Stephen Harper and My Part in His Downfall (part 7), Election Day

Feeling a bit nervous that Harper might pull this one off and then what?  So I recorded this just in case.

Click on the red bits.

My Vote's for Stephen

Stephen Harper and My Part in His Downfall (part 6), Voting

Lineup outside the advance polling station last Monday:

I entered about 1pm, got done around 1;35, total time 35 minutes.  I was about 25th in the lineup.

They only had enough staff to process one voter at a time.  I talked to someone else who had to undergo a 1-hour wait so I can't complain.  But I will anyway since there's no reason to have to stand in line that long.  There was room for more staff and ballot boxes.  The benefits of running an effective election process should seem worth the risk involved in spending a little more every few years.  It has been postulated that a difficult voting process favours the conservative vote.  I don't know if this is true or not but I do know that the budget is controlled by the Conservative government.  Perhaps it's easier for Conservatives to get time off work to come out and vote.  

Stephen Harper and My Part in His Downfall (5), CBC Interview translated

I wanted to understand the Niqab hysteria that’s being fanned up for the election and I thought the best way was to go to the source and I let Google lead me to the below interview with Stephen Harper conducted by a Rosemary Barton.  Unfortunately nothing in it made sense to me so I decided to translate from Politics into a natural language using some translation freeware I downloaded for the purpose.   The translations are in bolded font, after the relevant answer.

Link to the original piece:  http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2105-full-text-of-rosemary-barton-interview-with-stephen-harper-1.3259045

NB:  It's got some typos; I left them as is.

Rosemary Barton: Let's talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal that you managed to conclude yesterday. Was there a point  throughout those negotiations that were going on for five years where you began to believe that maybe this isn't going to happen? Was there a moment where you were doubting that it would happen?

Stephen Harper: Oh look, many times. Many times. I would say it was really, if I'm frank about it, it was only in the last six, seven, eight months that I thought 'yeah this is actually really starting to come together' because there had been a bunch of parties, even before we were a part of it, that had been sitting around the table for quite a while. So look, it's come together. I think it's a great thing. It's, as I say, the creation of the greatest economic partnership in the history of the world. It's going to set the standard for, not just Asia-Pacific trade, but eventually trade around the world and it's very important that I think we got a good deal but it's also very important that we get in through the front door. So we're not, the under way around, trying to negotiate your way in later would inevitably be very bad terms.   

I need the voters to believe what a rare and precarious thing this trade deal is so let me mention how it was touch and go right up to the last minute.  The deal is yet another step in handing our lives over to the corporations and the outcome of this progression is doubtful.  But I have no other ideas for solving the economic and environmental problems we face so the main thing is we must not doubt.

RB: Is it impossible to negotiate a deal later, you've got 11 countries signed on.

SH: I think the answer is yes and no. Its certainly possible to find a way to get in later, but you will not be negotiating. You will be accepting whatever terms they're offering you unless your China or someone that huge who actually has some leverage at a table that size. But by and large, you're either negotiating your way in later or you're begging your way in later and you definitely don't want to be in that position. But independent of that I think we got a very good deal. If you look at the reaction across the Canadian economy, it's about a unified -- i think we got a better unified reaction on this than we did on the European Union and that was pretty unanimous.

As I hinted before, it is crucial to emphasize how momentous this event is (that I brought about) so let me highlight that we might not have been a part of this arrangement and how terrible that would have been!

RB: Let's talk about what it means for consumers because I know you're talking about the broader opportunities. It's hard to see what it offers cor Canadians on a daily basis. And I would argue if you wanted to offer them something concrete you would have blown up the supply management and said here, here's all the cheap dairy products you want. So why didn't you do that?

SH: We have a pretty firm position. We've run many election of making firm commitments to our supply managed farmers and you have to remember that our rural regions, those family farms are the basis of the entire, or really the backbone of the entire economy in the region. So we  firmly committed to protecting that and we've done so. This deal will eliminate upon entry and over the years many tariffs across a range of consumer goods. Look I think the biggest gains are on the side of our workers and our exporting businesses. The are going to get tariff free access to an enormous market and we will be the only G7 country, at least for the foreseeable future, that has that kind of access in Asia, in the Americas and in Europe. So when you look at companies that are looking at, big companies especially with what they call global mandates, Canada will be about the place in the world to do that business.

