Between Charest and Harper, are we toast? By: Mohamed S. Kamel

Between Charest and Harper, are we toast?

By: Mohamed S. Kamel*

Montreal, April 24^th, 2010

The last few years brought with them a new era, where everyone is turning to the right wing agenda, and basic human rights are not in any government’s agendas. Basic human rights are not to choose your favourite TV channels or your jeans style. People’s basic human rights are located where dignity is, and dignity is not achievable without education and strong healthcare.

We, in Quebec, are not different from any place on earth.  We have been governed by local and federal governments who are not taking any direction other than serving their lobbyist groups.

On the local political arena, we have a government that is led by a conservative who has been brought in from federal politics because the so called Liberals were looking for charisma that will bring them back to power.  No matter what this person’s point of view or agenda is, they just have to govern.  

To hold onto to power, they built a strong network of business and lobbyist groups, those groups feed to be fed.

Allegations of the corrupted construction industry faced with cosmetic investigation and mediatic raids on big firms might end with a couple of irregularities but lead to nothing real. Or maybe will end with the dissolution of the unions and construction associations.

Added to it lately are the new allegations on the appointing of judges.  These allegations are being treated as if it is personnel between Charest and his ex-minister of justice, with a theatre style decision to appoint a judge to enquire in the procedures of the appointing of judges.  As if it is a procedure problem!

This is not enough, as we are bringing up a medieval problem, how women dress; Niqab issue with a special law for it.

Is it not clear enough? We are fabricating problems to turn people’s attention from the reality, from the budget.  Yes, turning their attention from the main issues! Are our schools at a level that could be described as a school system in one of the biggest industrial countries?  And if you don’t see the school system’s condition within the facilities, the curriculum, the teaching material and the staff, can’t you see our deteriorating healthcare?

We should not forget that the healthcare has been targeted for a long time by insurance companies locally and from the south.  They are waiting for the day when they can kill it forever.

A visitor to any hospital can see the reality, long waiting time, missing equipments, exhausted staff, shortage in specialists and now the destruction of one of the greatest element of this system, the CLSC.  And all this for one goal, serving private laboratories and forcing the population to lose faith in the public system and beg the government for a two tier system.

While all this is going on, we are still discussing bill 94, the cosmetic investigation on construction irregularities and our interest in the Tiger Woods’ affair.

The problem is located in our way of thinking.  We took everything for granted and thought that nothing could be changed. It is not the case.  We can wake up one day with no education system and no healthcare, except for the rich. For us, the majority and the elder, we will be on the streets, or if we are lucky, we’ll find place in a shelter.

Some of us could wonder where are the opposition parties?  Between Québec Solidaire (QS) a weak party, the ADQ a party in pre-dissolving stage and the greatest official opposition ever, the Parti Quebecois (PQ) with its leader that is not better that Don Quixote when he declared war against the monsters, the windmills.  She is still fighting the same way against minority rights and acting idiotically while promoting Quebec independence, abandoning the party that one day was the people’s party and replacing it with the new PQ that is fighting the right wing by being more right.

Nothing strange in all this, we don’t have to look far, our federal politicians are doing the same thing exactly.

Do we remember a few years ago when Paul Martin destroyed the Liberal Party of Canada by ousting out from the party all his oppositions and the real Liberal? While Martin was doing this, serving his lobbyists (the business people, the Bankers, the Pharmaceutical and the Military Industries), Conservatives were regrouping with one of the most dangerous extreme right wing person Canada ever knew, Mr. Harper.      

The scene ends with a fragmented Liberal party and hated but well organized Neo-con party, who’s achievements will be listed in the darkest history books, following their allayment with the most hated government, Bush’s administration and the manipulation of our history and our good name in the worst ever modern war, the war on Afghanistan. Reality, he is not the one who started it, but he is the one who is dreaming of finishing it. But it will finish him; hope not our Canada as well.

News of the shameful war is irrupting every day, with people becoming targets and our respected Blue Caps Army is turning into a carbon copy of the Blackwater mercenaries.        

Listing the damage that Mr. Harper’s government is doing to Canada and to the entire globe needs a book, but summarizing the main elements is important. Among them, the policies to destroy the environment for the wellbeing of the big corporations, the foreign affair policies that are turning us into the most hated country on earth, the local discrimination practices, the illusion of fear and ridiculous security measures, the detaining of people under secrete evidence, the deportation to torture, and the campaign to close CBC, the only public voice in Canada.

All this is nothing, as we are busy with Rahim Jaffer’s affair and his wife Minister Helena Guergis.  This affair is not strange from the Conservative way of doing business, pay friends and cut funds to arts and social research, as well as legitimate NGOs, Kairos, CAF...etc.  

The picture on the federal level is not different than the one on the provincial level. The New Democratic Party (NDP) with its bright history is limiting itself to a narrow future by imaging the new Liberal. The Bloc Quebecois (BQ) a well developed party but with a regional agenda.  And the official opposition, the so called Liberal party, has a leader who is fighting hard to turn into a right wing alternative to the Neo-con.   

So, if you think that Quebec’s health system will be saved by the Canadian Health Act, you are dreaming and will wake up to the reality of a new country that is serving as a bad example, is the most hated and does not respect human dignity.

It is the moment that both Charest and Harper are waiting for long time.  And their gratitude goes directly to both official oppositions’ leaders, provincially to Pauline Marois and federally to Michael Ignatieff for their great and effective contribution to the problems we are living. Their way of practicing politics will assure that we will be stuck with Charest and Harper for years to come until we are really toasted.

OH CANADA WE STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE...!

    

* Mohamed S. Kamel: is an engineer and a recognized project manager professional (PMP), a freelance writer, the editor of I.N. Daily, co-founder of the Canadian Egyptian for Democracy (CEFD), Alternative Perspective Media (APM-RAM) and the ex-president and co-founder of the Canadian Muslim Forum (FMC-CMF), could be reached at public@mohamedkamel.com