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The final victims of Stephen Harper will turn out to be the members of his own government.

The Conservatives are now the 3-D party: delusional, disconnected and doomed.

They think they are being led by a Conservative. Harper is not a Conservative — he is an iconoclastic narcissist out for himself. Apres moi, le deluge — that about sums up his concern for the party.

They think they are going to win, or should I say “secure” the next election. “Headed over the cliff” is more like it.

Some of them believe posing Mrs. Harper with various furry animals will soften her husband’s image in time for the 2015 election. His beloved Laureen could hand-feed all the animals at the Toronto Zoo, and knit them little toques, and the PM’s image would remain the same: akin to that of a lawyer specializing in mortgage foreclosures temporarily miscast as the leader of a country.

If you want the quintessential Stephen Harper, look no further than last week’s National Day of Honour. Everyone knew it was the Governor General’s job to accept the last Canadian flag that flew in Afghanistan, but hey, why give up the money shot to a mere functionary? So the PM snagged the flag — and then handed it off to the hapless David Johnston, former Commander-in-Chief of Canada.

Cute, Steve — but everybody gets it. The whole thing was for you, not the veterans.

The Royal Canadian Legion, veterans advocates like Sean Bruyea, and certainly Captain Wayne Johnson of Wounded Warriors Canada all know that. Capt. Johnson has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, like many other veterans. He needs help Harper isn’t delivering. “They think a fucking parade is going to change my mind?” Johnson told a newspaper after the ceremony. “Not a fucking chance.”

One hundred and forty seven Conservative MPs brought down the broadaxe on an NDP motion to spare VA from the cuts. Rarely is such base cowardice unanimous. In the Harper government, total submission is the price of membership.

What Capt. Johnson might not know is that the prime minister has an affliction of his own — Public Relations Disorder. The main symptom of PRD is the unshakeable belief that elephantine public displays of military might — tanks rolling, jets screaming overhead, guns popping off — will make people forget this government’s betrayal of Canada’s wounded veterans from the Afghanistan War.

In its terminal stages, the PRD sufferer actually believes perception is reality. In Harper’s Canada, nothing has to be true. You just need lots of commercials flogging the desired perception — paid for by the people you’re trying to indoctrinate. Nice gig.

In addition to a very expensive photo-op, I have the feeling that what the National Day of Honour was really about was closing the file on Afghanistan. There will be no more stories of Canadians being killed by IEDs, no more visits to Kandahar by celebrity shills, no more chest-thumping tales about all the schools being built — and no more lies about torture or civilian deaths.

Then a new conflict will arise and there will be fresh stories about casualties and courage, horrors and hurrahs, in other places too far away to be real. Pretty soon, Afghanistan will be like Korea — more distant than the caverns of the moon.

The trouble is that returning veterans with mental or physical wounds live in a commercial-free world. They inhabit a harsh reality: how to push your kid on a swing when you’re missing an arm or a leg; how to fill a war-hardened heart with human emotions again; how to navigate the unbearably normal world of civilian life when you have seen into the abyss and know what has been done.

Their disabilities are permanent, no matter how many jets fly over the Peace Tower. The final insult? Lectures from Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino about how their treatment will be improved by slashing $226 million from the VA budget and closing treatment centres. Stories about the reduced number of Second World War and Korean War veterans justifying cuts, but not a word about the thousands of new vets from Afghanistan.

Not a single Conservative MP — including the minister of Veterans Affairs — stood up for veterans when all that cash was on the chopping block. Rather than face the Wrath of Steve, 147 of them brought down the broadaxe on an NDP motion to spare VA from the cuts. Rarely is such base cowardice unanimous. In the Harper government, total submission is the price of membership.

That, I think, is what veterans will remember — that the party that courted, lionized and used the military abruptly turned its back on soldiers when priorities changed. So when Conservative candidates knock on the door of a veteran or a veteran’s family in 2015, there will be no tea and cookies.

Veterans have been caught in the PM’s latest gambit to keep power — a balanced budget. He is betting the farm that Canadians will see a balanced budget as proof of his competence and leadership. But will it be a balanced budget in a healthy economy? Or will it be a slash-and-burn political strategy which expects Canadians to cheer the demise of services they depend on?

If Stephen Harper thinks his sneak attack against Canada’s veterans — giving them bread and circuses while cutting the operations budget at VA by 30 per cent — will work, he is sorely mistaken. Canadians know that if a government can cut services for wounded war veterans, then no one is safe.

Every single Conservative in the Harper government should hang his or her head in shame over treating veterans like any other government expense. But it is frankly obscene that, from the prime minister on down, not one of them has publicly advocated for changes to the New Veterans Charter. After all, even the veterans’ ombudsman has reported that this Scrooge-like piece of legislation enacted in 2006 consigns some of Canada’s most severely wounded veterans to a life of harsh economic struggle.

In fact, the Harper government has already been in a B.C. court arguing against the claim put forth by veterans that there is a “social contract” that obliges Ottawa to look after them, given their service and injuries.

Canada’s wounded veterans deserve pensions for life, not one-time lump sum payments from a government that treats them like troublesome insurance claims it wants off the books. It should be remembered that in the civilian world, disabling workplace injuries are covered for life. How can the standard be lower for the military?

Stephen Harper may have convinced the hangers-on and weaklings in his party that he can do whatever he likes and get away with it. Check out the list of people he has bullied, berated and in some cases buried with nothing but submissive silence from his caucus: Kevin Page, Munir Sheik, Richard Colvin, Linda Keen, Helena Guergis, Bill Casey …

In recent weeks, Harper has even turned on the likes of former auditor general Sheila Fraser, and Beverley McLachlin, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Not a peep from the party of pipsqueaks, but many sycophantic shout-outs for the PM’s disgraceful outburst.

But Justice John Gomery, who investigated the ad sponsorship scandal, was astounded: “I think it’s appalling that the judiciary should be used for political purposes in this way and I’m puzzled as to the motivation of the prime minister and his office as to why they would take on a chief justice.”

If Stephen Harper thinks his sneak attack against Canada’s veterans — giving them bread and circuses while cutting the operations budget at VA by 30 per cent — will work, he is sorely mistaken.

Canadians know that if a government can cut services for wounded war veterans, then no one is safe. Yet what comes out of the Tory backbench in the wake of the Fantino fiasco and the National Day of Harper but wave after wave of silence?

It’s not only in the military that desertion is a despicable thing and carries a heavy punishment — as the silent members of the Harper party will soon discover.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

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