There are hardly any family farms protected by supply management; they’re mainly very large agribusinesses nowadays; but it’s a sacred cow to rural voters out West and in Quebec.  I’ll also say very quickly that we’re the only G7 country to get all the access to Asia, the Americas and Europe and maybe nobody will notice the USA is part of this deal, is part of the G7 and has the same access.

RB: There has been a trade deficit though over the past about two years, so what kind of lag time is reasonable to expect before doing these things. I mean CETA hasn't even been ratified, we aren't seeing the consequences of it.

 You're not seeing the consequences exactly, but companies on both sides of the ocean are positioning themselves for the benefits that will create when companies, bigger companies that plan long term, they start to plan on these things. Look the trade balance is a complicated thing, I'm not going to into it, but the fact is, our exports, obviously non energy exports are down in dollars because the falling prices, but our non energy exports are growing qutie significantly across the country, they're up about 10 per cent this year, and if you go to companies like this they will tell you they are seeing that.

We haven’t been experiencing a net benefit from trade for the past two years of my administration but a lot of people I prefer not to name right now are just about to start selling whacks of stuff overseas.  Non-energy exports have been so lame they had nowhere to go but up and that’s good news.

RB: I'm going to shift gears if I can. Yesterday the federal court of appeals said your government cannot have a stay on this issue of Zunera Ishaq, the woman who is willing to reveal her face before the ceremony for citizenship but not willing. She said yesterday that she believes the government is interfering or telling her how to dress or live. Why is it OK for the government to tell Ms. Ishaq how to dress and how to live?

SH: Well look, our position is very simple. We're an open society and a society of equality and an open society. Canadians are strongly united around the view that there are times when you reveal your identity. And of course there's the broader value question of the men and women we are trying to promote in this country. Obviously as we've said before this campaign we are going to go ahead with legislation and the next parliament will debate that. But I think the legislation is broadly reflective of the large, large majority of Canadians.

I dream of a Canada made up of people who think the same as me so I’ll obfuscate the contradiction of an open society forcing people to stop dressing like they used to back home.  Plus, the majority of voters feel a bit weird when they see somebody covered up, like that person is hostile or like somebody out of Star Trek, so it makes a good demagogic issue to get a few more people heated up so they'll vote for me.  

RB: But, but, what is the limits then? What a government then tell someone to do? If you're willing to tell this woman that she can't live her life like this, that she can't wear this at this ceremony, then where do you put the limits?

SH: Well, this is a Canadian public ceremony. And certainly, Canadians have a right to establish the basic values around that ceremony that are reflective of our basic values as a society.

This is a tough question about how far it is alright to go when telling people what they can wear and when, so I’ll divert the listener’s attention by talking about the non-issue of a country setting basic values and use words that seem to refer to freedom and equality but in fact are about good ordinary Canadians having the right to strip the covering off someone’s face even if he or she feels desecrated by it.

RB: But a public service worker, for instance, in the civil service, someone who has a public position. Should they be allowed to?

SH: That's a matter we're going to examine. Quebec, as you know, has legislation on this. And we're looking at that legislation. But as I say, we're a society of openness and of equality and this is what we want to promote. And look, the vast, vast majority of Canadians understand our position on this and are behind it. The other parties have made a decision to make this an issue because they are frankly offside on public opinion, but that's their choice.

Canadian values demand that we get a good look at your face or you don’t get to work for us, and right now it’s looking like a very good election issue.  Just for fun, let me rewrite history so it looks like the controversy is Mulcair and Trudeau’s fault.  That way it looks like I’m the guy proposing simple inoffensive solutions to the crisis of there being maybe 15 women in Canada wearing face coverings and it’s that opportunistic scum trying to make election hay out of it.

