Press Kit, don’t ask nasty questions or you won’t be invited to the next “Press Conference”.

The actions within the House of Commons are beyond belief. Have we had one piece of legislation moved in the House of Commons under the current regime that hasn’t had the invocation of “limit debate” tossed in? How many times are we hearing of the Harper Party wanting Committee Meetings moved in camera? Should I even mention the Marionette Theatre part deux formerly called the Senate?

Amazingly even the members of the Harper Party are starting to ask questions. The announcement of (possible?) changes to OAS caught most of them flat footed. It wasn’t even raised in Caucus? His own members knew nothing before Lord Stephen announced it in Davos? This doesn’t sound like the Canada I was born into.

No it sounds more and more like the Government from another place where the Party Leadership decided what to propose, informed the Caucus who would support it without question and it was passed into law by their House with no debate.

But the Soviets only had One Party so the debate was usually pretty brief.

Is that a nasty comparison? You bet your boots, but it fits far too well to be ignored.

The fact that some of the Party Faithful are wondering out loud about Lord Stephen and the Harper Party gives me hope that some of these folks remember their Conservative roots. Or at least their constituents have.

Joe Clark was not evil, nor was Robert Stanfield or John Diefenbaker. I may not agree with their given visions for the Country but to my knowledge they did not attack any groups with Canada, they sought to govern Canada and represent all Canadians for the betterment of Canada.

These people earned the right to be called “Right Honourable”. The members of the Stephen Harper Party have not.

I, for one, would like MY Canada back.

I want to be able to refer to the elected leader of my country as “the Right Honourable Prime Minister” and I am unable to do that as long as Lord Stephen and the Harper Party Regime are in power.

I miss my Country.

Lord Stephen and Old Age (in)Security

While our fearless leader was annoying the European Leaders in Davos he decided the time was right to let us know, back here in Canada, that he wants to monkey with Old Age Security or OAS as they like to call it.

Old is not a nice word anymore, especially when you tie it to the word Age.

Now he says he isn’t going to reduce payments or anything mean like that, he’ll just make those of us who haven’t reached age 65 wait a couple of more years to get our OAS, when we turn 67. But then again, he promised he wouldn’t touch the Income Trusts either.

As an added benefit, by waiting two more years to retire, we’ll get a little more Canada Pension Plan (CPP) money when we finally get to retire.

I’m sure that little oversight will get fixed first.

Anyhow, the announcement and the fact that fearless leader made it in a foreign country irked me a bit, but the noise I hear coming from the Harperistas is just grinding my gears.

They make it sound so wonderful, it’s just a minor inconvenience and we have all these wonderful new things to put money away for our retirement that the Harper Party introduced for us. We can put money into registered bank accounts that won’t get taxed until we retire and we can contribute to these new and shiny retirement plans that are just like company pensions but you contribute into it, not your boss.

Splendid things, lovely things, the only problem is that there are a lot of people too bust frittering away their weekly earnings on such frivolous items as food and rent and utilities that they don’t have nickel one to salt away for their retirement.

They are the working poor, and there are a lot of them.

The next time you wander into Zellers or Walmart or Timmies… look at the people serving you. They aren’t the fresh faced kids of yesteryear starting out at their first real job, they are increasingly older folks who used to have good jobs but don’t anymore.

They are the “recovering from the recession” people.

These are the people who are often working two or three usually part time jobs to keep their heads above water because their former employer doesn’t need them anymore.

And the reward for being a member of the working poor? Two extra years of struggling to make ends meet.

Now Stephen says that there will be too many Seniors in 20 years for the current OAS/CPP system to handle and the option He considers viable is moving the retirement OAS age back 2 years. We just can’t afford the future He says.

Funny thing is before we had Lord Stephen in charge, the tax and spend Liberals were running the country at a profit. We were paying down the debt and putting money in the Bank. And now we are not. Lord Stephen put us back into deficit financing before the recession.

We would have been able to afford to let people get their OAS at age 65 but the Harper Party messed that up for us.

Thanks, Steve.

The real irony for me is that at the same time that Lord Stephen wants me to tighten my belt and work extra years he still hasn’t touched the Federal Government pension… the one the Tax Payers’ Association now calls Platinum Plated. The same Tax Payers’ Association that had some guy named Stephen Harper at the helm that whined and puled about the Gold Plated Pension that our MPs were getting.

Even better, Lord Stephen has been chucking the party faithful into the revolving door Senate for 8 years at a time… and they are eligible for about $30,000.00 per year in pension when their term is up.

I gotta get me a job like that.