WEEKLY COMMENTARY
By Ralph Goodale, M.P.
Another Broken Promise, Another Fraud!
Stephen Harper’s repeated threats to trigger a snap election – despite all his “solemn promises” never to do so – would constitute yet another case of political “fraud” (to use the Conservatives’ own language).
On the attack against other political parties, Conservatives have often asserted “there is no greater fraud than a promise not kept”. They have actually used that wording in their campaign materials.
So what about unkept Conservative promises? They add up to a sorry list of “frauds” – on-going!
Take, for example, Mr. Harper’s unmistakable commitment to change the Equalization formula to send Saskatchewan an extra $800 million every year. But it never happened.
Then there was his pledge never to impose any tax of any kind whatsoever on Income Trusts. That promise too turned into a lie.
The list goes on. The most recent example is all this sudden election sabre-rattling.
In the 2006 campaign, the Conservatives promised to fix the dates of future elections at regular intervals every four years to prevent governments from manipulating the timing to their partisan advantage. Legislation was enacted to implement this rule.
But now Mr. Harper is threatening to break that promise and violate his own law.
The next election date, which he himself fixed in statute, is in October of 2009 – over a year from now. But Mr. Harper is suggesting he may pull the plug as early as next week.
Why? For three reasons:
First, he is worried about the rapidly worsening national economy for which he is responsible.
Second, he wants to shut down several Parliamentary investigations that are exposing his government’s ethical violations and Conservative corruption.
And third, to Stephen Harper a “solemn promise” is meaningless. He has proven time and again that you simply cannot trust a word he says.
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