Robocalls scandal challenges faith in Canada

Letter to the Barrie Examiner November 21 2012

Like many in this country, I was born to immigrant parents who came here from Holland after the devastation of the Second World War. My family spent most of the war under the thumb of the Nazi regime. My aunt recalled small acts of daily control, terror and atrocities inflicted by a dictatorship that did not understand or respect democracy, the rule of law or even basic human rights!

Ultimately it was Canada that liberated Holland, and it was this act and the strength, courage and ideals of the Canadian soldiers — the Canadian people — that helped them to choose Canada to be their new home.

My parents went on to raise me and my brother to enjoy our heritage, but also to love and respect Canada, its history and our place in the world, so much so that in 1992 I joined the Canadian Forces, to give back to the country that has given so much to me and mine.

Both my parents are gone now and to some extent I am glad.

Glad because they will not have to see the Canada of today, the Canada that is so different from the one they knew, the Canada I chose to serve, which too many fought and died for.

When I was growing up I truly believed I was living in a very special country, one that stood for fairness, a country that believed that together we are better then the sum of our parts, and that if we dream it, and work hard we can achieve anything.

Over the years Canada’s governments have become progressively less concerned with the Canadian people, our ambitions or our ideals. Increasingly successive governments have focused their attention on getting elected, serving special interest groups or following narrow party ideology. For too long government after government has forgotten who they serve, and why they exist, and it’s our fault.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has taken us to new lows. It was first elected to power after years of Liberal majority governments plagued by scandals, back-room deals, autocratic decision-making and a lack of transparency.

Our new PM promised to strengthen the parliamentary checks and balances, end patronage appointments, increase transparency and access to information, reform the senate and get government spending under control.

Of course, little of this ever took place.

During the 2006 election campaign, Harper was promising to restore accountability while at the same time shuffling money around to try and avoid spending limits which became their first scandal — now known as the in-and-out affair. But this was just the beginning.

Harper and company have been banking on Canadian meekness, or apathy, and systematically destroying the very institutions that keep our politicians in check, cheekily saying that these same institutions are preventing them from doing the will of the people.

The Conservatives have prorogued Parliament for crass political reasons, they have withheld documents from Parliament, and they have hamstrung the parliamentary committees that do the lion’s share of the work, centralizing power unto the prime minister.

They have been appointing patronage positions more freely then any prime minister in history. They have used preposterously large omnibus budget bills to pass legislation that is fundamentally changing our country, and then limiting debate as much as possible.

Press releases and other communications now have to be approved by the Prime Minister’s Office for all government departments and even Conservative members of Parliament. Access to information has been restricted through red tape, increased fees and even document tampering.

When inconvenient research gets in the way of party ideology it is dismissed as merely an opinion, and if it stems from something under the government’s control like Statistics Canada, the budget is slashed, workers axed and the mandate meddled with.

Attack ads, media bashing, G-20, Charlestown, Helena Guergis, F-35s, the Chuck Cadman affair: the list goes on and on.

My faith, challenged of late, finally died. Since the last election there have been indications of voter suppression here and there, growing to alarming numbers.

The ‘robocall’ scandal, as it has become known, added a new dimension.

Apparently the first misleading calls began three days prior to election day and so far look to have taken place in at least 234 ridings, and still Elections Canada drags its feet on this investigation.

It’s clear to me that Elections Canada is trying to stall and avoid a confrontation with the Conservatives, hoping that maybe it will all go away in the next election. Why is this the case?

Simple: they don’t think we care, and from everything I see we don’t.

We have a government that is trying to make fundamental changes to our way of life, that seems to have done everything it could to win a majority that may not even be real.

We should be uncharacteristically Canadian and be really, really, really angry, and vocal about it.

We should demand a full inquiry. We should write our MPs, we should write letters to the editor, and we should protest.

Elections Canada has received more than 1,000 complaints to date, and usually that is only the tip of the iceberg as most people never complain. I expect that there were, in fact, hundreds of thousands of these calls and that we may actually have an illegal government in power passing legislation that is in fact not legitimate, damaging our country and all of our lives.

This is not the Canada my parents emigrated to; those Canadians knew what was right and were willing to make a stand.

We have not lived up to the example of our forebearers, and we are failing our children.

Ron Fischer

Alliston