This poorly written article headlined with a clickbait title and authored by Bruce Livesey in the National Observer seeks to ask an audience of people they already believe know the answer a simple question: is Stephen Harper the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history? Instead of following up with a comparison between different Prime Ministers as one would expect, the remainder of the article is simply one sided Harper bashing, with mainly biased and partisan sources.

The first time the question is asked the response comes from a far less than unbiased source in Michael Harris. Harris is on his own personal war against Stephen Harper and his articles and blog postings read like the ranting of a mad man who believes Harper is personally out to get him. A frequent poster on ipolitics.ca if his articles were against anyone other than the Prime Minister it would be considered cyber-bullying (though most cyber-bullies are more coherent).

After speaking to this “expert” on unnatural hatred towards another human being, Livesey divides the article into deconstructing Harper’s policies including: “the economy, democratic practices, the environment, corruption, foreign policy, culture, civil liberties”. Apparently we have to wait for part two for the latter four topics. Contrary to what you would expect this isn’t a comparison between Harper and other former Prime Ministers but rather another opportunity to slam his policies using biased sources and without any comparison to any other Prime Minister.

His Democratic Record

While comparing Harper’s democratic record against Prime Ministers who didn’t let women vote (up until 1918) or aboriginals vote (up until 1960) seems unfair, this article still somehow draws the conclusion that Stephen Harper is the worst Prime Minister for democracy, without any comparison, of course. After passing the Federal Accountability Act, which seems to be objectively a very good thing for Canada by eliminating the ability of political figures to enter lobbying, the article chastises Harper for only enacting half (29/60) of the measures he promised to make Ottawa more accountable. Fair enough, but this still means he enacted 29 new measures to make Ottawa more accountable than any of his predecessors, without eliminating the old measures. That alone should end the discussion of whether he is the worst for democracy but not for Livesey who uses a “laundry list” of Conservative failings to “prove” his point.

First was Harper’s four prorogations. While the article ignores the precedence set by Jean Chretien who used to prorogation to avoid the sponsorship scandal, Harper did prorogue Parliament four times, this is true. However, that never prevented him from returning to the House to answer questions, and twice was for the same Winter Olympics. Hardly the same as MacKenzie King refusing to give “a five-cent piece” to any Tory government in 1930.

Next he conflates omnibus bills (annoying but MPs have a duty to read them even if they’re really, really long) with the Marc Nadon appointment, when in reality one has nothing to do with the other. Nadon’s appointment was counseled as legal by two former Supreme Court Justices before the bill and would have been made, omnibus bill or no. Sometimes when you’re elected to represent your government you have to read a lot of information. Deal with it.

Robo-calling by Michael Sona et al was called by the aforementioned Michael Harris as “Canada’s Worst election scandal”, but was called by a more reputable source (Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley) as an event that didn’t affect the outcome of any election and that “There is no evidence to indicate that the use of the CIMS database in this manner was approved or condoned by the CPC.” While the Sona trial said there may be more people involved, that’s a fr cry from a court case which exonerated the CPC, unmentioned in this article.

The biggest critique of the Fair Elections Act was that its critics called it the “Unfair Elections Act”. Stellar journalism Bruce. Then he goes on to talk about how federal scientists can’t speak to the media (which somehow relates to democracy) and the fact that the independent RCMP and CSIS targeted environmental groups as reasons why Harper is undemocratic. Even though they have been doing this since at least 2005, most likely earlier, and before Stephen Harper took power. But we can’t have a tie for worst Prime Minister, can we?

He goes on to saying that auditing charitable groups is undemocratic specifically based on the fact that he doesn’t know any Conservative leaning groups that were audited, again showing his complete lack of understanding of what “arm’s length” means. He makes a valid point about political ads, though Chretien and Mulroney were never ones to back away from advertising their policies, and Trudeau’s advertising blitz during the repatriation ceremony could easily rival the “Canada Action Plan” ads.

The Economy

Most reasonable observers would say Stephen Harper is above average at managing the economy. That’s his thing. Under his stewardship Canada was the first G7 country to recover from the financial crisis of 2007 and the recession of 2008. But of course to spin doctors like Livesey that’s not “the real story”.

His first source on this is the “left-leaning think tank” the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (of course, he conveniently left the left-leaning part out), who remarkably don’t think Canadians are doing better now than before the recession. No really? We’re not doing better at the end of a bust cycle than we were at the top of a boom cycle? No wonder this is a think tank with such revolutionary thinking. To back up this think tank Bruce brings in another credible source. A 45 year old mother of a 10 year old with a sad story. I know of a 43 year old mother of two with a feel good story about getting a job, so I guess those “sources” cancel out.

