Conservatism and Behavior

[Mighty AC]

Except Harper is not incompetent. You just don't like him.

He's almost exactly opposite of the leader he promised to be. You're right that this deception was not accidental, which makes him more of a liar than incompetent. The lack of honesty, transparency, accountability, and accessibility coupled with his willful disregard for evidence in pursuit of ideological goals make him far worse than incompetent. A man willing to not only ignore science and evidence but actually hide it and shut down its collection goes beyond inept to actually being dangerous.

It's possible that Mulcair and Trudeau have no intentions of keeping their promises of accountability....but Harper has already proven that he will not be honest and is not beholden to the people. If we care about open, accountable government meant to serve the population, then Harper has to go. Any vote cast for him is an endorsement of the 'Benign Dictatorship', that Harper once railed against himself, and an acceptance of an eroding democracy.

[Canada_First]

He's almost exactly opposite of the leader he promised to be. You're right that this deception was not accidental, which makes him more of a liar than incompetent. The lack of honesty, transparency, accountability, and accessibility coupled with his willful disregard for evidence in pursuit of ideological goals make him far worse than incompetent. A man willing to not only ignore science and evidence but actually hide it and shut down its collection goes beyond inept to actually being dangerous.

It's possible that Mulcair and Trudeau have no intentions of keeping their promises of accountability....but Harper has already proven that he will not be honest and is not beholden to the people. If we care about open, accountable government meant to serve the population, then Harper has to go. Any vote cast for him is an endorsement of the 'Benign Dictatorship', that Harper once railed against himself, and an acceptance of an eroding democracy.

We live in troubling times to be sure and our way of life is under attack by fundamentalist Muslims who wish to install Islamic style theocracy governments in every western nation. It's imperative that we install legislation to lake this not possible. This legislation will not have any effect on the vast majority of people living in Canada. Only those who wish to undermine the authority of our government need to worry.

I think PM Harper has been a good PM. Who was our alternative at the time? Dion? Ignatieff? Canada said a resounding NO.

[Mighty AC]

We live in troubling times to be sure and our way of life is under attack by fundamentalist Muslims who wish to install Islamic style theocracy governments in every western nation. It's imperative that we install legislation to lake this not possible. This legislation will not have any effect on the vast majority of people living in Canada. Only those who wish to undermine the authority of our government need to worry.

I think PM Harper has been a good PM. Who was our alternative at the time? Dion? Ignatieff? Canada said a resounding NO.

Harper has run a dishonest, closed door, secretive government beholden to fossil fuel interests rather than Canadians. If you are fine with leadership that has no connection to constituents, hides information from the public, erases, covers up and obscures evidence then great...Harper is your guy. However, if you think that it is better to have open, accountable government beholden to Canadian voters, then Harper has to go. I get that governments are forced to make difficult decisions, but I would rather they convince us of the necessity than make them in secret and then hide and obscure any information about those decisions.

[Canada_First]

Harper has run a dishonest, closed door, secretive government beholden to fossil fuel interests rather than Canadians. If you are fine with leadership that has no connection to constituents, hides information from the public, erases, covers up and obscures evidence then great...Harper is your guy. However, if you think that it is better to have open, accountable government beholden to Canadian voters, then Harper has to go. I get that governments are forced to make difficult decisions, but I would rather they convince us of the necessity than make them in secret and then hide and obscure any information about those decisions.

I didn't notice any secrecy. All bills before the house were available to anyone on the web for months before anything passed in the HoC. National security is a concern for our PM maybe more so than any time in out recent history. PM Harper is doing his best to protect Canadians from a very real threat. He's telling us everything he can within those boundaries. IMHO.

[Mighty AC]

I didn't notice any secrecy. All bills before the house were available to anyone on the web for months before anything passed in the HoC.

The fact that you didn't notice is the point. Harper uses many tactics to ensure you don't notice and instead stay focused on an almost nonexistent terrorist threat. The CPC uses omnibus bills to bury dozens and dozens of unrelated law changes. For instance he once gutted environmental protections in an over 400 page budget bill, that he then shut down debate on to ensure the changes could not be discussed in the house. In fact, debate has been shut down only 150 times during the entire history of this nation, prior to Harper. Yet Harper, shut down debate 100 times over the last 10 years.

He also does not answer unscripted questions, he rarely attends question period, CPC MPs are only permitted to repeat talking points and must attend pre-committee meetings where they are given their positions and sound bites. Harper has gutted scientific research, gagged the scientists and in some cases even destroyed information. He has made it illegal for environmental charities to challenge or call out government decisions and has even increased the budget for auditors to harass these agencies. Yeah, I wonder why you haven't noticed secrecy. Keep worrying about that Muslim threat though, considering more Canadians have been killed by vending machines than all forms of terrorism combined. Of which Islamic terrorists represent only a tiny fraction, but hey they are the most palatable target for old, white, Christians. Dance puppet, dance.

[Argus]

He's almost exactly opposite of the leader he promised to be.

He's been reasonably prudent in fiscal management. Good, though not great. It'd be interesting to push rewind and see what would have happened had there been no world wide recession, but the laws of physics rule against it. He's done a good job in managing various programs, though again, not great. I like some of what he's done to streamline and clean up immigration, but certainly don't like him pandering to the ethnic vote and especially raising immigration numbers to get votes. I didn't expect a lot more out of him. All that stuff about more open government, well, it would have been nice, but opposition leaders always promise stuff like that until the power is in their hands and they realize how much that 'open information flow' can embarrass them time and again.

It's possible that Mulcair and Trudeau have no intentions of keeping their promises of accountability..

I don't consider that to be anything like the most important issue we're facing, and it certainly won't affect my vote. Handling the economy and taxation are more important. Immigration is more important, as well as our relationships abroad. I don't like the promise of the opposition parties to drastically raise my taxes, or to reshape politics with a new voting system. I don't like their elevation of immigrants over Canadians, and their focus on doing everything in their prime ministerial power to make Quebec happy at the expense of everyone and anyone else. I also don't like their social engineering promises. And I think Mulcair's promises would bankrupt us even if his party's naked hostility towards business didn't drive unemployment through the roof.