RB: You haven't made this an issue?

SH: We're on side with public opinion on this, and I think Canadians understand this very clearly. It's not by any means the biggest issue of this campaign. The biggest issue is the economy, but I think our position is widely understood and supported.

People have a natural level of discomfort with others dressing so strangely and I’m going to exploit that to the tits.  It’s not the biggest real issue but being so visual it means some voters  will apprehend it better than complex economic matters.

RB: But if you look at the niqab, which, OK, it's a court decision it's not something that you've timed, the barbaric cultural practices tip line, there are people who believe that this is in some way encouraging anti Muslim sentiment. We've seen instances in the past week two women who have been attacked, not even for wearing niqbs, hijabs.

SH: As you know our party has a whole series of very strong policies. We're the party that really has brought in strong policies to crack down on crime in this country. It is important that violent crime and violence against people be appropriately counted and punished, we've brought in a whole series of measures to do that. Priorities going forward in this parliament are additional measures in the areas of drunk driving, life means life, and people who commit certain heinous acts actually serve a life sentence for their crimes.

True, in my quest for another term I’ve remorselessly set the fires of xenophobia burning in people’s hearts but I won’t address that right now; maybe in my memoirs.  The stupidity of sticking people in jail is popular among my core electorate so I’ll mention that rather than answer the question.

RB: But what do you say to these women or to these people who are doing this to these women who may be interpreting, falsely perhaps, that it's happening during the election campaign as some sort of anti-Muslim feeling that is out there?

SH: Look, I don't think you can use that kind of thing to discredit legitimate political debate. Violence against women is unacceptable, which is why our government has brought forward laws to crack down on violence.

I’ve whipped up this sentiment and some people are physically afraid because of it.  You seem to be demanding that I adhere to some standard of decency and that makes me feel oppressed.  Anyway I can’t help what people do.  Not my problem.

RB: Let's just turn to broader questions about where you're at and where you're going. We're in the last two weeks here. You've been doing this for ten years, it will be ten years next February, is that correct?

SH: Yep, I think so.

I’ve counted every fucking day but I’ll pretend to be vague on the subject, since I’m too deeply immersed in the problems of our time to look at fucking calendars every five minutes.

RB: What do you have left to do? Why do you still want this job at this stage?

SH: Well look, I've got, I tell people it's the best job in the best country in the world. But we are in a time of considerable global economic turmoil and I guess that's been the story of the world for the last seven years. But the fact is we have renewed turbulence with more faces of the debt crisis in Europe, we've seen some turmoil, and we've seen some markets crashing in Asia. We've had the drops in global energy and commodities prices. We've come out of this global economic turmoil in pretty good circumstances. I think that we have in this country a tremendous opportunity to now solidify the gains that we've made. We have the best economic fundamentals of really any significant developed country. And we have a great era ahead of us if we do what we want to do which is keep lowering taxes for people, keep making investments in people's lives and families, in a way that is sustainable. I think we've got an opportunity to really launch this country into many decades of prosperity and I want to see that story through.

I tell everybody what to do and nobody tells me what to do.  I’m having the time of my life.  In order to keep on having it, I’ll say how chaotic and scary the world is so voters think I’m the only one who can manage it (having survived 9 years, 10 months and half of a day without getting caught).

RB: Is that the fire in your belly? That's what makes you want to do four more years?

SH: The economy is the biggest thing I want to do. There is a pretty fundamental choice here. The other parties, as you know, they are proposing a different track. They're proposing that now is the time, I don't think they propose to do differently than us, they just purpose to spend tens of billions of dollars more on the same things. We know you can't do that unless you run permanent deficits and you start raising taxes.

[at this point the freeware seemed to bog down and my power supply fan made grinding sounds.  Puffs of smoke started drifting out of the back of my desktop so I ctrl-alt-del’d the process and started again at the next question]

RB: The Liberals are going to run deficits for three years, and you ran deficits for six.

