CON-cave and CON-vex

When an issue comes up-  whether initiated by them or not -  Harper & Co decide how to handle it based on two motivators:  covering their ass, and how they can use the situation to forward the goals of their party.
Several recent events demonstrate this well: the Tamil refugee claimants; the Employment Equity complaint  made by one person; the announcement to build more prisons. 

Here Stevie does CON-cave politics:  extremely shallow, superficial response very weak on research, long-term planning or projections, and devoid of any truth as to why he is taking that particular action.  The  EE complaint was one of hundreds of similar complaints made every year and routinely addressed by whichever department is involved, but the CONs decide to cash in on this one by having not one, but two high profile Ministers show up within a couple of days to give interviews.  They take the relatively minor incident, make sure it develops into a bigger one, then use it to appeal to their base and to set up changes to policies they had already decided to change in any event.  Time to review employment equity!!!! they boldly shout.  Guess what?  It’s constantly being reviewed as are most federal programs.  But the CONs grab this one minor complaint,  wave it around, massage the message, and charge in with heroic words and swords well sharpened to hack and slash according to their narrow ideology.

Similarly, the CONs are creating havoc with the Tamil refugee claimants,  taking this incident, pulling out the tough talk to make sure they don’t take flack from their base, and stirring things up to use this occurrence to push their tough on crime and war or terror agendas publicly.  Look at who they send out:  Not Kenney, Minister of Immigration, but Toews, Minister of Public Safety.  Why?  Because they want to forward their never ending get tough policies by creating a crisis which they can then claim to be quelling.  Toews is out there ridiculously trying to label the claimants as victims of human trafficking, terrorists, and members of organized crime all at once while adding in the storm-crow words of prophetic doom: the latest boatload of asylum seekers is but a "test boat" that will be followed by others.
    
Yet nothing is being done to actually deal logically with not only this situation, but lay out good legislation and policies for the future as we anticipate many more political and climate refugees.  Instead, the result will be more hasty decisions and haphazard policies tossed together on the fly as the CONs’ priorities remain massaging the message.

Sometimes the CONs manage to tie a couple of issues together superficially in order to pursue their true agenda.  The plan to build more prisons and the resulting fall-out is a good example.  Day couldn’t sell the plan on unreported criminals, but watch it, Canada! There’s still plenty of crime out there!  Nicholson sets the stage by expanding the definition of serious crimes claiming these lesser offenses are related to that big, scary beast – organized crime.  Guess what? Hang-‘em high Toews frowns like all the storms of the century in one and warns us of…organized crime coming at us from the high seas!!!!!  Oh my!  Crime here, crime there, now crime coming in by the boatloads!!!!  Now were getting’ ascairt!!!!  All that crime and terrorists as well!!!!!

Lots of noise, folks, but very little action.  At least no reasonable action that will address these issues through sound planning.

But there’s the CON-vex at work behind the scenes.  Here’s where Canadians will get more than they ever expected or voted for.  That’s where the real Harper plans hide out.
 
While we have been subject to the stupid that is named Clement, Day, and Toews these past few weeks as they contradict themselves day after day, offer up vague, nonsensical comments, and make ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims, the CONs are hard at work figuring out how to use these issues and how to create others that will justify the changes they plan to make in order to reach their real goals.

In order to figure out what those real goals are, Canadians need to look behind the diversions and superficial reactions of the CONs and see what major changes they have made while using non-credible arguments to do so.  The list is long, but ties into only a few things:  secure the ability to work in almost complete secrecy, reduce the public’s access to information to practically nothing, situate themselves so that public servants and public departments serve the CON party and not the public.  There are other goals as well, but those three would give them almost total control of the country.

They could push through what they want without Canadians knowing until too late; hide the details of how and why changes were made; invent whatever reality they wanted to message the public; shut off avenues for us to find the truth ourselves; effectively muzzle public servants; have the entire public service and all of their resources working for them.  The opposition can scream all it wants, but without facts obtained through ATIP, it's little more than noise.

That’s why, my equally screwed fellow Canadians, Harper cancelled the long form census, has been systematically replacing key personnel in the public service, has been testing the waters by seeing what he can get away with in using federal departmental sites to post his propaganda, why he has been investing our money into greater security and prisons, why he has been expanding the power of law enforcement, why he canceled the long form...  The on-going fear factors?  Those justify violating our privacy and due process rights and have the added advantage of keeping us distracted by playing on our emotions.

Conservative supporters as well as left of right should oppose this Harper government.  I doubt very much that any but a few rabid fanatics really agree with a government having so much power as well as the desire and means to deny us our right to know what they are up to and why.