By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
It has been less than nine months since the extreme right-wing Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper won its first majority and, already, its oft-denied “hidden agenda” is beginning to emerge.
Having won their first majority only after more than half a decade as Canada’s minority federal government, the Conservatives have been so boisterously triumphal at having finally seized full control of both houses of Parliament, that they can barely constrain themselves.
The Harper Conservatives will prove to be the most loyal servant the Top One Percent has ever had and the worst enemy the Other 99 Percent have ever had.
No longer governing under the ever-present threat of an imminent non-confidence vote and a sudden general election, the Tories have begun to loosen up and show their true colours.
It was just weeks ago that the Harper government hiked employee contributions to CPP (Canada Pension Plan) and EI ([un]Employment Insurance) while at the same time slashing federal corporate taxes by almost 10 percent, bringing them to the lowest level in the G7.
Yet where is the job-creating investment that 30 years of tax cut after tax cut after tax cut for corporations and the wealthy were supposed to engender?
Every new round of high-end tax cuts – in both Canada and the U.S. – over the past 30 years has resulted in less – not more – corporate domestic investment.
While Harper has preached sovereign (government) “austerity” – meaning cuts in health care, education and social spending – to the rest of the world, it has not quite yet arrived in Canada.
But watch out! It is about to begin in earnest.
Harper and the Tory horde won their majority by basking in the glow of a relatively strong economy produced not by anything his government had done but by strict banking regulation enacted by a previous minority Liberal government maintained in power by the NDP. Harper’s sorry Tories actually opposed those policies.
There’s nothing to hold him back now. Unless God or some other phantom fairy suddenly strikes dead a quarter of Harper’s caucus we’re stuck with him until 2015, at least.
Harper revealed in his “keynote” address to a gaggle of at least 70 mega-billionaires and more than 900 establishment economists, gangster banksters, captains of corporate capitalism and puppet political prostitutes this past week that he is now targetting Canada’s public pensions system just at a time when the massive baby-boom generation is beginning to hit retirement age en masse.
Who knows what will be next?
Fortunately, the Occupy movement has remained strong and active and continues to grow across Canada despite widespread police evictions from public property and the firm onset of winter.
I would imagine that right about now, a lot of those idiots in the Other 99 Percent (38 percent of them actually voted for Harper’s sordid Tories) are kicking themselves for their abysmal stupidity. If they aren’t now, they soon should be.