Friends of Canadian Broadcasting continues to raise the alarm over threats to our nation’s public broadcaster and well they should. While Heritage Minister James Moore promised in May to maintain and expand support for the CBC, Tory antipathy to the CBC is well known. Recent initiatives, such as the petition by Tory MP Rob Enders to end CBC funding cast doubt on the Tory pledge to support the CBC. (His surname says it all, eh?)
Because Harper is a notorious control freak, no Tory backbencher who wanted to keep getting nominated would post a petition of this sort without his blessing. This has to be taken seriously.
The Friends have taken a humorous approach in their current attempt to awaken Canadians to the Tory threat. I hope it works.
Under Harper’s majority government, we are beginning to see the unraveling of Canada.
- Earlier this year, with their attacks on postal workers and Air Canada employees, they declared war on free collective bargaining.
- Yesterday, they did something similar to western grain farmers when they effectively killed the Canadian Wheat Board without allowing grain producers their legally required right to a plebiscite on the question.
- They continue to militarize Canadian society with their disgusting celebration of the murder of thousands of Libyans, while moving ahead with billions of dollars in spending on new war ships, fighter planes and overseas bases.
- To complete the portrait of power drunk right wing ideologues, their response to falling crime rates is to build more prisons and jail more offenders for longer sentences in defiance of all the evidence that this approach has not worked anywhere it has been tried.
The next four years will be trying times for Canadians who do not want to see our society hideously disfigured. We will have to fight them every step of the way. Take a moment to see how you can begin this by supporting the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
Paul S. Graham 