Some of Stephen Harpers Broken Promises

What’s your Number?

Will you be next?


1) Promise Made: Mr. Harper campaigned for an elected senate and pledged that “all appointments would be made on merit-based requirements”.
Promise Broken: In his first act as Prime Minister, Harper appointed his campaign co-chair Michael Fortier as a Senator and Minister of Public Works –the largest governmental procurement department and home of the sponsorship scandal. Because Mr. Fortier is not elected, he cannot be held accountable for his actions in the House of Commons.

2) Promise Made: In Opposition, the Conservatives fought hard against floor-crossing. Days before the election, 40 Conservative MPs supported a private members’ bill banning floor crossing without a by-election.

Promise Broken: Within hours of receiving the election results, Mr. Harper dismissed the valuable contributions of many of his fellow Conservative candidates and instead sought out the Liberal Minister, David Emerson, for a key position in his cabinet.

3) Promise Made: Prior to the election campaign, Mr. Harper unveiled his party’s Accountability Act, which aims to “crack down on the revolving door between ministers’ offices, the senior public service and the lobbying industry”.
Promise Broken: The Accountability Act apparently didn’t stop Gordon O’Connor from walking right through this revolving door into the crucial portfolio of Minister of Defence. Minister O’Connor, formerly a lobbyist for the defence industry, is now responsible for overseeing some of the largest defence contracts in Canadian history.

4) Promise Made: Mr. Harper’s election platform committed to strengthening the role of the Ethics Commissioner and preventing the Prime Minister from overruling the Commissioner’s decisions in the application of ethics rules.
Promise Broken: Despite “numerous attempts” to interview Mr. Harper over a four-month period, our new Prime Minister refused to make time for the Ethics Commissioner to discuss his role in the Gurmant Grewal taping affair.

5) The Conservative government announced today that, for the first time in Canadian history, the next judicial appointee to the Supreme Court of Canada will be questioned by a public parliamentary hearing. Although Conservatives promised a free vote in the House of Commons on the appointment of new Supreme Court justices during the election campaign, they will now appoint an ad-hoc parliamentary committee to question the new appointee.

6) During the election campaign, the Prime Minister promised the Canadian people that he would “lead by example”. In his Federal Accountability Act, Harper went so far as to promise that he “will prevent the Prime Minister from overruling the Ethics Commissioner on whether the Prime Minister or an official is in violation of the conflict of interest code”.
“Now, Mr. Harper has admitted he has even gone so far as to try and have Dr. Shapiro replaced, showing utter contempt for the Parliamentary process by trying to unilaterally remove a duly appointed officer of Parliament – an officer seeking to carry out his duties under the law “, Mr. Easter continued.

7) During the election campaign, the Conservatives promised to make all capital gains exempt from taxation, as long as the funds were reinvested within a six month period. The proposal was widely criticized by economists because of difficulties in implementation as well its prohibitive cost.
Two budgets later and still no exemption

8) Stephen Harper also promised to revamp the income support system, to make it more responsive to farmers’ needs, saying “A new Conservative government will scrap CAIS.” Minister Strahl is now saying he will “transform” it.

9) The Prime Minister has repeatedly reiterated his commitment to end “the revolving door between ministers’ offices, the senior public service, and the lobbying industry”. During the last election campaign, he pledged to Canadians that “under a new Conservative government, politics will no longer be a stepping stone to a lucrative career lobbying government.”
But now that Mr. Harper is in power, the actions of many of his party’s members seem to contradict the very wording and spirit of this promise.
According to The Globe and Mail and information posted on the Public Registry of Lobbyists, a host of Conservative strategists, former staffers and political operatives—including former employees from Mr. Harper’s Opposition office, assistants to newly minted Cabinet Ministers, and even old Reform and Mulroney-era aides—have queued up in recent weeks to sway government policy.
“Prime Minister Harper has appointed three former lobbyists to Cabinet: Gordon O’Connor, Lawrence Cannon, and Jean-Pierre Blackburn,” Mr. LeBlanc added, also noting that several PMO staffers including Sandra Buckler, the Prime Minister’s new communications director, along with the chiefs of staff to Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn and Minister of the Environment Rona Ambrose, Government House Leader Rob Nicholson, Minister of National Revenue Carol Skelton were also recently registered as federal lobbyists.
Not only do these actions appear to contravene the Lobbyist Registration Act as well as the 2006 Conflict of Interest and Post-Employment Code for Public Office Holders, but they also violated the proposed Federal Accountability Act –the very cornerstone of the Conservatives’ election platform.

10) Mr. Graham also noted that the “Selective” Accountability Act breaks a key Conservative campaign promise to implement all of the recommendations made by the information commissioner.
“Where was the Prime Minister’s pledge on access to information, which was the core of his promise to clean up government?” he said.
Also missing from the legislation was any mention of preventing lobbyists from joining the government, where conflict of interest is an even greater concern.
“This is not surprising given that Minister of Defence Gordon O’Connor is a former lobbyist for major defence contractors,” he said.

