Does Our Prime Minister Know Recent Canadian History???

Back on Friday late in the day, the news broke about the Conservatives having cancelled the CAIRS (Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System) Database, a system that allows Canadians to track Access to Information requests (I wrote about it here, and podcasted it here). The thought that the Conservatives would pull something like this isn't really surprising, as they have shown that they are more interested in having a secretive government, not an open and transparent one. The original reason for this database cancelled came off as a bureaucratic reason, as a Treasury Board official told the Canadian Press back on Friday that the database was being killed because "extensive consultations showed it wasn't valued by government departments". As I said at the time, I thought that reason missed the point of why you have a database like this.

But today we got a different reason given to us by none other than Stephen Harper, and it left me shaking my head even more. Here is the reason for cancelling the CAIRS database, according to the highly educated Prime Minister of our country, Stephen Harper, courtesy of cbc.ca:

"Harper told the House on Monday that CAIRS — launched in 1989 — was a "centralized tool" created under the previous Liberal government and was decried by critics as "a product of a political system in which centralized control is an obsession"

"That's why the government got rid of it," Harper said"

Wait a minute. This was brought in back in 1989 by the Liberal government??? Call me crazy if you like, but if memory (and history) serves me right, wasn't Brian Mulroney, the Conservative Brian Mulroney, the Prime Minister at that time??? Would you care to explain that Stevie??? Is this your idea of bad spin or just an attempt to revise history??? Yes folks, our highly educated Prime Minister obviously was living in a coma during that period of time, or no one took the time to tell him who that Mulroney guy was, especially during the whole Mulroney/Schreiber garbage. I guess that Ian Brodie, Mr. Harper's top aide, was too busy allegedly interfering in elections in the US than to keep his boss up to date on simple facts like, oh, who occupied his job in the past twenty years.

So, what to make of this quote today??? Did Mr. Harper just make a stupid mistake, or was he deliberately trying to mislead people about the origins of this database by trying to label it as "Liberal"??? That really fits the Harper MO... avoid responsibility for anything, and no matter what's wrong, it's the Liberals fault. To top this off, it was extremely hypocritical to hear Mr. Harper attack anyone for having a "obsession with centralizing" as he has shown himself to be a complete control freak, and did it again with his most recent moves to try to muzzle independent officers of Parliament.

One thing is for certain right now, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are more concerned with what's good for them, and what's good for Canada and the truth comes a distance last place. Stephen Harper is not a stupid man, so I refuse to believe that he honestly didn't know that the Liberals were not in power in 1989. He told a bold faced lie, and knew he had the protection of the rules of the House of Commons to protect him. The only reason why he did it was to try to divert the attention of his supporters, who he obviously thinks have the collective IQ of a rotten piece of fruit. Harper got caught again with his hands in the cookie jar, and showed his contempt for all of us in his answer today. I just hope that someone turns that quote and the video of it into a good campaign ad. I can picture it now: "Stephen Harper: A man who'd rather look like an idiot who doesn't know recent Canadian History than admit that what he did was wrong". It's a bit wordy, but does the job nicely.Recommend this Post