The Space Shuttle Endeavour’s Canadarm at work in orbit in 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, NASA Photo

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When Ground Control cuts Major Tom’s umbilical cord, you know the acidification of Canadian politics is complete.

Not only is Marc Garneau this country’s first astronaut, he actually operated Canada’s robotic space arm on two NASA missions. Moreover, it was Garneau who suggested to Industry Minister Christian Paradis that the Canadarm, a Canadian invention, be placed in a venue where people could actually see it — the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.

The alternative was the Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Montreal where the iconic piece of gear would be seen by office staff and the night watchman. The government took the advice — but left the astronaut who gave it stranded in outer space.

The make-it-up-as-they-go-along gang then offered the lamest stretcher of their lingering love affair with whoppering: It wasn’t the Harper government that snubbed our very own Major Tom, it was those thoughtless museum and space agency officials that issued the invitations — and apparently forgot an icon.

This is more then mere drivel — this is craven buck-passing, if not outright dishonesty. Not so long ago in this space, I broke a story about a change in the publication policy inside the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that would give government managers control over what government scientists published.

One of the key changes was that people not involved in the science would be signing off on the copyright. Let’s call a spade a spade: It was about muzzling science to prevent a collision with policy-based evidence, the specialty of the Harper crowd.

The next day the story was repudiated by some poor mouthpiece in the department. There was no change in the policy, DFO insisted — the story was “untrue.” The minister parroted the denial in the House of Commons. The story had been puréed in the government’s communications processor. Then iPolitics and others produced memos to show the policy had in fact changed.

Where is the apology to Marc Garneau? And is the Harper government actually claiming that it never occurred to them to glance over the guest list or to invite our first Space Man to the Canadarm ceremony?

The upshot? The government admitted that the policy had changed — but insisted that it had been done by departmental officials who had acted on their own and hadn’t advised the minister. You know, another example of the public service out there on its own frolic, doing stuff behind the back of the most secretive and punitive federal government in Canadian history, risking their necks just for the heck of it.

Those damned, devil-may-care bureaucrats.

So you see, it really was the museum and the space agency’s fault. Even if that were true, where is the apology to Marc Garneau? And is the Harper government actually claiming that it never occurred to them to glance over the guest list or to invite our first Space Man to the Canadarm ceremony?

Bottom line? The crunchy cons chose to punish the rival politician rather than honour the astronaut.

It is bred in the bones of this regime. Everyone knows that the Harper Conservatives have made a policy out of excluding sitting MPs from events to announce federal initiatives in their ridings. It’s dirtbag politics at its grimiest and the message is as unambiguous as a punch in the gut: “All goodies come from Steve, not your MP, or the government of Canada.”

Remember those giant mock cheques the Tories used to use when handing back taxpayers some of their own money — the ones bearing the party logo and Tory MPs’ signatures? There was something faintly North Korean about it all. You began to have the feeling that the Great Navigator himself might soon appear on the currency.

The Garneau Affair is not unique. The template is simple, repeated and unvarying. The government denies until denial becomes absurd, and then shifts the blame to some lowly minion when something absolutely has to be done. The H-Team is never responsible for bad things — just their incompetent underlings.

Consider the case of former Conservative cabinet minister Peter Penashue. When he was caught breaking elections rules by exceeding spending limits in the form of non-monetary contributions, the first response was that he had done nothing wrong.

When that bull wouldn’t fly, the minister blamed an inexperienced member of his campaign team, Reginald Bowers, for his troubles. Except the fall guy wasn’t exactly a neophyte. Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver appointed Bowers to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board because of his “decades of experience in business and economic development.”

The template is simple, repeated and unvarying. The government denies until denial becomes absurd, and then shifts the blame to some lowly minion when something absolutely has to be done.

And when Penashue resigned after admitting that he had spent $47,000 more than he was entitled to under the law, the prime minister endorsed his re-election bid in Labrador.

It was the same in the ‘robocalls’ affair. After Elections Canada laid a charge against Guelph Conservative worker over a phone campaign that allegedly sent hundreds of voters to a phoney poll address on Election Day, Conservative party brass muttered something about overzealous local party workers.

Never mind that Michael Sona, the only person charged so far in the case, claims that he didn’t have the resources or the access to party voter information to pull this stunt off on his own. His lawyer is anxious to pursue that point in court by examining the evidence of Conservative party headquarters officials on a matter he says should be the subject of a public inquiry.

Remember, you practically have to give a blood sample and submit to a retina scan before gaining access to Tory voter information from CIMS. Yet Conservative HQ yapper Fred DeLorey talked about how delighted he was that the Elections Canada investigation had reached the stage of charging someone. I suspect that getting to the bottom of the robocalls affair will mean getting to the top — which is why those Elections Canada investigations are active, ongoing and widespread.

Interestingly, Conservatives in Guelph were less thrilled than DeLorey with the charge against Sona. Half the riding association walked, including former Tory candidate Marty Burke and his wife.

The trouble with perpetual lying and relentless dirty tricks is that people get tired of being dissed as either too stupid or too submissive to get it. The Harper Conservatives are now indelibly branded with poisonous partisanship, corporate cheerleading and terminal tackiness.

How low can these guys go? When the PMO was busily trying to shove former cabinet minister Helena Guergis under the bus based on flashy but false allegations, she and her husband Rahim Jaffer announced that they were having a baby. “They said I was lying about it to get sympathy. They said that I wasn’t really pregnant,” she told me.

That might be why the prime minister’s favourability rating in a recent Harris Decima poll trails so far behind that of Justin Trudeau. And it might also be why the lemmings are getting restless in the Tory caucus. South of the border, the Republican Party has been told that if they don’t want to remain a lost political tribe after their recent drubbing by Barack Obama, they need a new message, a new messenger and a different tone.

After 2013, a Space Oddity, they’re not the only ones.

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.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.