Time to rein in the destroyer of Canada's support system

Stephen Harper vulnerable after all: Goar

After bulldozing through opposition for years, the prime minister gets stuck in a thicket of problems.

It took a while to find the chinks in Stephen Harper’s armour. But Canadians have done it now.

They are chipping away at the prime minister’s policies on everything from electoral reform to military procurement. Advocacy groups have raised red flags, the media have highlighted the damage he is doing to people’s lives and communities and the courts have reined him in. But the primary thrust is coming from citizens who don’t like what is happening to their country.
 

The latest manifestation was the July 4 Federal Court ruling striking down the government’s cutbacks to medical care for refugees. Justice Anne Mactavish said the two-year-old policy “shocks the conscience and outrages our standards of decency.” She gave Immigration Minister Chris Alexander four months to bring Ottawa’s treatment of asylum seekers into line with the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual treatment of any person. The doctors, lawyers and children’s activists who brought the case to court were relieved and heartened.
 

Alexander immediately announced he would appeal the ruling. Although the fight is not over, the Tories lost the first round badly.
 

That has become the pattern. The government encounters a barrier it can’t bulldoze out of the way. It lashes out at its challengers, vowing to reassert its will. But what follows in most cases is a grudging dilution of the policy.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/07/10/stephen_harper_vulnerable_after_all_goar.html