11) Mr. Harper campaigned on an elected Senate and then appointed his election campaign co-chair as a Senator;
he vowed to stop the revolving door between lobbyists and government, and then appointed a senior lobbyist as Minister of National Defence; and
he promised Canadians his government would only make “merit-based” appointments, and is now handpicking House of Commons committee chairs.

12) As Leader of the Opposition in May 2004, Mr. Harper pledged to Canadians that a Conservative government would eliminate the GST on gas entirely if prices escalated above 85 cents per litre. Mr. Harper called the GST a tax on tax, referring to the federal excise tax which is also charged on fuel.
I think that the truth of the matter is that higher gas prices are…going to be something that we’re going to have to get used to,” the Prime Minister told reporters yesterday. (April 06)

13) During the election campaign, Mr. Harper promised that Quebec’s role at the international organization would be one of a “participating government,” knowing full well UNESCO’s rules state that only sovereign states may participate. As a result, today’s agreement only gives Quebec an official representative within the Canadian delegation.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government today reneged on their campaign promise to Quebec which would have guaranteed the province a place at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

14) “Last fall, during a rush of promises to garner votes for an impending election, Stephen Harper unequivocally promised to ‘stand up for veterans’ by immediately extending VIP services to the widows of all Second World War and Korean War veterans.
“Today in the House of Commons, Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson confirmed that this government has no intention of honouring this commitment. In fact, yesterday before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, Mr. Thompson had the gall to tell Canadians that it was never promised in the first place, when it is very clearly laid out in the party’s Blue Book for all to see.

15) appointing campaign organizer Michael Fortier to the Senate so he could sit in Cabinet, after years of calling for an elected Senate;

16) implementing an Accountability Act that will actually increase government secrecy and make it less accountable, after running an election campaign on openness and accountability in government;

17) trying to push through a highly politicized deal on softwood lumber that industry representatives oppose because it puts more than $1 billion into the hands of American lumber competitors, after campaigning for years against any deal that does not return 100 per cent of duties paid to the U.S.;
“The Conservatives said they would demand that the U.S. government play by the rules on softwood lumber, and return the more than $5 billion in illegal softwood lumber tariffs to Canadian producers. But the agreement they signed with the U.S. only allowed for $4 billion to be returned to Canadian producers, and even went as far as to leave the U.S. a $1 billion dollar tip.”

18) presenting a budget (2006) that increases income taxes, cuts billions of dollars from social programs and contains no vision for the economic progress of our nation, despite having inherited the strongest financial position of any incoming government in Canadian history.

19) July 14, 2006 Breaking an election promise to implement the Patient Wait Times Guarantee and instead recycling the Liberals’ $5.5-billion Wait Times Reduction fund, but downloading its responsibility to the provinces and territories without investing any new money;

20) The Harper Conservatives misled the public on their plans to arm Canada’s border guards and are now hiding the costs of this expensive campaign promise, says Liberal MP Mark Holland, Opposition Critic for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
“They now admit that this is a ten-year process and not the short-term solution they pretended it was when they made up this promise on the fly during the campaign,” says Holland. “Now they are refusing to disclose the costs over ten years, and are trying to bypass the scrutiny of the House of Commons Public Safety Committee

21) During the last federal election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised that all government public opinion research would be published within six months of a project’s completion. Mr. Harper clearly stated that using public money for partisan polling was an abuse of power that his government would have no part of.
But now that the Conservatives have taken office, Mr. Harper appears to be singing a different tune. With only a month left until their promised deadline the Conservatives have yet to publish the March 3rd poll or the results of the environmental focus group testing.
Recent media reports indicate that on March 3, 2006, the Harper government commissioned an exhaustive poll to gauge public support for their five campaign platform priorities. Even though the poll’s questions were obviously partisan in nature, the $85,446 bill was sent to the Privy Council Office, not the Conservative Party of Canada.
Moreover, the Conservative Party’s most recent year end fiscal report indicates that no money had been spent on polling, yet we know that polling is happening. Canadians are right to wonder just how much of their hard-earned tax dollars are going towards partisan public opinion research.

22) The mean spirited cuts by the Conservative government announced this week may appeal to his socially conservative friends but they hurt so many others including women and aboriginals,” added Liberal Critic Anita Neville. “The Prime Minister has cut 39 percent of the operating budget from Status of Women, and he has cut the Court Challenges Program. During the election Stephen Harper said he would uphold the government’s commitments to women. Why has he broken that promise?

23) The Conservative federal election platform specifically states: “A Conservative government will…stop the Liberal attack on retirement savings and preserve income trusts by not imposing any new taxes on them.”
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Harper’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that income trusts will be taxed like corporations starting in 2011, blatantly contradicting a major Conservative election promise to Canadians.
“Since the last election, many Canadians put their money into income trusts precisely because Prime Minister Stephen Harper told them to do it, and told them he'd protect them,” said Liberal Leader Bill Graham. “This isn't about corporations. It's about Canadians from all walks of life that’ve lost their savings. It’s about Canadians sitting around the dinner table with their heads in their hands saying ‘what do we do now?’

