Boy oh boy, what a decade! Amiright?

I mean, think about it: back in 2006 when the Conservatives under Stephen Harper hit the political stage with a minority government the world was still all worked up over Brokeback Mountain.

Destiny’s Child was still a thing. So was the anthrax scare.

Needless to say, a lot has happened since those good ol’ bad ol’ days and things are bound to change around here, what with all the “Real Change” that’s being bandied about by our new top dog.

But before we’re off to the Liberal races, let’s take a fun moment to look back at how we laughed and how we cried with Stephen Harper.

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Senate Scandal

Let’s start with a recent one, shall we? The senate scandal.

This particular moment is fresh on Canadians' minds with the much-publicized Duffy trial in August bringing to light just how amuck Harper’s senators were running in Ottawa.

A nice little peek behind the redaction-curtain was offered to all Canadians through Duffy’s kind of hilariously poorly redacted documents. The documents show he was pretty much a Mother Hen-like busy body for the oil industry and anti-environmental attack dog Vivian Krause.

The Duffy affair, which involved a prodigal $90,000 cheque that Harper maintained he knew nothing about, put the PMO in the spotlight and raised pretty damning questions about culpability and who knew what when.

Harper’s right hand man, Nigel Wright, took responsibility for the cheque, becoming just another fall guy in a long list of Harper’s sacrificial lambs.

Overall, however, the senate scandal exposed the culture of corruption and waste embodied in senators Duffy, Patrick Brazeau, Marc Harb and Pamela Wallin who all charged Canadian taxpayers for ineligible living expenses.

A full investigation by the Auditor General found 30 senators were charging the public for things they shouldn’t have and nine of these individuals were referred to the police for further investigation. 

The senate scandal tainted the reputation of a government that, back in 2006, campaigned on “cleaning up government.”

Within months of being elected in 2006, Harper introduced the Federal Accountability Act (a watered-down version of his campaign promise) that sought to “begin the process of fixing the system…to clean up government.”

Harper went on to oversee one of the most corrupt senates in Canadian history. Whoops.

Robocall Scandal

On the scandal note, let’s also recall that Harper’s Federal Accountability Act was designed to “ensure that party nomination and leadership races are conducted in a fair, transparent, and democratic manner.”

But remember the freaking robocall scandal!?

In one of the most explicit attacks on democracy in Canadian history, and the most direct attack against actual electors, the Conservative party was accused of using automated and in-person phone calls to confuse the public about where they were supposed to vote. Other calls harassed voters with late-night calls that impersonated opposition parties.

An estimated 690,000 voters were targeted with these calls.

Several investigations were launched that found the calls targeted voters who indicated they were not voting Conservative.

But an Elections Canada investigation found that, even though some of these calls were made from a computer within Conservative party headquarters and that Conservative party staffers were refusing to cooperate with the investigation, there was not enough evidence to pursue full charges against the party.

But don’t worry, there’s a fall guy: while Harper consistently maintained he had no knowledge of the calls, Michel Sona, a twenty-something junior Conservative staffer at the time, was convicted of violating the Elections Canada Act by preventing electors from exercising their right to vote.

Sona was convicted this past August to nine months in prison plus 12 months probation. The judge in Sona’s case concluded the young man did not act alone, but did not rule on any other’s involvement.

In total, the outcome of 13 Conservative seats were called into question. And guess what? The Conservatives in the 2011 election secured their majority by 13 seats.

Enemies List

Perhaps because of the way he ran things (and his penchant for employing ‘fall guys’) Stephen Harper had a lot of enemies.

But no one knew about the existence of a formal list until a leaked internal e-mail prepared for incoming ministers during a cabinet shuffle in 2013 referencing “enemy stakeholders” appeared.

A second leaked e-mail showed the PMO reached out to different ministries asking for suggestions for the blacklist.

A source told the CBC that enemy examples were provided to ministerial aides and they included environmental groups, non-profit organizations and other civic or industry associations that dared to think differently than the Harper government.

Canadians, obviously, were excited about the prospect of being on such an exclusive list.

And although the actual list itself never surfaced, I think it’s safe to speculate now just who ended up on the veritable who’s who of Canadian adversaries: pretty much every environmental organization, First Nations (just, all of them), any person or community or pet against pipelines, organizations fighting poverty (although not, interestingly, people feeding the poor), journalists, organizations fighting for free speech, probably all Muslims but definitely all Muslim women.

You get the idea.

Pipelinepalooza

It’s hard to pick a favourite best/worst moment of the Harper government when it comes to pipelines.

But the epic, protracted cross-governmental freak-out that happened around the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline hearings should probably take the cake.

About 4,000 individuals signed up to participate in the review process for Northern Gateway, something Harper and his cadre of pipeline cronies took as a personal-affront to democracy.

Then-Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver lashed out in one of the strangest acts of statecraft we’ve ever seen: he wrote an open letter to all Canadians telling us all to stop being such goddamn terrorists.

It was awkward. Oh Joe, you old kook. Unfortunately Joe lost his seat in this last election so, I’m sorry to say it Canada, but we may not see those kinds of super fun antics again. Onward and upward, right?

