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Those who live by the whopper should always remember that they can die by the whopper.

True to form, Conservative leader Stephen Harper began the 2015 election campaign with a cascade of factual deficiencies. Harper said he was calling the election early because the campaigns should be paid for by political parties and he had noticed the other parties had already started their campaigns.

Reality check? His own re-election campaign, using public money, began in 2011. The early election call will add millions of dollars to the $375 million that a 37-day campaign would have cost — and the taxpayer will be paying for all of it. Harper just wants to suck a ton more public money into the whole exercise, not less.

This PM is incapable of getting it out straight. Has he forgotten about that cuddly picture of Pierre Poilievre staring down at all those government cheques as though he were gazing at his first born?

Harper also said the budget was balanced (the PBO and at least three major banks disagree), social programs have been preserved (ask the veterans and pensioners), and ‘new’ benefits (most would say bribes) have been delivered to families.

Funniest of all, the PM insisted that election campaigns have to be conducted under the rule of law. Really? Let’s go to the tape:

Dean Del Mastro caught cheating at elections;

Peter Penashue caught cheating at elections and then had his nomination papers signed by the PM;

The Conservative Party of Canada pleads guilty to cheating at elections and fined;

And, wasn’t it the CPC’s own computer lists and staffer linked to the infamous Robocalls scandal?

To Harper, the rule of law means the law of the jungle.

Whether we get the Beard, the Beauty or the Beast after October 19 depends on the answer to this question:

Will election 2015 be a cattle-drive run by the political parties, or a rational process adopted by Canadians to judge the government’s record?

In other words, is it to be an exercise in crowd control in a lazy democracy, or people power in a country that has had enough autocracy? Marketing or a full-blown exercise in public engagement?

And then there are all the unsavoury changes made to Canadian election law that work directly to the Cons advantage. Pierre Poilievre did his job well. Under the ‘Fair’ Elections Act, for which he acted as principle Judas goat, it is easier to cheat and harder to vote. And then there are all the unsavoury changes made to Canadian election law that work directly to the Cons advantage. Pierre Poilievre did his job well. Under the ‘Fair’ Elections Act, for which he acted as principle Judas goat, it is easier to cheat and harder to vote.

If it’s the latter, Stephen Harper will be schlepping furniture onto a moving truck in just over 50 days. (Steve, I know we’ve had our differences, but here to lend a hand with the piano if needed – provided you don’t break into song.) Like Dean del Mastro, running on his record is simply not an option. It is a road that leads to oblivion at warp speed and Harper has no intention of taking it.

If it’s a cattle drive, though, the guy with the best cattle prod wins. As king of the low road, that would be the sitting prime minister – a man pundit John Ibbitson referred to as “a lion in autumn” in his new book about Stephen Harper. Liar in autumn would have been more accurate.

Ibbitson, who famously predicted a Tory blue dynasty in his unfortunately titled previous book The Big Shift (he now sticks pins in his Rachel Notley doll) should have read James Goldman’s play, Lion in Winter, more closely. If he had, he might not have been so fast to suggest a modified comparison between our current prime minister and Henry ll. In that play, the monarch himself says to one of his sons that just because you plunk your ass on purple cushions doesn’t make you a king. (That said, Ibbitson did a nice job of pointing out the PM’s dark side).

So far, Harper is getting a lot of help from the MSM to run the marketing version of campaign 2015. Here is how to identify the PM’s enablers. First, their principle obsession is with who is “winning” today. This is a fatuous proposition because there is no election today. We are 70 days out. This is cat-chasing-tail journalism.

Their favourite tool of copping out of the real Harper story, his record, is therefore polls. Polls never deal with who should win, or who deserves to win, or what the government has actually done, but rather with who would win today if there were an election.

It is not that polls aren’t important. They are. But polls distract rather than inform. They are about an ever vanishing present, rather than a fixed and enduring past. Polls are the May flies of context. The government’s record is the Gospel.

Harper’s helpers also love attack ads. You know, the ones that say Mulcair is an opportunist and Justin isn’t ready – deep stuff that gives you a headache trying to grasp it all – if you are a low-information voter sucking on a beer. The Cons, the helpers say, have scads of money and can outspend their opponents by a wide margin. Now that we are headed into the third longest election campaign in our history, this too is construed as an advantage for the Conservatives.

And then there are all the unsavoury changes made to Canadian election law that work directly to the Cons advantage. Pierre Poilievre did his job well. Under the ‘Fair’ Elections Act, for which he acted as principle Judas goat, it is easier to cheat and harder to vote. If there were to be another Con Robo-raid on Canadian democracy, Elections Canada couldn’t tell us about it until charges were laid. And you know what that means; years after the horse has left the barn, we might be handed his bridle. And the gumshoes over at EC still don’t have power of subpoena, thanks to Steve.

And then there’s that famous vote-splitting – the feature of our antiquated electoral system that allows someone to win 100 per cent of the power with 38 per cent of the vote. Stories now abound that vote-splitting is working out to the Conservatives’ advantage. Why Harper might even win another majority if the vote splits just the right way in seat-rich Ontario.

You will note that all of the above examples share one thing in common — total amnesia when it comes to the Harper record. Why, the CBC won’t even run ads from the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting criticizing Harper, lest the Great Navigator conclude the state broadcaster agrees with brilliant people like Ian Morrison that Harper is a tyrant.

As for Peter Mansbridge, don’t look for any exposes about the PM during the election. His interviews with Stephen Harper look like one monkey picking the nits off his cousin at the zoo. Huggy bear and kissy face. Job security is elephant shit stuff at the Corporation these days – especially since the end of moolah for moonlighting on the speech circuit.

Let me say it again. The moment any of the MSM, including the CBC, begin to seriously deal with the true Harper legacy, that is the beginning of the end of his decade-long debacle of corruption, deceit, and institutional destruction.

Institutional destruction, yes. The Law Reform Commission, the Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, the Long Form Census, the Canadian Wheat Board, First Ministers’ meetings, rural mail delivery, and the Office of the Inspector General at the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. All gone.

There is the phoney reputation for fiscal stewardship, when the reality is a $200-billion increase in Canada’s national debt since 2006. Everything is a shell game with these political carnies, from fake balanced budgets to obscene public expenditures for the empty Economic Action Plan. It was neither action nor a plan – just partisan propaganda on the public dime.

There is the dubious distinction of owning the worst climate change record in the industrialized world, including failing grades from former Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan.

Vaughan reported that the Harper government’s knowledge of greenhouse-gas emissions and oil sands pollution was so poor that key decisions were being made without understanding the consequences. What a time to be environmental Neanderthals.

At home, the Harper government called eco-activists ‘terrorists’. At the UN, Canada has been repeatedly called “a climate laggard.” The one scientific installation that made us a leader in climate change and pollution, the Experimental Lakes Area, was closed by the Harper government – as iPolitics was the first to chronicle in full detail.

The law and order party has broken and bent the statutes that bind us – with the Supreme Court rejecting Conservative legislation at a record rate – from the wrongful appointment of a Supreme Court justice, to closing free injection sites for heroin addicts. There was even an attempt in the government’s most recent 167-page omnibus bill to retroactively exonerate the RCMP for illegal records destruction. You know, making a crime disappear by government fiat. Like they do in countries that hand you a banana instead of a ballot. And then there is Bill C-51, Harper’s homage to Senator Joe McCarthy.

Now will that be election campaign by cattle prod or critical faculty? Is it about Harper, or as Justin Trudeau said at his campaign launch, about us?

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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 nine 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. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

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.