About Frances Russell:

Frances Russell is a Free Press columnist.

• Harper driven by libertarian ideology, not reality

  Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quoted in the Globe and Mail on July 10, 2009, as saying, "You know, there's two schools in economics on this. One is that there are some good taxes and the other is that there are no good taxes. I'm in the latter category. I don't believe that any taxes are good taxes." Four days later, on July 13, 2009, Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson responded: "Only libertarian anarchists believe that all taxes are bad, and that society can get along without them... Presumably, there lurks inside the prime minister an anger about much of contemporary society that has been built by taxpayers' money, an anger contained by the political reality that the prime minister can't do much about this state of affairs."

  View Full Column | 02/8/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Fired environmentalist sees conspiracy

  A B.C. environmentalist claims in a sworn affidavit the Harper government labelled him and his organization, ForestEthics, an "enemy of the government of Canada" and an "enemy of the people of Canada" and threatened to pull the charitable status of its funder, the Tides Canada Foundation, because of ForestEthics' opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker project exporting tarsands oil to China. Tides Canada is a major social-policy and environmental organization tackling poverty, climate change and social justice issues. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is a former board member.

  View Full Column | 02/1/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Canada exports jobs along with its oil

  Canada is an emerging energy superpower that's the most attractive investment opportunity in the world, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a London business audience in July 2006. Today, Canada's dependence on Middle Eastern oil is growing. It is now as large, proportionately, as the Americans' dependence.

  View Full Column | 01/25/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Harper creating 13 kinds of citizens

  At last, it's out in the open for all to see. The Harper Conservatives are not just abandoning the national government's leadership role in medicare and social policy. They are ending its constitutional responsibility to promote a common Canadian citizenship by ensuring "reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable rates of taxation."

  View Full Column | 01/19/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Manitoba loses under equalization change

  Manitoba loses $200 million while Alberta gains $800 million annually under the new federal-provincial cost-sharing agreement federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled to his provincial counterparts in Victoria, B.C., last week. That's because Ottawa is moving to per-capita funding for its share of provincial health costs but keeping the cap on equalization transfers to "have-not" provinces, Manitoba Finance Minister Stan Struthers says.

  View Full Column | 01/11/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Harper's latest lunge at domination

  Prime Minister Stephen Harper treats Parliament like his kitchen tap. He turns it on and off at will. In December 2008, facing certain defeat in the House of Commons, he simply prorogued it, setting a constitutional precedent that flipped Canadian parliamentary democracy on its head, making the prime minister Parliament's master rather than merely "first among equals."

  View Full Column | 01/4/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Rule by law, or is it rule of law?

  Is Canada governed by the rule of law -- or only by the laws acceptable to the party in power? The difference, obviously, is not mere semantics. It is the difference between democracy and authoritarianism, between constitutional government and the exercise of arbitrary power by a temporary partisan majority. These fundamental issues arise from the Harper Conservatives' decision to abolish the Canadian Wheat Board's single desk without holding a vote among western wheat and barley growers as required by the CWB's statute.

  View Full Column | 12/14/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Moral compass spins like chopper

  A month and a half away from their sixth anniversary in power, and seven months into their third term, the Conservatives' penchant for playing hardball and dirty tricks against opponents -- and fast and loose with the truth -- could be catching up to them. Last week, the Ottawa press gallery obtained a series of emails from the Department of National Defence flatly contradicting statements in Parliament by both Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The issue involved MacKay's commandeering of an Armed Forces Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopter to pick him up in a basket at a remote Newfoundland fishing lodge and take him to the Gander airport at a cost of $130,000 to then board a military jet to a London, Ont., ribbon-cutting ceremony in July 2010.

  View Full Column | 12/7/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Ideology just ain't what it used to be

  A new cottage industry in Canada has sprung up from the May 2 election giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper his "strong, stable, majority Conservative government." It's a lively debate over which political ideology will wither and die as a result of the seismic political shift. Will it be the left? The centre? The new right as embodied by Harper's Conservatives? Will the centre-left coalesce? If it does, can it win?

  View Full Column | 11/30/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Whither the public good?

  Our political language about taxes has changed. Gone is "ability to pay." The new catchphrases are "user pay" and "pay as you go." The bottom-line message to citizens is "if you can't pay, you don't go." You don't get to drive into our congested cities without a toll; you don't get your garbage collected without a fee; and who knows, soon you won't get to visit a doctor without a charge. So pervasive is everyone-for-himself that there is hardly anyone talking about concepts such as "the public good" and "a rising tide lifts all boats."

  View Full Column | 11/23/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Demise of democracy

  PIERRE Trudeau started it. Stephen Harper is finishing it off. The "it" is the effective demise of parliamentary democracy and the installation of "court government" ruled by an all-powerful prime minister and his hand-picked, unelected, unaccountable "courtiers."

  View Full Column | 11/16/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Canada's culture is to cave

  Twenty-three years ago, on Nov. 21, 1988, Brian Mulroney's Conservatives won their second majority government and signed the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (subsequently the North American Free Trade Agreement), although a clear majority of Canadians -- 52 per cent to 43 per cent -- voted for parties opposed to it. Neither Mulroney, nor his successors, nor the big business lobby that spent $5 million helping him "sell" free trade by branding its opponents "liars," have delivered on their promise to gain Canada "secure access" to the U.S. market.

  View Full Column | 11/9/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Canadians can't afford their wealthy

  Jim Stanford, chief economist for the Canadian Auto Workers, has carved out a tiny corner for progressive economic thought in a field dominated by his colleagues on the fiscal and economic right with his articles for The Globe and Mail and commentary on CBC-TV. In his latest Facts From The Fringe newsletter, Stanford reports that Canada now has 61 billionaires, meaning Canada boasts not simply a one per cent to 99 per cent inequality, but a 0.0002 per cent to 99.9998 disparity.

