Harper IS the worst.....

Is Harper the worst prime minister in history? PART TWO

“Brian Mulroney was an appalling prime minister, appalling. But if I had to pick one prime minister over the other [between Harper and Mulroney], I would pick Mulroney.”
– Stevie Cameron, author of On the Take, the 1994 bestseller about corruption during the Mulroney years.

In the summer of 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and other world leaders arrived at a swanky resort located two hours north of Toronto to take part in the annual G8 Summit. As it turned out, the resort lies in the riding of then federal Industry Minister Tony Clement.

At that time, no one knew that Clement had lifted $50-million from the public purse – money originally allotted by parliament for alleviating congestion at Canada’s borders – and spent it beautifying his Parry Sound-Muskoka riding on things like parks, walkways, toilets and gazebos. He would later claim the money was dispersed for the G8 Summit.

But when Auditor General Shelia Fraser investigated what happened to the $50-million, she could find little paperwork showing how it was decided the money be spent. Documents later unearthed through the Access to Information Act showed Clement was encouraging mayors in his riding to apply for this cash prior to the 2008 election – and used federal civil servants to help dole it out. The NDP later accused Clement of using the money as a “slush fund” to better his chances of getting re-elected.

Still, when the $50-million scandal broke in 2011, Clement was not dropped from cabinet or even reprimanded. Instead, Prime Minister Stephen Harper put him in charge of the Treasury Board – the very entity designed to oversee spending, ethics and accountability in government. That same year, the Conservatives chopped 92 auditing positions from the civil service.

“On the Clement case, team Harper’s strategy appears to be to simply ride out the criticism,” wrote Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin at the time. “Stonewall the media and the opposition until fatigue with the issue has set in and everyone moves on. It has worked in the past. It will likely work now.”
In fact, unlike his predecessors, Harper has seemed Teflon-like in respect to how corruption scandals have clung to him. Even the trial of Senator Mike Duffy has not dented his veneer to any great extent – although this may soon change.

Yet corruption is among the litany of reasons why Stephen Harper might go down in history as Canada’s worst prime minister (a case we began to make here in Part 1 of this two-part series).

A more recent example of Harper’s proclivity for corruption was buried in the 2015 budget. After the government got rid of the long gun-registry in 2012, the RCMP was ordered to destroy its records. By then, however, an access to information request for this data had been made. The RCMP eviscerated the information anyway – which is a criminal offence if an access request is being processed. Suzanne Legault, Canada’s information commissioner, recommended charges be laid against the responsible RCMP members – which included high-ranking officers.

But in its most recent omnibus bill the Harper government simply rewrote the access laws retroactively to erase the RCMP's mishandling of gun registry records – in order to protect these officers from facing criminal charges.

READ MORE: http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/06/07/news/harper-worst-prime-minister-history-part-two