Conservatives Never Miss an Opportunity to Exploit Tragedy

From 9/11, to the Toronto Boxing Day shootings, to the Dawson College massacre, Conservatives exploit tragedy at every turn.

     “I will say simply that the legislation we have in force today didn't prevent the incident.” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, mere hours after a crazed gunman shot up Montreal’s Dawson College. No one should be surprised that Harper or his party would use a nationally publicized shooting to their advantage; they had done it only 10 months before in reference to the Toronto Boxing Day shootings. Yet Conservative cat calls in the days that followed that tragedy are decidedly different than they were back then. Now the Prime Minister is calling for new legislation to fix the problem, however during the election campaign when the governing Liberals called for a ban on hand guns then Leader of the Opposition Harper said “The problem is this is the first government in our history that seems unable to enforce our gun laws, and I think obviously this is just the consequence of 12 years of lax criminal justice in law enforcement.” Basically what he’s saying here is the government should be enforcing the laws already on the books more effectively. So if the laws were good enough back then and the “lax criminal justice in law enforcement” couldn’t stop the Boxing Day shootings what, according to the Prime Minister, caused the Montreal shootings? Why lack of legislation of course.

It’s a lot easier to complain…

     Don’t feel bad if you’re confused by this contradiction in stances, you’re not alone. The young Harper government seems to be setting precedent for governing differently than they campaigned. Was this oversight merely a slip of the tongue either now or back in December? Or do the Conservatives not bother to write anything down when they spout off about their opponents? Perhaps the cause of this confusion can be summed up by saying the Conservatives may have learned in the interim that it’s a lot easier to complain than it is to govern.

Conservative Cooperation

     This phenomenon isn’t limited to the Canadian brand of Conservatives either, earlier in the week (Where Was Their Outrage Four and a Half Years Ago? – 09/13) the case was made that Conservatives’ neighbors to the South, the beleaguered Bush administration, has used the September 11th attacks at almost every turn to frighten confused voters in to believing they had no choice but to vote Republican. This is a tried, tested, and true page from the Karl Rove playbook that has dubiously made its way north of the border to our country. It plays on the most basic human emotion: fear. Fear can be a good thing, it lets you know to stay away from that snake, it gives you a heads up that you might want to slow down a bit when it starts to snow, but used and perverted as it has become fear is a dangerous and difficult to combat weapon. The subtle but unmistakable similarities in tactics of both Conservative minded parties should serve as a dire warning for Canadians who don’t want to end up like their Southern counterparts.

Biding Their Time

     Many will point to the fact that the Conservatives have been in power since February and haven’t done anything crazy. The problem with that statement is that they haven’t been in total power at all. A minority government doesn’t afford Conservatives the ability to do what they truly want to do because they know their hold on any type of power at all is precarious. We’re living in dangerous moments, moments where Conservatives bid their time, waiting for the opportunity to mould Canada in to their vision of what it should be.