1. Bill C-61: Conservative commitment to the unenforceable and distinctly unfair, bill C-61. Why is this an important issue? Here are just a few reasons (source: http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2008/06/16/talking-points-to-defeat-bill-c-61/): “It forces you to buy media you’ve already purchased”, “it makes your devices less useful”, “consumers will be unable to influence the market by finding new uses for their existing media and copyrighted materials”, and “it makes the public domain works inaccessible”, to name but a few aspects. Read the article for more.

2. Climate Change and the environment: The recently announced environmental policies in the conservative party platform are yet again, a sad excuse at pretending to care about the environment. Not one environmental organization I could find gave it a thumbs up. “The Conservative party platform missed the opportunity to strengthen the party’s inadequate approach to global warming, and instead added more uncertainty to it. The party also failed to announce support for a key renewable energy program that’s about to expire, and did not offer a strategy to deal with the environmental impacts of runaway oil sands development.” (source: http://www.pembina.org/election2008/blog/Cons-Platform) More: “The Conservatives’ national emissions target for 2020, which is equivalent to just 3% below the 1990 level, falls far short of both the targets adopted by leading countries and of what the science tells us we need. Mr. Harper has called global warming “perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today ” That urgency is nowhere to be found in the party’s platform.” And perhaps the most impressive evidence that “doing something” will not actually destroy our economy: “Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.” (source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/29/climatechange.carbonemissions)

3. Anti-Green Energy: We are missing important alternative energy opportunities because of Harper’s bias towards the oil industry. A really tangible example is this: “the founder of a Canadian-made, 100 per cent electric car says the federal government is blocking him from selling his cars in Canada. Warehoused Zenn cars in St. Jerome, Que. (CBC) The ZENN (zero emissions, no noise) electric car is already being sold in the United States, Mexico, and Europe, where it has won awards” (source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/10/26/electriccar-zenn.html). A more abstract statement from the Toronto Sun: “Canada fails to recognize that there’s money to be made in developing a green economy, some of Canada’s brightest scientists heard yesterday at a 20-year conference reunion. ‘There is profit to be made in developing technology to fight pollution’, said Howard Ferguson, the original chairman of the historic climate Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security conference in 1988. About a dozen of some of Canada’s eminent scientific minds — Nobel Prize winners among them — shared ideas and reunited yesterday to mark the 20th anniversary of the conference in Canada and lambast the world’s inaction”. Another opinion; “the Conservatives remain the only party not to signal a renewal of support for green electricity. The ecoENERGY for Renewable Power program will run out of money this coming year, stranding billions of dollars of investment. A lack of leadership on renewable power in Canada means that investors will likely seek opportunities in the United States, which recently  announced a decision to continue its support for renewable power. Canada’s green power industry will continue to fall behind the Americans without a renewal of federal support – and this platform failed to make that commitment”. (source: http://www.pembina.org/election2008/blog/Cons-Platform)

4. Reduced Transparency: Elected on the promise of making government more open to the public, Harper has done the exact opposite. “Too often, responses to access requests are late, incomplete, or overly censored,” Information Commissioner Robert Marleau said in an introduction to his first annual report. “Too often, access is denied to hide wrongdoing, or to protect officials or governments from embarrassment, rather than to serve a legitimate confidentiality requirement”. (source: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=cf2b9830-7185-4036-bf8e-f164fca973ca&k=7741) This, combined with Harper’s reduction in press conferences (refusing to meet with the Parliamentary Press Gallery) and strangle-hold on party opinions, is not only breaking an election promise but damages Canadian democracy.

5. Telecommunications, Banking and Media Monopolies: Who likes paying higher cellular data rates than Rwanda? (source: http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/idol/2008/05/26/why-is-canada-more-expensive-than-rwanda-for-mobile-data-access/) Who likes the fact that Japan has Internet that is 8x faster than ours at a fraction of the cost? (source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801990.html?nav=rss_technology) The difference? “In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire…. regulators [in Japan] compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers”. I’m sure Harper loves that idea.

Then there’s the 10% – 20% fees to access your money at ATM’s in addition to a host of other unpopular banking service fees. This industry accounts for the highest volume of consumer complaints to the Better Business Bureau. The public opinion polls on this are enough to make the case: “In response to the question, ‘Do you agree or disagree with the suggestion that the federal government should ban fees charged when people use ATMs of financial institutions other than their own?’, 70% of Canadians agreed, while only 26% disagreed”. (source: NRG: Research Group)

And finally, the pathetic media situation in Canada. One really has to look no further than the Vancouver Sun and Province to get a sense for what’s wrong here. “In addition to the National Post, CanWest now owns 14 large city dailies, 120 smaller dailies and weeklies, and the Global TV network, Canada’s second-largest private broadcaster. The company also has private TV networks in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, among other holdings”….”CanWest chair Israel (“Izzy”) Asper [this is a 2002 article] told the CanWest Global annual shareholders meeting on January 30 that “on national and international key issues we should have one, not 14, editorial positions.” But this reverses the guarantee of local autonomy the newspaper chains promised regulators when they were allowed to amass their empires, gobbling up independent dailies from the 1970s through the 1990s.” (source: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1106) As a result of this media concentration, Canadians get inundated with inaccurate information that suits the economic interests of one company.