  View Full Column | 11/2/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Killing CWB nets nothing

  Wilf "Butch" Harder, former director of the Canadian Wheat Board and chairman of its former farmer advisory committee, says the federal government's legislation to abolish the CWB's single desk imposes "a corporate takeover of agriculture... a vertically-integrated system." And, he warns, "Canadian consumers should start to be a little concerned." Vertical integration, Harder continues, means farmers will soon have no choice but to buy everything, from seed to fertilizer to marketing services, from one of the big private agribusiness giants. At that point, they lose control over their input costs, their negotiating power and ultimately, their livelihoods.

  View Full Column | 10/26/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Warfare it was, warfare it remains

  PRIME Minister Stephen Harper won his coveted majority by convincing Canadians his radical days were behind him. So what are Canadians to make of the Conservatives' recent conduct? They are using their majority on parliamentary committees to block investigations of politically embarrassing issues by going in camera, where MPs are bound by secrecy and can be found in contempt of Parliament if they talk.

  View Full Column | 10/12/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• The danger of electoral injustice

  Recent political history in Manitoba and Canada demonstrates it's time to rethink and reform Manitoba's -- and Canada's -- antiquated, unrepresentative and profoundly undemocratic electoral system. In 1999, Gary Doer's New Democrats won 31 seats with 44.23 per cent of the vote. The Conservatives captured 25 seats with 40.58 per cent. Less than four more percentage points in popular vote translated into six more seats. Voter turnout was 70.6 per cent.

  View Full Column | 10/6/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• 'No plans' to privatize, then and now

  Progressive Conservative Leader Hugh McFadyen can't get the Manitoba Hydro privatization monkey off his back because privatization is as fundamental to the PCs as universal social programs are to the NDP. Earlier this year, McFadyen's star candidate in Seine River, former Liberal and Winnipeg city councillor Gord Steeves, advocated selling off Manitoba Public Insurance.

  View Full Column | 09/28/2011 2:38 PM | 0

• Rich-poor gap speeds up in Canada

  The U.S. may lead the income inequality parade among major industrialized countries, but the gap between rich and poor is growing faster in Canada than in the U.S., the Conference Board of Canada says.  The 1990s enjoyed the fastest economic growth in this generation. The last time the economy grew so rapidly was in the 1950s and 1960s. But back then, the top one per cent of income earners took home a mere eight per cent of economic growth. Today, the top one per cent’s share has ballooned to almost 40 per cent, five times what it was 50 years ago.

  View Full Column | 09/21/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Canada's oil ethics confused

  DOES it make sense to you that a nation would require its own citizens to use insecure and "unethical" oil to ensure it can export secure and "ethical" oil to its neighbour? No? But that's what's happening to Canadians.

  View Full Column | 09/14/2011 3:17 AM | 0

• Conservative 'coalition' headed for a fall?

  Political paradigm shifts begin with triumphalism and end in reversal of fortune. When the Soviet Union crumbled in the 1990s, one U.S. historian declared the "end of history." His conceit was followed by al-Qaida, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq and trillion-dollar deficits.

  View Full Column | 09/7/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• State funeral could backfire on Harper

  PRIME Minister Stephen Harper's decision to give the late NDP leader Jack Layton a state funeral can be parsed two ways: a noble gesture or a Machiavellian political manoeuvre to further marginalize his original foe, the leaderless, languishing Liberals. But no one, least of all Harper himself, could have predicted Canadians' week-long outpouring of emotion. Was it a fleeting historical moment? Or something more profound? If the former, political normalcy will return with the opening of Parliament Sept. 21. If the latter, the state funeral could turn out to be Harper's biggest political mistake yet.

  View Full Column | 09/2/2011 7:03 AM | 0

• Triumphal pride now invites a fall later

  Last weekend, Prime Minister Stephen Harper entertained his Calgary Southwest constituency Stampede breakfast with a bellicose, partisan speech dripping with what his political opponents called "triumphalism." "Under our Conservative government, Canada is more united than it has ever been. My friends, I think something has changed. I believe the long Liberal era is genuinely truly ending. As with disco balls and bell-bottoms, Canadians have moved on," Harper said to laughter and applause.

  View Full Column | 07/13/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Playing politics of envy

  Behold the curious role reversal. The political right has always accused the political left of fomenting the politics of envy and class warfare because it criticizes social and economic inequality and the growing gap between rich and poor.

  View Full Column | 07/6/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Harper's Teflon coat thickens

  Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Teflon coat keeps thickening. Rarely, if ever, have the nation's power elites, from its business community, small and big, to its print, radio and television media, so completely aligned themselves with a government. Since his majority victory May 2, a triumphalist aura has enveloped the man and his party. Normally circumspect commentators herald the dawning of the Harper Age -- a government destined to be elected and re-elected into the foreseeable future, thanks to its crushing of one foe (the Liberals) and the power elites' hostility towards the only other (the New Democrats.)

  View Full Column | 06/29/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Senate 'reform' dangerous

  Contrary to conventional wisdom, the most powerful democratic leader in the world is not the U.S. president. He is our very own Canadian prime minister. The American head of state routinely finds his agenda blocked by either or both houses of Congress as well as a politically activist Supreme Court. But a Canadian prime minister with a majority government has no checks and balances on his power outside of tradition and his own democratic sensibilities. He controls the House of Commons, the appointed Senate poses few if any obstacles and the Canadian Supreme Court, by custom, generally restricts itself to interpreting, not making, the law.

  View Full Column | 06/1/2011 1:00 AM | 0

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