It continually amazes me that, even when they can see that Prime Minster Harper’s military programs are both dangerous to Canadians and totally self-serving to his office, they can still say “the Conservatives deserve a lot of credit for re-equipping the forces.”
Here is a Prime Minister who:
*Spent $28 million on commemorating the War of 1812, while slashing spending on Library and Archives Canada by $9.6 million.
*Sent 40,000 Canadians into Afghanistan during the 12-year war where 126 Canadians died and 2,179 suffered injury, both physical and psychological.
*Denied that Canadians handed over Afghan PoW’s for torture – a war crime according to the Geneva Convention. Reprimanded Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, the whistle-blower of this action, despite a secret order by Defence Minister MacKay becoming public.
*Spent $50 million on the reconstruction of a dam in Afghanistan which largely went to corrupt local officials - still no water available for the farmland in the area.
*Spent a conservative estimate of $28 billion on the Afghan war.
*Adopted, without debate, the New Veterans Charter, which gave wounded soldiers who had once been eligible for life-long pensions, a lump-sum payment of $48,000. What was supposed to serve as “recover, rehabilitation, and reintegration” has turned into “delay, deny, and die.”
*Pledged $557 million to Afghanistan including $330 million for the Afghan army between 2014 and 2017.
*Gave seven managers in Veteran Affairs bonuses of $760,000 in 2011 for coming up with cuts of $36,000 to their department.
*Was responsible for giving a wounded Canadian soldier, hit by American “friendly fire,” and who was told by fellow soldiers that they could see part of his brain, and with blood and yellow liquid trickling from his ear, who then underwent two head operations, a lump sum of $22,000 for loss of five per cent of his brain.
*Found $50,000 to fund a monument to honour vets who had fought in Italy in the Second World War.
*Planned a National Day of Honour on May 9, 2014, and invited family members of fallen soldiers to attend with the proviso that attendance “would be at your own expense.”
As former Liberal leader, Bob Rae, commented about Harper, “... I find him one of the most deeply partisan and divisive people in Canadian history. I’ve never seen a politician act with less compassion.”
Still think Harper is a great leader? And, this is only part of one chapter in Michael Harris’s book Party of One.
Frank Martens
Summerland