Debunking Harper’s pro-family fraud

September 9, 2008

I will be sending out more word warrior letters than usual in the next five weeks trying to respond to the political moments of the election campaign. I don’t expect everyone to write every time but do hope to offer enough suggestions that everyone writes at least 2 or 3 three letters during this absolutely critical period. I don’t need to tell you how much danger the country faces with the prospect of a Harper majority.

Harper is really pushing the family values theme in the first few days of the campaign and will likely continue to do so. In part this is a page out US republican “issue framing” as he portrays himself as the “strong father” figure. Of course it is incredibly cynical given his policies and we need to point that out.

FRAMING:   Harper and his “small government” ideology actually tells middle class families they are on their own - just like everyone in a deregulated, so-called free market society.  In a country where real wages have flatlined since 1982 families depend more and more on the equalizing efforts of government programs and transfers to maintain their security. Under Harper’s government the security and quality of life of Canadian families has been going steadily downhill.

Some facts and arguments you can use in your letters – and if I have missed any, please add your own:

• The Harper government cynically cancelled the previous Liberal government’s planned universal child care program worked out in co-operation with the provinces - an historic breakthrough that took years to conclude. The $1200 per year per child replacement has done literally nothing to reduce the need for child care spaces.
• Stephen Harper’s multi-year,  $60 billion tax cuts last year went predominantly to high income earners and corporations so that the cost of government programs will increasingly fall on middle class families
• The Harper government has refused to increase funding to universities despite calls to do so from every quarter - making it ever more difficult for middle class families to send their children to university.
• Harper maintains one of the most inaccessible UI/EI programs in the developed world with fewer than 40% of those paying into eligible for benefits. Despite calls to change this mean-spirited program (which both PCs and Liberals gutted) he has refused to budge.
• Middle class families in other developed nations - except the US - have access to many more robust social programs than do Canadian families: enhanced maternity leave benefits, legislated paid vacation time of up to 6 weeks a year, home care, pharmacare and more. None of these genuinely pro-family measures will ever see the light of day under a Harper government - leaving families to cope on their own in the private marketplace
• Harper’s policies have only one family in mind: the families of the wealthy and privileged who have enjoyed massive tax cuts with even more to come

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