SH: Let me come to that in a second, cause I think the numbers actually don't know show that. The numbers show you're going to launch into a permanent deficit if you do that. You can't afford the kind of increased spending they're talking about out of thin air. And we think this would take us off course just at about a time when we've positioned this country well for future growth. But look on the question of deficits, this economy is growing. We already have a balanced budget. We had a balanced budget last year. The auditor general has said that. If we're going to be the kind of country that goes into deficit even when the economy is growing. we return to deficit, that is a recipe for permanent deficit. Look, once you loose the anchor of a balanced budget, you're always under pressure to just spend more and not cover it.

Everybody thinks chartered accountants are smart and they always talk about ‘the numbers’ so I’ll do the same and hope nobody notices that there are no particular numbers I’m talking about.  Plus I’ll look smart and my voters are so impressed by my superiority they don’t notice that I only care about people who are making money and don’t really give a damn about anybody who doesn’t fit so well into our modern economy.  And I’d better reinforce the point about my financial management; that’s why I’ll talk about our balanced budget even though that was achieved by selling General Motors at a loss.

RB: But why are three deficits permanent and six deficits are not?

SH: They're not three. Nothing is going to magically balance the budget after three years. When you increase spending to that level, what you're going to do, if you eventually try to fix it, you're going to a combination of tax hikes, ongoing borrowing or of cuts. In the Liberal platform there is a line item, even in the Liberal platform that doesn't add up, there is a line item of $6.5 billion of undefined cuts.

Your point is very logical and that’s why I won’t answer it.

RB: Well they might decide to cut some of your boutique tax credits to make other choices.

SH: Well that's a kind of policy they are running on — let's raise taxes in families. Those are tax benefits, we've been able to do a bunch of things: income splitting for families and seniors, universal child care benefits, TFSAs, fitness credits, the RESP enhancements. These are all good things for Canadians, for the middle class. I know they want to take them away. But I think that's the wrong choice for Canadians. They are going to take them away, and replace them with a bunch of things that aren't actually paid for. We know where the previous Liberal government led us with that, and that was eventually to big tax hike and bunch of benefit cuts.

A few people benefited from the tax cuts and as it happens they vote Conservative.  If you have a low income it’s perfectly obvious that you won’t benefit from tax credits and you won't vote Conservative anyway unless you're an idiot.  Again, not my problem.

RB: Do you have any regrets from the four years, and if there is anything there would inform you going forward. And in 2011 it was something about intelligence in Iraq, what is it now?

SH: You know, I always say I have the entire press gallery to tell me all the things I'm doing wrong. But look, I think the biggest lesson of the past few years is that we really don't know what's coming in terms of the global economy. We have seen more unexpected surprises, mostly negative in the past few years, than any analysts would have seen coming and we keep getting surprises. And I think that speaks to why we need a plan that's based on solid fundamentals, that's based on balancing our budget, keeping taxes down, keeping down and containing our expenditures and programs, based on opening our markets and training people, investing in infrastructure. But doing that in a way that is sustainable. We will inevitably be hit by big surprises and if we have to make big adjustments we don't want to be in a bad situation already. We ran an enormous big stimulus program in 08-09, we ran one of the biggest in the world, we got it out of the door fastest, and we said we would make it temporary because we  were able to do all that because we were already in surplus and our debt levels were low. Other countries found themselves already in debt so they found themselves in higher deficits and now they can get out of it because they are paying interest. We don't want to be back in that situation we wants strong economic fundamentals for whatever unexpected things face us. 

Because of the previous Liberal government we entered the 2008 recession with a low debt load and because in the early 2000’s the Liberals over my protest refused to let the banks make the same investments that nearly sunk the United States and European banks and insurance companies, we entered those days of crisis (which are unique to my premiership and never beset any other government in the history of the world) in good shape to roll out a stimulus package which we only undertook under pressure from the Liberals and the NDP who had a better read on the financial crisis than I did at the time.  We’ve got a bunch of inconsequential ideas to implement in the future and this has been a wonderful opportunity to bypass the media and sell them to the Canadian public.  It’s been a pleasure dodging your questions.  Thank you.