Stephen Harpie: The Other Great Darkness?

For the November 15th class.

We saw in class Paul Emile Borduas' Refus Global (1948), a text that would foreshadow Quebec's quiet revolution.

At this time, the Maurice Duplessis governement has been in political power for eight years, and yet more was yet to come (with Duplessis in power from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959). This time is often referred to as the Great Darkness because of the government's strict adherence with the church (especially in health and education), its bare-bones social services, its favoring of rural development instead of cities, and its anti-union and communist policies.

A great dictatorial-like picture of Duplessis.

 In many ways, Duplessis reminds me of You-know-Who.

In case you had your head buried in the Sahara Desert in the last 15 years, yes, this is the evil Voldemort in Harry Potter.

No, not that guy. This one:

Yep, Stephen Harper, our current Canadian Prime Minister. Last Saturday, I heard and saw Yves Engler talk about his new book The Ugly Canadian. He focused mostly on international affairs, including the Harper government's:

• inappropriate direct financial support of Israel and their discrimination against charities supporting Palestine
• false pretenses of supporting "democracy" in the Middle East while they have deepened ties with Saudi Arabian monarchy, etc.
• dangerous deregulation of Canadian international mine companies, allowing them to operate with disastrous environmental and economic results in the countries of residence
• constant failing grades in matters of environmental sustainability such as pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2011 and fighting to keep the Canadian tar sands off of California's list of "High Carbon emitters" (see B.1.)

I wasn't a fan of Harper already for his national impact, and now I am equally not a fan of him for his international consequences.

There's something that I think we tend to forget as Canadians and Americans and that our European counterparts are much more apt at understanding: We live in a global community. I see the reason for this, notably the expanse of our national territory and so the (horizontally nautical) distance between us and our nearest neighbors. Also European countries have agreements via the European Union and the Council of Europe since after the second world war, which have worked greatly at lubricating country rapports and collaborations as well as cultural appropriations and market competition.

Why would any of us (and most of all, Stephen Harper) close our eyes to the wonderful strives going on elsewhere? Are we really that different? Do we really need to pollute and pillage the human and natural resources of other countries in order to be "economically sound" ourselves? If anything, that is the contrary of sustainability and long-term economic viability. Harper has shown us that he does not trust other countries, does not trust the medias and "does not trust" -and so has censored- canadian federal scientists, recently pushing the scientific community to announce the death of evidence on parliament hill. Not surprising in this case that he values the arts so little. Distrust is dangerous when in national and in international territory: In the first case you will alienate the people, and in the second, harvest enemies like the States has done in the middle east.

The last thing I want is another Great Darkness of any sort, be it in Quebec or in Canada at large. Let's get rid of the Harpie in 2015. After all, we too, as a country, deserve leaders with ideals like this. Listen to Uruguay's president Mujica speaking as a world citizen: