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If Stephen Harper had retired five years ago, as many advised, he would be regarded as one of the country’s outstanding prime ministers and would have been spared the ultimate defeat that has needlessly ended the careers of many other leaders, including such distinguished statesmen as Laurier, St. Laurent, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Thatcher and Helmut Kohl. But he went for a fourth straight election without some of his best ministers, including the late Jim Flaherty, John Baird and Peter MacKay, was more dictatorial than ever, conducted a completely incompetent campaign based on women’s headgear in public places and a conjured threat of mass migration from the Middle East, and was sent to the showers.

As I wrote here in the past two weeks, for four years we have had image government from his successor; pandering to voting sub-groups in a politically atomized country. All emphasis has been on unlimited pursuit of a pristine environment and the manipulation of gender issues and native policy. The government has declared the objective of “phasing out” fossil fuels (Alberta’s), with no regard to the resulting impoverishment of that province, and with the unnecessary continuation of Canada as an oil-importing country. The Canadian environment is not deteriorating, and climate alarm is being propagated for discreditable motives and with undesirable consequences.