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.” He hosts Michael Harris Live, an Ottawa talk show on CFRA. 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.

When Ralph Klein ran Alberta, you might as well have been a prairie dog as an opposition member in the legislature.

Klein believed that when he won an election, the work of crushing the opposition had just begun. You’d think they’d all come down from the mountains with explosives in their underwear. In a nutshell, they were not the representatives of the people who didn’t vote for Ralph, but the enemy.

As premier, Klein banned opposition members from sitting on policy committees. The poor devils from the Liberals and the NDP weren’t even allowed to use government facilities paid for by the public. Everything belonged to Ralph.

As for the legislative process, Klein used closure more times that Moe poked Curly and Larry in the eyes. Anyone who opposed the government’s agenda got the treatment, from being labeled commies to being publicly worked over by Klein’s enforcer-in-chief, Rod Love.

For Klein, the only democratic process he honoured was the election. Once that was in the books, it was the Kingdom of Ralph and woe to any knave who didn’t get it — no matter what walk of life they came from.

Why all the talk about Klein Conservatism?

From what I’ve seen since the election that gave us Harper Unbound, Ralph might as well be prime minister. Stephen Harper has his Rod Love in John Baird, two attack trained understudies in Jason Kenney and Dean Del Mastro, and sufficient disdain for the process of post-election democracy that his best efforts as prime minister have been dedicated to undermining it.

So far the prime minister has cut off public funding for political parties, knowing as he does that money is the mother’s milk of politics and that the incumbent enjoys a built-in advantage in fundraising. He uses closure at the drop of a quibble. Anyone who criticizes gets dipped in boiling oil, as people like Ed Clark and Richard Colvin can tell you. As someone who believes that truth resides in a nuance, I also find the little things telling.

I knew we were in trouble when the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa had to ask Rona Ambrose and James Moore if they could hold their monthly meetings in a federal government building. The good news is that the antiquarians apparently may leave the room without raising their hands.

“I can understand that government bureaucrats might need the space for their own meetings – I used to work in the government, but I don’t know why we would have to seek ministerial approval,” President Glenn Wright told me.

In the spirit of taking, the federal government also served noticed on non-profit groups meeting on federal premises that they will now be charged rent. Mr. Wright’s group faces a monthly fee of between three and six hundred dollars. Thirty million dollars of taxpayers’ money to remember the War of 1812, but rent bills to non-profit organizations.

Then there was Dean Del Mastro’s face-rub on Facebook of MP Justin Trudeau. Del Mastro, who is MP for Peterborough and Stephen Harper’s parliamentary secretary, wrote that it was “outrageous” that a Catholic high school in his riding has invited Trudeau to speak twice in three years.

In branding Trudeau a bad Catholic, Del Mastro quoted from an interview I did with the Liberal MP on my radio show. Here is Trudeau’s offending quote spoken after I asked him how he would get more young people interested in our flagging democracy: “So what I like to do is I encourage them to connect with their world, to go out and occupy something, you know, to get involved in creating a community group, get involved in creating a protest group.”

That was enough for Del Mastro to consign Trudeau to Purgatory. The Del Mastro Doctrine goes something like this: in Peterborough, real Catholic school boards only invite good Catholic Tories to speak to their students. The bewildered response of the teacher who invited Trudeau is the question on a lot of lips: who made Dean Del Mastro Chief of the Faith Police? What the bleep business is it of Del Mastro’s who the school board invites? And since when is it outrageous that a sitting MP is asked to speak?

The all-politics on all-fronts at all-times Ralph Klein approach to governing touched the selection of Canada’s next Auditor-General. First the government advertised the position as mandatory bilingual. No surprise there since every senior officer of parliament must be bilingual. In the Auditor General’s case that is even more crucial, since so much of the job comes down to communicating potentially controversial information. Then a unilingual candidate was selected, despite both parliamentary precedent and the terms of the job-posting.

Believing the process followed in Michael Ferguson’s 10-year posting to be illegal, the Liberal caucus in both the House of Commons and the Senate walked out on votes to approve the appointment. Michel Dorais, one of two independent members of the internal audit committee that oversees the Office of the Auditor General, quit over the Ferguson appointment. He said that a unilingual Auditor General would mean that the language of work in the office would change substantially over time to favour English.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement responded for the government by reporting to the House of Commons on a political donation made by Dorais to the Liberal Party. No one ever said the Harperites don’t know how to go for the gonads. Klein’s Conservatives wrote that book.

The language itself also appears to be part of the spoils of electoral victory. It doesn’t matter what is true, only what is said by powerful members of the government. With every paper in Europe proclaiming the Cannes G-20 meeting a failure, the prime minister talked about how Greece has finally come around to doing the right thing. And what can be said about Julian Fantino’s confabulations about how the F-35 project is moving right along on schedule, when even the Pentagon says the taxpayer is getting skinned alive.

Although the Harper government has not so far banned opposition members from parliamentary committees, some MPs think that they may as well have. I spoke to Frank Valeriote, the Liberal Party’s agriculture critic, about his proposed amendments to the Conservative legislation that will soon do away with the Canadian Wheat Board’s single desk monopoly to sell Western wheat.

“They didn’t even bother with the amendments at committee. They just dismissed them. And anything controversial, they just take behind closed doors and then we can’t talk about it. At this rate, you have to ask yourself what is the point of coming up with amendments, when the Conservatives just use their majority to do exactly what they want with legislation.”

Maybe that’s why the directors of the Wheat Board have taken the government to court for what they believe is a breach of the law governing the process by which this Canadian institution can be changed. So far, the government hasn’t asked the farmers what they think.

As for respect for the Treasury Board rules governing Ottawa’s spending, between Tony Clement’s Orwellian babbling and John Baird’s cheeky “top up” admissions at committee, nothing came through but the Cheshire Cat smile of majority government. Talk about walking like an Albertan.

Mary, if I were the Warrior Princess, I’d consider adding a little more Kevlar to the old breast plate.