The next five paragraphs talk about the economy between 2006 and today while inexplicably never mentioning the recession of 2008. How Livesey’s fact-checkers missed such an important event is beyond me, but he goes on to blame Harper for everything that happened in the interim without even mentioning why. I suppose R.B. Bennett is solely to blame for the economy going down in the Great depression. Or Pierre Trudeau is solely to blame for the economic collapse in the 1970’s. We’ll never know because in this “comparative” article Bruce forgets to mention other Prime Ministers just like how he “forgot” the worst economic collapse since the 1930s.

However he then does a huge 180 degree spin. After first blaming Harper for putting the country into deficit and increasing the national debt, Livesey chastises Harper for not wanting to do either thing in the first place. When Harper pushed his effort towards the thing generating the most jobs and income in the country (oil and gas) this apparently was the wrong move as well. Better to put the money into manufacturing at the cost of Alberta’s prosperity like Trudeau did (how Trudeau isn’t mentioned more in an article about who is Canada’s worst Prime Minister is dangerously ignorant, at least on certain issues).

Using the same biased source (that was audited by the CRA) Livesey claims that Canada’s economy slipped from 8th pre-recession to 11th today and “sliding down that greasy pole”. That’s weird because the last data I could find Canada’s GDP was still growing, and is estimated to crack the top ten again in the near future, though there’s not much we can do when countries with populations double to 40 times larger than us start having a recovery or economic growth like India, Brazil and Russia. Apparently the world getting stronger means Harper is a bad economic leader.

Under Harper, he claims, income plateaued after 2008, which you can only understand if your definition of “plateaued” is “continued to rise annually”. Since he couldn’t back up this assertion he uses a poll to see how many youth still rely on financial help from their family (which can be construed either as a good thing for the families to be well off enough to help their children, or a bad thing that the children are poor) and that less people consider themselves middle-class today than before (without indicating whether the people who don’t identify themselves as middle class identified now as higher or lower, making this point irrelevant).

Livesey goes into some more irrelevant facts (that CEO’s are making more money in the free market, or that debt is increasing at a level economists consider appropriate for the interest rate levels) which attempt to confuse the reader with things that sound bad (rich CEOs!) and things which have nothing to do with Stephen Harper (rich CEOs). He also uses Jim Stanford, chief economist for Unifor as a source. Unifor. Seriously. The union that is running anti-Conservative ads across the country, is saying that Harper is bad for the country. Why pay for ads when people like Bruce Livesey will run them for free?

His Environmental Record

Here’s one that the layperson in Canada can agree with: Stephen Harper is bad for the environment, everyone knows that. Sure, some of the older Prime Ministers were far worse, but they didn’t know what we know today, right? No need to lie about Harper’s record or use biased sources is there?

Of course there is. If your goal is to create the most biased article ever created there is no excuse not to make up lies to further a point. Also, no need to name any other Prime Ministers even in passing when your article is dedicated to comparing Stephen Harper to the worst of the worst. Also, the fact that Harper’s approval record on the environment is increasing wouldn’t help the spin.

Pulling us out of Kyoto was good thing, as the accord did nothing, few were meeting their targets and all it would have accomplished was to create a $14 Billion bill for Canada without positively affecting climate change. China and America were never part of the plan, which doomed it from the beginning and Canada was right to pull out. Good idea in theory but not worth the waste of money.

Canada is low on the global emissions levels, that’s true. Calling us climate-villains might be pushing the realm of reasonableness, but by this point if there was a line Livesey already crossed it and it’s so far behind him he can’t even see his undeserved smugness from the beginning of the article. While some of the messages are true, others are without clarification (such as the acts Harper “gutted” without even an attempt to describe how they were amended) and others are brought by such partisan sources that it is a waste of time to even fact check them when reputable sources exist to everyone but Livesey. Sources such as Elizabeth May, famous for describing a convicted war criminal as having more class than Harper’s Cabinet and Christian Nadeau, author of “Rogue in Power: Why Stephen Harper is Remaking Canada by Stealth” both of whom who’s biases are hidden from the reader.

This piece of fan-fiction by Bruce Livesey is negligent at best and dangerously dishonest at worst. He is clearly making this article for people whose minds are already made up on Stephen Harper and who wants to hear this message. He used almost entirely biased sources, but failed to disclose any of these biases to the reader in the hopes they just believe him. Even worse, how does the title make any sense considering that the article was supposed to be a question as to whether Harper is the worst Prime Minister in history but no attempt to compare him to any other was even attempted.

Poor article. Poor author. Poor sources.