Canada's prime minister wants to make it harder for people to vote against him
Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood faced censorship in the national press late last week for her satirical take on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hair. It might have been a rather amusing episode if it wasn’t symptomatic of darker, Orwellian trends that have marked Harper’s nine years in office.
Stephen Marche’s article in the New York Times mid-month does an excellent job of summarizing how Harper has pulled tight the reins of power, stifled criticism and eroded the freedoms of Canadians. But it is in the prime minister’s assaults on the most fundamental of democratic acts, a citizen’s right to vote, that Harper’s lust for control finds its most disturbing outlet.
Not confident of winning re-election on merit in October, he’s pushed through a series of legal changes spearheaded by the perversely named Fair Elections Act. Harper’s front man for the task, the aptly titled democratic reform minister, Pierre Poilievre, brushed off critics, claiming the changes are “common sense”. But it’s more likely that, after winning by an uncomfortably small margin in the last election and, after nine years, having the distinct honor of the lowest job creation numbers since World War II and least economic growth since the 1960s, Harper is making sure potential naysayers have a harder time accessing the polls.
READ MORE: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/28/canada-stephen-harper-harder-to-vote
Canada government suspends scientist for folk song about prime minister
An environmental scientist working for a Canadian government agency has been suspended and will be investigated for recording a protest song about the prime minister, Stephen Harper, according to union representatives.
The song is called Harperman and was written by Tony Turner, who worked at Environment Canada and is, in his spare time, “a mainstay on the Ottawa folk music scene”, according to a biography on his website.
The song, which is recorded with a backing choir and a double bass, with Turner himself on the guitar, contains lyrics like “no respect for environment / Harperman, it’s time for you to go”, and “no more cons, cons, cons / we want you gone, gone gone”.
Turner’s union representatives told the CBC that Turner was being accused of having “violated the departmental code of values and ethics in that the writing and performing of this song somehow impeded his ability to impartially study migratory birds”.
“We will stand up for its members who face the prospect of being disciplined for exercising their democratic rights as citizens. The supreme court of Canada has confirmed that public service workers, like all Canadian citizens, benefit from freedom of expression,” Debi Daviau, the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the union which represents Turner, told the Ottawa Citizen.
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