5 Feet of Fury

Four years on, how ‘conservative’ is Canada’s government?

Parliament Hill journalist Brian Lilley looks back:

It was supposed to be a brief interlude, a twelve to eighteen month minority government and then the Canadian people would turf Stephen Harper and his Conservative government on its ear. Yet four years after Canadians first elected the Harper government, here we are. (…)

Despite assertions that this is “the most right-wing government in Canadian history,” Harper has, for the most part, governed from the centre or at least centre-right of the political spectrum. He is, as Liberals will gleefully point out, running the biggest deficit in Canadian history. Canada has not, despite some claims to the contrary, been turned into a theocracy governed by pastors of the religious right. And to the best of my knowledge there are not soldiers, with guns, in our cities, Canadian cities.