“The Prime Minister is the author of their fortune. Yet he refused to admit it's him that lured Canadians into investing in his promise. Will the Prime Minister at least admit that he misled Canadians and offer them an apology?

24) “In January the Prime Minister signed a declaration that he would support women’s rights and that his government would take ‘concrete and immediate measures’ to uphold its commitments to women. But last month this government did just the opposite when it eliminated equality from the mandate at the Status of Women.”

25)“Minister of Environment Rona Ambrose has repeatedly broken her promises to the people of Quebec,” said Quebec Liberal MP Raymonde Folco. “First Ms. Ambrose said she was open to allocate $328 million to Quebec. Now she is not.

26) “During the election Canadians were duped into believing a Conservative government would honour the terms and objectives of the Kelowna Accord. But that promise was broken with the Conservative budget, which cancelled the $5.1 billion agreement.

27) “The Conservative platform promised to cut income taxes for all Canadians, yet on July 1, taxpayers noticed an extra hit on their paychecks. The promised tax CUT had turned into a tax HIKE at the lowest bracket, hurting virtually all taxpayers.”

28) Passing a Federal Accountability Act that Information Commissioner John Reid describes as “retrograde and dangerous,” and that breaks 21 election promises relating to conflict of interest and failing to change the Access to Information Act;

29) Breaking an election promise of openness and accountability by refusing a call from Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer to open the party’s books for a full independent audit after Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to admit that his party had violated election financing laws;

30) Breaking an election promise that no province would lose out in any new equalization program by back-peddling on a firm commitment to remove non-renewable resource revenue from the equalization formula, which would result in hundreds of millions of dollars being lost to some provinces;

31) Breaking an election promise to create 125,000 new spaces, while canceling the Liberal early learning and child care agreements to pay for a $100-a-month taxable allowance that does nothing to help families in need of child care;

32) Breaking an election promise to honour the $6.9-billion Canada-Ontario agreement;

33) Breaking an election promise to immediately compensate victims of Hepatitis C;

34) Breaking an election promise to outdo the Liberal government on investments in integrating foreign-trained workers into Canada by actually investing nine times LESS.

35) Breaking an election promise to reverse the Canada Post decision to close down the Quebec City mail sorting plant and save 300 jobs from moving to Montreal.

36) The Conservative government’s failings on immigration include a broken promise to establish a Foreign Credentials Agency, the abandonment of the Liberal government’s work on family reunification, and a failure to do anything to decrease backlogs in immigration applications. It has also slashed $20 million set aside to update Canada’s citizenship laws.

37) ACOA “This is a minister who campaigned on a promise not to cut funding to the Agency and then cut millions of dollars from it just a few weeks ago,” said Mr. D’Amours. “Now service is going downhill fast while Minister MacKay travels the globe, leaving the needs of his own constituents in limbo.

“Of course, we should hardly be surprised. This is the same government that referred to ACOA in the past as ‘corporate welfare.’ It appears Mr. MacKay agrees with this. He owes Atlantic Canadians an explanation as to why he continues to ignore them,” he said.

38) Equalization:- Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote a letter to Williams in January 2006 vowing to keep non-renewable energy resources out of the equalization formula.
"The Conservative government will ensure that no province is adversely affected from changes to the equalization formula," Harper wrote at the time.
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams said the federal budget released Monday is a betrayal of his province, and he wants voters to punish the Conservatives in the next federal election.
"What they've done today is basically and completely shafted us," Williams told reporters after the budget was released. "It's scandalous what they've done, when you think of it."

39) Child Tax Benefit Stephen Harper had been campaigning to have the child tax benefit increased to $5100 per child. Instead he increased the Child Tax Credit which will do absolutely nothing for the poorest children whose families have no taxable income.

40) Prime Minister Harper had pledged to boost aid spending beyond Liberal government's planned 8% annual increases to achieve the average aid donor country performance by 2010. While the 2007 Budget reported that $315 million would be added to Official Development Assistance for this current year, 2006/07, it promised no new funding initiatives for 2007/08.

41) Whatever you think of the Atlantic Accord the can be no doubt that Steven Harper promised to honour it, Bill Casey the former Conservative MP claims Mr Harper has made subtle but critical changes to the wording which Harper of Course denies, the Premiers agree the Accord has been broken.
If you introduce a budget with an either/or clause on the Accord it would appear the intent would be to circumvent the intent of the accord, it fact you could ague as the Premiers do, that the very existence of the clause breaks the Accord.

42)

In the election campaign Stephen Harper to increase Canada’s presence in the Artic by.
By building three heavy armoured Icebreakers capable of carrying troops.
Building a year round combined military civilian deep water docking facility in the Iqaluit region.
Establishing a new unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV squadrons in CFB Comox and CFB Goose Bay.
Instead he delivered a commitment to build.
Six to eight Canadian-made patrol ships capable of operating in ice up to a meter thick and certain other conditions. These vessels will be able to capable of traveling in summer ice and be at the mercy of the Artic weather much of the time. I guess he should have checked the price tag before opening his mouth.