The UnCivil War

For the last four months I've been writing a book on peace - not the kind where governments negotiate settlements but where average people find innovative and courageous ways to bring people together despite military conflicts. I've worked in enough armed conflicts at the citizen level to see the transforming effects of dedicated people on societies ravaged by tensions.Strange as it sounds, it got me thinking what Canada might look like if Stephen Harper actually attained his coveted majority. In the English debate last week, the PM talked about the inconvenience of a minority parliament, how it gets so little accomplished. Naturally, he didn't talk about his own part in what became the shambles of the 40th Parliament in Canada. These things are now well-known - prorogations, despoiling of committees, legal battles with Elections Canada, contempt of Parliament and its people, corruption in the PMO, the refusal to work with other parties - and they constitute the key reason this past session became dysfunctional. Under minority rule, Stephen Harper shut down, belittled, fractured, balkanized, darkened, alienated, victimized, and renamed Parliament all at the same time - a dizzying and disturbing ability.And now he wants to rule it with a majority. That will only provide more of the same, only with a kind of absolute power that will denigrate anything it touches. I speak from experience and I've witnessed it on a daily basis. This country has never seen anything like it before and therefore has been frozen in place - those endearing Canadian traits of tolerance and acceptance have suddenly become a disadvantage in a world where irresponsible power knifes through such traits like butter.The PM is attempting to promote the reasoning that a majority granted to him by the voters will at last bring stability to an otherwise raucous House. The opposition parties just won't go along with things and cooperate, he says. Somehow he wants you to overlook all of those attacks on Parliament mentioned above, each and every one purposefully managed by the PMO.For the opposition parties themselves the last Parliament was one long, drawn-out battle of attrition. They could never win, but at least they could hold down the score. And that's exactly what they did, all the while attempting to thwart the takeover of Parliament by an autocratic regime. Take those defenders of the House out of the equation and what are you left with? I know it already: scorched earth. This isn't some alarmist sentiment based on a theoretical partisanship; rather it's informed by five years of predetermined actions of a government that couldn't get its way by the legal or historical norms, so opted to just steamroller everything in its path.In other words, why would a government that has so abused the House of the people suddenly transform into some kind of benign, tolerant elite? It will never happen. It will be the precursor to the UnCivil War, forcing the country into regional conflicts: West versus East, Aboriginals versus the feds, capitalists versus environmentalists, the poor against the rich, the seashores versus the prairies, and Quebec versus the rest. Among Conservative MPs there are those who worry about this very possibility. I know it; I've talked to them. They care about this country but innately comprehend that their man never really took to it the way it was constituted. His predecessor, Brian Mulroney, built the largest majority in Canadian history by a framework of inclusiveness that went beyond mere election prattle. Our present PM hated it at the time and those spots haven't changed - if he has contempt for us in engagement, the marriage will be only worse. He understands well enough that the House of Commons is the essential gathering point of the people of Canada, and in forcing it into a dysfunction he knew it would infuse the country at large. His contempt of Parliament was, by extension, contempt of us. Canada is constituted through Parliament in arrangement with the provinces. A majority for Harper will just give you provinces and a divided people.I have been befuddled and angered by all this, having tried to cooperate within it and been alienated from it. I am an MP, for all the good and ill that comes with that. I understand the intricacies of Parliament from the inside and I'm not blind to what a Harper majority would do. If the Conservative party was led by a different figure - and there are some good able Conservatives - I wouldn't be concerned as much because there would be more of a respect for the place of the Commons where, figuratively, the people gather.It's time you started to rise up and defend yourself. If you have no Parliament, you'll have no gathering place of national reason, merely regional offices of disparity. If Mr. Harper should fail in his quest, or even receive a more limited minority, it's common conjecture that he'll opt out, plying his efforts elsewhere. Why? Because Parliament would remain an obstacle to his grander design. It's not a plan of the devil but it is one that would lead to ultimate alienation. If he can't get that he's likely gone. He was never in it for us.