Libel chill to stifle public inquiry. Intimidation to turn national institutions into servants of the party in power. Trash talk to destabilize opponents. A "black book" of procedural dirty tricks to disrupt parliamentary committees.
Like former U.S. president Richard Nixon, Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants power "not to govern the nation but to undermine the government," Trent University historian Dimitry Anastakis and Saskatchewan journalist Jeet Heer write in Britain's Guardian Unlimited. Harper, they continue, "sees many Canadian institutions as illegitimate, not just in need of reform but worth attacking root and branch."
Last March, Harper made Canadian history by suing the leader of the Official Opposition, the deputy Liberal leader, a prominent Liberal frontbencher and the party for "impugning" his reputation through "malicious and reckless defamatory statements." The Liberals alleged the Conservatives offered dying Independent MP Chuck Cadman a $1-million life insurance policy to vote against the Liberal minority government's 2005 spring budget.
Harper subsequently dropped St ©phane Dion, Michael Ignatieff and Ralph Goodale from his case but is still proceeding against the party. He has threatened Dion that "this will prove to be in court the biggest mistake the leader of the Liberal party ever made."
Last weekend, the RCMP confirmed it has interviewed Cadman's widow and daughter but is refusing to say whether it has launched an official investigation.
The Cadman affair is the most high-profile example of the Conservatives' libel chill offensive. Nova Scotia Liberal MP Robert Thibault has been barred by the federal ethics commissioner from asking further questions about the Brian Mulroney-Karlheinz Schreiber relationship because the former prime minister slapped him with a lawsuit over his comments in a television interview.
Thibault is standing his ground and challenging parliament to address the growing libel chill threat, raising the spectre that frivolous lawsuits could silence legitimate parliamentary inquiry and the role of the opposition to hold the government accountable.
Ontario Liberal MP Mark Holland is being sued by Environment Minister John Baird's chief of staff, Chris Froggatt, for publicly suggesting he "interfered with or attempted to interfere with a police investigation into Minister Baird."
Last fall, Baird was interviewed twice by Ontario Provincial Police detectives over allegations Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien, a long-time friend of Baird's, offered to help an opponent get a federal job if he dropped out of the 2006 mayoral race. News last December that the OPP was set to forward its dossier to the RCMP to probe any role Baird may have played prompted Froggatt to make a series of calls to a detective and the superintendent of the anti-rackets unit. Froggatt claims he only made the calls after getting inquiries from the media and calls Holland's accusations "seriously defamatory."
Also last fall, Dion had to issue a public apology to Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, for allegedly defaming him over accusations Soudas interfered on behalf of a Montreal real estate developer involved in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit with the federal public works department.
Elections Canada is the latest federal institution to feel the full force of Harperite fury. Last Friday, Ontario Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre and a group of Conservative backbenchers engaged in a mocking chant to attack the respected federal elections agency. The Conservatives charge that other parties are also guilty of "in and out" bookkeeping, but Elections Canada is only going after Conservatives. Conservative backbenchers chanted "In and out; In and out" as Poilievre repeatedly chanted back "Where's Elections Canada?"
The chief electoral officer and the elections commissioner are both Harper appointees.
Here's a list of other Conservative assaults on Canada's public institutions: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission president Linda Keen, fired; the two top officials of the Canadian Wheat Board, removed; the Law Commission of Canada, closed; the Court Challenges Program, killed; several senior environmental and scientific positions, eliminated; several officers of Parliament -- the former ethics commissioner, the former chief electoral officer and the former information commissioner --all retired after high-profile run-ins with the Harperites; the chair and advisory panel of the Immigration and Refugee Board, all resigned.
Last week, Auditor General Sheila Fraser blew the whistle on a Conservative plan to require her and other officers of Parliament to clear all public communications through the Prime Minister's Office.
Imagine how that could have gagged Fraser's incendiary report on the Liberal sponsorship scandal in February 2004 -- the issue that brought the Harperites to power. Imagine further how the Conservatives could have been libel-chilled from probing it.
Like schoolyard bullies at recess, the Conservatives have been trash-talking Dion just before daily question period. Toronto Liberal MP Bob Rae calls it "ritual denunciation."
The Conservative chair has blocked a parliamentary committee's investigation of the Cadman affair for months by walking out on every meeting.
Hostility towards the federal power, indeed, towards government itself, spawned the Harperites' ancestor, the Reform party. But their assaults on Parliament and their derision and coercion of Canada's federal institutions are more than partisanship run amok. Degrading and undermining democratic institutions degrades and undermines democracy itself.
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