If one were to draw up an indictment of this government’s approach to politics and the public purpose, one might mention its wholesale contempt for Parliament, its disdain for the Charter of Rights and the courts’ role in upholding it, its penchant for secrecy, its chronic deceitfulness, its deepening ethical problems, its insistence on taking, at all times, the lowest, crudest path to its ends, its relentless politicization of everything. But you’d think you would need to look back over its record over several years to find examples. You wouldn’t think to see them all spread before you in the course of a single day.
Above is the last paragraph of an Andrew Coyne column that ran in the Post Media chain on Saturday. The column was titled “A Telling Day In Harper’s World of Contempt”, and in it the columnist, in eight bullet points, discusses recent actions by, and revelations about, the Harper government that highlight the abysmal level the Conservatives have sunk to in their desperate effort to cling to power.
You can read the whole column here, but points raised by Coyne include the release of email correspondence at the Duffy trial that indicates the PMO conspired with Conservative senators to tamper with an audit of Duffy’s expenses, the passage of Bill C-51 and the government’s disdain for critics who raised legitimate concerns about abuse of civil liberties, the introduction of yet another omnibus budget bill that stitches together 27 different legislative provisions, and the issuing of a fundraising email by Pierre Poilievre that contained blatant falsehoods about the Liberals’ fiscal plan released the other day — including the accusation they planned to eliminate Tax Free Savings Accounts, when what the party said was that it would roll-back the TFSA limit to $5500 after it was raised to $10,000 in the April budget.