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Stephen Harper never surprises. He just keeps on getting worse.

Among other things, he proved this week that he is the king of pettiness. A federal scientist, Tony Turner, has been suspended for singing. Only Steve, it seems, can sing.

I still think Harper should be sued by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr for gross cruelty to iconic music. What is the greatest distance in the known universe? The expanse between the Beatles and Stephen Harper. That barfing unicorn on YouTube has a better sound than Steve and the Van Cats.

True, the singing scientist from what used to be known as Environment Canada (now the Secretariat of De-Regulation) was suspended by the Public Service Commission.

It’s not Steve’s fault. It never is. The latest example is duplicity on the PM’s security costs. One answer to Parliament, another to an ATIP request, as brilliantly documented by Elizabeth Thompson of iPolitics. The PMO’s answer: ask the RCMP, not us.

I have it on good authority that Turner, an expert in the highly controversial field of bird migrations, was also recently caught smiling at his desk. There are even nasty rumours circulating that he laughed at the Great Navigator during a clandestine lunch with other seditious critics of the government.

Singing, smiling, laughing? What’s next? Voting against Steve?

According to the latest polls, Harper is now in last place in the category of preferred prime minister. One of the reasons is that everybody but Rex Murphy has realized what the Duffy trial is really about. According to the latest polls, Harper is now in last place in the category of preferred prime minister. One of the reasons is that everybody but Rex Murphy has realized what the Duffy trial is really about.

And they call this a breach of the code of values and ethics for a civil servant. Say what? How about Harper’s inner circle and members of his PMO senior staff? In Harperland, criticism set to music is worse than lying, cheating, bribery, breach of trust and peeking into other people’s forensic briefs?

Everyone in Steve’s service is merely trying to please the Boss, including the starched-collar types in the Privy Council Office and the top mucky-mucks at Environment Canada. A plague of pileated woodpeckers hasn’t descended on Ottawa. That tapping noise you hear is just federal bureaucrats’ knees knocking.

Harper could have stepped up and stopped the whole “no-sing” Harperman thing in its soundtracks. Never mind the guy’s employer — does anyone really believe a Canadian citizen doesn’t have the right to criticize the government? I mean, outside of Paul Calandra and Konrad Yakabuski?

But what can you expect from someone who wanted to search and gag his own followers, who set the cops on civilians at the G8 and G20 like they were rabid dogs, and who thinks global warming is a scam by poor countries to screw money out of rich ones? Oh, sorry — he’s changed his mind on that one, right? Steve now agrees that something has to be done about carbon emissions … by 2050.

As I said, Steve never surprises. So it sort of fits that he turned to advertising to find a veteran who would say nice things about him — you know, something nicer than the “Fuck Harper” sign that Albertan Rob Wells put in the window of his hatchback.

Naturally, the Royal Canadian Harper Police pulled Wells over and slapped him with a $543 fine when he wouldn’t remove the sign. Can’t have a citizen publicly displaying that good old Scottish word that Harper himself is so fond of using when browbeating the staff. Credit to the Globe’s John Ibbitson for the potty-mouth facts, which I also discovered when writing Party of One (soon out in paperback).

Harper has shown time and time again that he is just another milker of the military, there for the guts and glory of the battles he sends others to fight in the finest chicken-hawk tradition of George W. Bush. But he is nowhere in sight when the wounded make their way home, limping down the Highway of Heroes on their own for the rest of their days.

As Veterans Affairs minister, the calamitous Julian Fantino fell on his fanny trying to impose Harper’s gross insensitivities on veterans. First Fantino stood them up rather than meet with them, then he threw a hissy fit because a vet called him out for acting like the deadbeat he was. Finally, he offered an hollow apology quickly followed by a new insult: the vets were just dupes of the union.

For all this, Fantino scored a rare 10 out 10 in the bellyflop category off the high-diving board of Conservative arrogance, surpassing Peter MacKay’s fine effort in the F-35 fib-fest.

Perhaps that’s why Canada’s veterans came up with their Anybody But Conservative election plan. They now plan to show up and picket campaign events. That will provide a nice change from the usual background of grinning supporters looking like they’ve been recently dosed with formaldehyde. You know, the perma-smile “average citizens” that Harper deploys when he makes public appearances and rented children are unavailable.

The ABC veterans kicked off their campaign at the Royal Canadian Legion in Fredericton during Harper’s announcement about increasing the number of reservists in his comically depicted “next mandate.” How did Harper handle the protesters? He didn’t let them in. You have to admit, this is a dude who knows how to celebrate democracy with the best of the Benitos.

How bad has the Conservative treatment of veterans become?

I will have more to say about this case next week, but consider the dilemma of one military widow, Joan Larocque. Her husband Jacques died in 2005, 20 days after returning from an operational tour in Camp X in Doha, of a massive heart attack. He was 40 years old.

An autopsy showed that although his heart was grotesquely diseased, military medicals never uncovered his condition — despite constant complaints from Cpl. Larocque that he was ill.

His diagnosis consistently came back as acid reflux — until he dropped dead at a family gathering in the United States. It took the government from 2005 until November 2014 to agree that his death was the result of serving in a special duty area.

It took the military eight years to debrief his widow on the Board of Inquiry into her husband’s death. And although she has received some financial help from the government, which is laudable, that’s not the full story. She and her family still have not received the mental health assistance they need after what veterans’ advocate Mike Blais called “ten years of bullshit.”

Such actions do not lead to popularity. According to the latest polls, Harper is now in last place in the category of preferred prime minister. One of the reasons is that everybody but Rex Murphy has realized what the Duffy trial is really about.

It is not a stand-alone, episodic piece of detritus to be washed away by the churning tides of the 15-minute news cycle. It is a road map to the heart of darkness — Harper’s modus operandi. Lying egregiously and without conscience is the hallmark of this government.

That is not a platform for re-election. It should be a plank for Harper and the Conservative party to walk in October, just as the Liberals did in 2006, and for the same reason — moral bankruptcy.

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