6. Shameful Foreign Policy: This is very simple. We as Canadians are complicit in torture thanks to our involvement in Afghanistan. TORTURE! TORTURE! TORTURE! TORTURE! “The government had initially denied the existence of [evidence of torture], stating in writing that ‘no such report on human-rights performance in other countries exists’. The Globe and Mail subsequently used the access of information law to force the government to turn over a copy of the report, which is titled ‘Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights’. But the report given the Globe had been heavily censored in the name of ‘national security’; numerous passages depicting the deplorable human rights situation in Afghanistan and the violation of basic civil liberties by Afghan authorities were blacked out” (source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/afgh-a27.shtml). The Liberals have a shared shame here, as they got us in to that wonderful hornets nest.

What else can be said?

Continuing to fail on our foreign aid obligations: “The Harper government has been silent as to Canada’s obligations to alleviate poverty around the world and to increase aid to reach the target of 0.7% of GDP” (source: http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/visiongreen/partfive).

Uncritical support of Israeli and American war-crimes in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq; Including the forced retraction of a government report critical of Guantanamo Bay.

7. Drug Policy: Against a growing body of medical evidence and against the wishes of the majority of the population (55% in favour of complete legalization, source: http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/16300), the conservatives continue to insist on criminalizing drugs like marijuana. From the Canadian Medical Association Journal: “Mr. Justice Minister, let’s decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”
(source: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/186/canadianmedical.shtml) Thousands of Canadians are unfairly imprisoned for marjiuana related offences, many thousands more have criminal records as a result, and finally, organized crime is being fueled by this incompetent and ignorant policy.

8. Ideologically motivated arts cuts [Possibly retracted due to popular opposition]: Despite a net increase to Canadian Heritage funding (less this year), selective funding cuts to some arts programs are a genuine concern. Some of the stated reasons for the cuts were that the programs included: a “general radical”, “a left-wing and anti-globalization think-tank” and a “rock band that uses an expletive as part of its name”. Harper seeks to fund artistic programs that are uncritical, unquestioning and uncontroversial to his power base. Independence be damned.

9. Secret Trade and Security Agreements: Have you heard of the SPP? ACTA? No? Maybe that’s because these agreements are being negotiated with no public input, just like NAFTA. These are perhaps the most important problems on this list. The criticisms of these agreements are deep enough that you really need to do background reading to understand what’s happening. Here are some brief criticisms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_Prosperity_Partnership_of_North_America#Criticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement#Criticism

Beyond ACTA and the SPP, our existing international trade regimen under NAFTA and individually under the WTO, need to change. These agreements continue the trend of leveraging capital flight to drive down wages, exploiting countries with the laxest environmental and labour standards for manufacturing and ultimately continue the 30 year downward spiral of middle class real-wages. “the substantial economic gains of the past quarter-century have not been fairly shared. Thanks to Canadians working harder and smarter, the national economy grew by a stunning 50 per cent. Yet median earnings, the midpoint of the income continuum, remained virtually unchanged.” (source: http://www.thestar.com/Canada/Census/article/420651)

10. The Old Stuff: This is the stuff everyone worried about before the conservatives were first elected but has been kept under control by the fact that they had a minority government. Should the conservatives get a majority, these issues are back on the table and nobody really knows what they’ll do. Issues surrounding: the public health-care system, the poor judgment behind supporting the Iraq war, the CBC, abortion, and a host of issues regarding privatization of public assets. On all of these issues, the conservatives have extremely unpopular opinions but Harper has muzzled his MP’s to such a degree that the public simply has no idea what might happen. Not even myself. Either way, it wont be good.

11. This a bonus criticism. It is completely ideological so I did not include it in the top 10. The economic crisis we are currently seeing around the world will force us to make some very difficult decisions. Canada is not immune from the problems, however buffered we have been so far. If we do have a depression on our hands, it would be wise to remember how these kinds of problems were dealt with in the past. FDR, who is commonly attributed with lifting America out of the depression, invested massively in public works projects to spur the economy and get people working again. In contrast to this, FDR was strongly opposed by the business community. To the point that a fascist coup attempt devised by prominent business leaders, was only narrowly defeated. I’m not saying Harper is fascist; certainly not. I am saying that he has demonstrated, via Bill C-61 and his treatment of the press, that he does not adequately understand the importance of democracy and this could lead to policies that  make a bad situation worse. Make what you will of this criticism, only time will tell.

And the other candidates?

Elizabeth May – She actually seems relatively articulate and vaguely on the same page with the criticisms outlined here. There are some nuts in the Green Party so be careful and candidate specific. Vote for her if it doesn’t matter in your riding.

Jack Layton – The best of the major candidates. Has very well articulated stances on all the issues mentioned here. Generally the best option in this election.

Stephan Dion – Only vote for your liberal candidate if the situation is desperate. Their policies are only marginally better than the conservatives, but it’s enough to matter. They do have a better environmental platform than the conservatives and don’t have quite the same contempt of the democratic process. ie: In my old riding Deborah Meredith didn’t even show up to debates, additionally, in the Vancouver Center debate I went to two weeks ago, Lorne Mayencourt also refused to go. From what I’ve seen this is typically the trend.

Stephen Harper – Fail.

And Finally:

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/