More from Michael Harris available More fromavailable here

John Ralston Saul is probably right — our Maple Leaf Mussolini would have impressed old Benito himself, shiny boots and all.

Canada’s Master Confuser has hit all the hot buttons in recent weeks and many Canadians responded exactly as he had hoped. They stampeded like a herd of gazelles pursued by starving lions.

Stephen Harper emerged from the storage closet following the attack on Parliament Hill to declare Canadians would not be intimidated. He linked two disturbed killers to terrorism long before the shaky ‘proof’ was produced.

(By the way, if you’re looking for a connection to Islamic State, keep looking … notwithstanding the RCMP’s latest working theory — that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau planned to behead a politician. The Mounties also claimed he wanted to travel to Syria, not Saudi Arabia, a statement that turned out to be false. Trudeau blinked on this issue. Mulcair did not.)

Andrea Polko, the girlfriend of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, showed more sense that the PM. She called for Canadians to “wake up” and reflect on how we treat mentally ill people like Zehaf-Bibeau.

But in terms of politics, fear is the ace of spades these days. Fear shaved five points off Justin Trudeau’s lead in the polls. It doubled the turnout for Remembrance Day at the Ottawa War Memorial. (A man who apparently passed himself off as a veteran was granting interviews at the ceremony — another ringing endorsement of Hill security.)

Monument-lovers were impressed with all that pomp. But what about the people at the centre of this carefully orchestrated exercise in emotional crowd-control — the living veterans? What are they doing?

Are they cheering their closet commander? Are they mistaking jingoism for patriotism — as so many are these days, including quite a few people in the media? Have they chosen marketing over information?

They have not. In fact, the veterans are here not to praise Caesar but to bury him. That’s why veterans Ron Clarke and Mike Blais have launched an Anybody But Conservative campaign to rally opposition against the government in time for the election.

Those who have been watching the veterans’s file closely on Harper’s watch — rather than listening to the Top Gun drivel being dished out by the PM — know that a national disgrace has been unfolding in Canada. While the Harper government has been a great little military monument-builder ($50 million added to that budget), it has abandoned the flesh-and-blood veterans who came back from war needing help.

The veterans have already fired Fantino. Now they want to fire Stephen Harper. The Harper government saved $3.8 million by closing those nine VA centres. It proceeded to add $4.5 million to Fantino’s ad budget to assure the viewers of Hockey Night in Harperland that the government was doing a great job with vets.

Since 2011, the Harper government has cut $226 million from Veterans Affairs administrative funding — a 30 per cent chop. That’s why one of Harper’s strongest supporting groups — veterans — has turned against him. Or rather, Harper abandoned them first.

Take the issue of suicide. The Canadian Forces have a suicide rate that is twice as high as the rate in the British Armed Forces, which are three times larger. What ever happened to the idea of hiring an adequate number of mental health workers to deal with the victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the handmaiden of suicide in many cases? When Peter MacKay was minister of Defence, he promised to hire extra medical personnel to deal with this dire legacy of Afghanistan. I guess he couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a photo-op.

The litany of shame deepens with the current Veterans Affairs minister, Julian Fantino. This bloviating puffball of a politician has had his shiny boots resting on too many big desks in his life — and he should have been fired for gross indecency to veterans long ago. First, he closed nine VA centres, refused to re-visit the decision — and then said it would lead to better service. Only a horse’s ass could say something like that.

Fantino is the worthy fellow who set up a meeting with veterans who didn’t see the logic of less-means-more — then stood them up for 70 minutes. When they vented their anger over the VA centre closures, he accused them of being union dupes.

Fantino then left the meeting in a huff — as if he had been the offended party, instead of the bumbling oaf of the whole grotesque encounter. By the time he got around to offering an apology, it didn’t matter anymore. Everyone knew what Harper was doing — taking from everybody with a legitimate need to balance the almighty budget for 2015. The whip was landing on every back, including those of the needy and vulnerable.

Here’s the way it is. The veterans have already fired Fantino. Now they want to fire Stephen Harper. The Harper government saved $3.8 million by closing those nine VA centres. It proceeded to add $4.5 million to Fantino’s ad budget to assure the viewers of Hockey Night in Harperland that the government was doing a great job with vets. Who cares about the truth when you can always use public money to produce phoney commercials?

Who cares? Vets do. That’s why a group of Afghanistan veterans has taken the New Veterans Charter to the B.C. Supreme Court. Instead of giving our wounded and damaged veterans reasonable pensions for life (the old number was $31,000 annually), the Harper government implemented a new system under which the government made a one-time-only lump sum payment. You know, like an insurance company trying to get the gum of your claim off their shoe. This is not about compassion or social justice. This is minimal compliance — and contempt.

But like a lot of things Stephen Harper does, it looks plausible until you take it apart. Though the maximum payment under the new system is $350,000, (this notional maximum is constantly rising) the reality is that only a small number of veterans — 148 — have ever received anything close to that amount since 2006. The average payout is $45,000. Try managing that with one arm, one leg, or a troubled mind — particularly if you did not clock in the 10 years in the Forces to qualify for a pension.

The Harper government, which has shamelessly used Canada’s military in its endless political wars, is currently in court arguing that it does not have a legal obligation to look after returning veterans under what veterans themselves cite as ‘Borden’s Bargain’.

Harper’s lawyers say that Prime Minister Robert Borden’s promise to look after Canadian soldiers, regardless whether they made it home after the First World War, was just words in a speech — just politics.

This is the government that issued a one-cent cheque to the mother of Cpl. Justin Stark, who killed himself in the John W. Foote Armouries in October 2011.

This is the government that told the grieving parents of Lt. Shawna Rogers, a woman who committed suicide in the military in 2012, that they would have to pay their own legal bills for fighting the military’s demand that the family take part in an investigation into her death. Worse still, Rogers’ parents were told that, unless they agreed to get with the program and participate in the investigation, they could be sent to jail.

Stephen loves us, yes I know, for his office tells us so. Ms. Polko was right. Time to wake up.

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. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, recently hit number one on Maclean’s magazine’s top ten list for Canadian non fiction.

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.