Ring-leader of a pack of white-collar thugs who repress discussion and dissent while smashing and vandalizing anything they can get their hands  on in their prolonged post-coup orgy of gratuitous violence.

May all of what they are bringing on themselves hasten home to them and may freedom and peace replace the collateral damage of their presence

However, that should not require explicit loyalty to the government, but only loyalty to the Canadian citizens who duly elected this government.

Instead, what this policy makes clear is that in the unfortunate case where the interests of the government differ from the interests (in the global sense) of Canadians, the duty of the bureaucrat is to the government.

Now of course, this is mostly about symbolism, but (1) symbols have real (if subtle) consequence and (2) this symbol makes it clear that the bureaucrats represent the government in power, not the people of Canada. 

Even Stephen Harper counts as a public servant, right?  I mean technically, not in the sense that he actually serves the public.

They have no interest in opening their eyes or ears, they just want to further the goals of the flagship and tow the party line.

It is also an expression of the populace’s trust in government (not trust they’ll do what we want, but that they are loyal to the citizens of their nation), and one of the fundamental cultural differences between the United States (where the government is all about checks and balances) and Canada and the UK.

I used to hate it, and it absolutely has it costs, (especially in examples like this), but as time as gone on, I have actually found myself more in favor (favour!) of the system over its American counterparts.

However, it *does* require a fundamental belief that the parties that you intensely dislike are not filled with fundamentally evil or malicious people.  Merely ones who are completely wrong.

Feelings that, I admit, are being put to the test with legislation like this.  However, no party lasts forever.  Now is the time to the other parties to pledge that they will reverse this when they eventually get into power.  Something to hold them to when “but they did it” becomes tempting.

Co-operation? Sure. That’s admirable… two parties working together on a common goal. Mergers? Hell no.

I don’t want silver spoon corporate entitlement flooding all 3 or 4 parties. We have Harper’s Conservatives, the “lite”/slightly left version of the same thing (wearing red jerseys) and some real alternatives.

Electoral reform would be swell though.

http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/rcmp-commissioner-bob-paulson-arrest-and-charge-stephen-harper-for-treason#intro

Unless they SHOULD be checked, but the other parties just plain aren’t doing their job?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-re-brand-government-in-stephen-harpers-name/article1929175/

A scary, scary man.

————————————————————-
From: The Office Of Stephen Harper
Re: BEST PRICES FOR BONER PILLS ON THE WEB !!!!!!!
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And a lot of them would have a had time understanding that it is not a real email but just something typed on a sheet of paper. Of course, a whole witch hunt could be launched before that simple ruse is detected. And of course we’ve all had the “boner pill” spam with a friends name on it, so maybe that starts to happen.

A day or three later, a citizen, who understands just how things work, instituted a 1-800 ‘Snitch Snitch’ line:  so that people who suspected that their neighbours had called the government’s Snitch Line, could report THEM.

Withing 24 hours, the government reversed itself and McKenna cancelled the Snitch Line. 

I can still recall watching on TV the then-Premier McKenna, in a reporter scrum (remember those?), who turned to a reporter who had just asked him why they had cancelled the Snitch Line.  The straight-talking politician replied: “‘Because we screwed up!”.

(That’s when I decided I had to move here.)

What’s needed here is another Snitch-Snitch line.

/ Snitch lines are soooo Stasi…

// It was a McKenna Goverment policy that any phone number listed in the phone book (remember those?) had to be answered by a human being.

/// It was a McKenna Goverment initiative to lay fibre-optic Internet backbone throughout the province – in the early 1990′s, the first in Canada.

I think the Conservatives are confusing managers with owners.

See our friends South of the border for an example of the cost of such.