Prorogation Nation

Harper loved himself a prorogued Parliament. That’s because you can pretty much use prorogation to accomplish anything!

In 2008, for example, Harper prorogued (basically, suspended) Parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote.

In 2010 he prorogued Parliament again ‘for the Olympics.’ But this also had the added effect of letting him avoid an inquiry into the mistreatment of Afghan detainees. So neat!

Harper was totes in contempt of Parliament for this, but whatevs!

Harper also shut down Parliament in 2013 to avoid questions about the senate scandal.

In all Harper suspended Parliament for 181 days, setting a new record for prime ministers in Canada.

Regulation is "CRAZY!"

Last year as countries were gathering Lima, Peru, for the 20th UNFCCC climate talks, Stephen Harper said it would be “crazy” for Canada to regulate emissions from the oil and gas sector.

He added that obviously no one else in their right mind would ever do such a thing (even though it turns out A LOT of people are doing exactly such a thing literally all over the world).

Steve was too busy rockin’ out to care, tho.

Tough on Terror

The contentious anti-terrorism Bill C-51 is probably Stephen Harper's pièce de résistance. The showpiece legislation showed just how far the former Prime Minister and his voting entourage were willing to pursue a political agenda no matter how many other former prime ministers, national editorial boards, technology experts, legal scholars, civil society organizations, democracy watchdogs and outraged citizens felt it was a really, really bad idea.

Although the bill was supposed to target terrorists, it affected such a grab bag of activities (like being critical of the government, expressing yourself freely, attending protests, disliking pipelines, being indigenous…) it in effect turned everyone and their grandmother into a terrorist. 

It was perhaps Stephen Harper's greatest high and greatest low. At the height of his powers, Harper took advantage of the nation's fear in the wake of the Ottawa shooting and carried it to its lowest logical conclusion: you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists. Even our new, fresh-faced leader Justin Trudeau was caught in the shitty binary and, wanting to impress upon the good people his distain for terrorists, voted in favour of what was probably one the worst pieces of legislation in Canadian history. 

Harper had a special talent for bending the legislative process to his will. Like Emperor Palpatine, he was a universal antagonist to the end.

Adieu, Harper. Adieu.

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Kelly McCullough says she is angry with herself for believing the information provided to her in an automated call that led her to the wrong polling station during the last 2011 federal election.

“I was very empathetic to people who were at the polling station because clearly they had received several people who had come. They had to let me and other people in my position know that we had foolishly believed what we shouldn’t have,” McCullough says in a new documentary about voter suppression mischief in Canada by filmmaker Peter Smoczynski.

The film, “Election Day in Canada: The Rise of Voter Suppression,” is available in a draft screener form online until midnight, October 18.

In 2011 voters across Canada received automated phone calls, also known as robocalls, that notified them their polling station has been relocated when they in fact had not. Other calls seem designed to harass voters with fake calls from opposition parties late at night or on holidays.

The new documentary film shows how these and other ‘voter suppression’ tactics, such as placing the name of candidates on ballots who were not in the running, were used to the benefit of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Smoczynski plans a full release of the film in 2016 but made an early version of the documentary available to the Canadian public before they hit the polls on election day, October 19.

In the film Smocyznski interviews McCullough and several other residents of Guelph, Ontario where robocalls misled voters in 2011.

“I was definitely frustrated, I was angry with myself for believing the message that I received,” McCullough says. “I was annoyed with my partner for not seeing through the transparency of the robocall he received and then passing along information to me.”

NDP leader Tom Muclair says in the film: “Think about what this is about. This is about phoning people in their homes, impersonating someone from Elections Canada and saying, ‘oh they’ve changed your voting section’ and sending them to the other side of town.”

In late 2014, former Conservative staffer Michael Sona, was sentenced to nine months for his roll in the robocall scandal and interfering with citizen’s ability to vote fairly under the Canada Elections Act. Sona was only 22 at the time of the scandal.

Justice Gary Hearn, an Ontario judge who passed the sentence, said senior Conservative colleagues failed Sona.

In the documentary, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, former CEO of Elections Canada, calls the scandal criminal.

“This is a criminal activity that is beyond competiveness, that is beyond what Canadians expect during an electoral campaign,” he says.

“That is why Canadians in general are so offended by this.”

Watch the preview version of Election Day in Canada: The Rise of Voter Suppression on Vimeo.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is a guest post by Michael Harris, author of Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical Makeover. It originally appeared on iPolitics. 

In politics, as in baseball, the rule is simple: Three strikes and you’re out.

When Stephen Harper finally shambles towards the showers, head down, bat in hand, I’ll be thinking of Mighty Casey. For much of his career, Harper has umpired his own at-bats. But that role will soon — if briefly — fall to the people of Canada. Election Day is coming to Mudville.

Strike one against this government of oligarchs and corporate shills comes down to this: They have greedily championed oil and gas while doing nothing to protect air and water. Consider the piece of legislation with the Orwellian name — the Navigable Waters Protection Act. NDP house leader Nathan Cullen said it as well as anyone could:

“It means the removal of almost every lake and river we know from the Navigable Waters Protection Act. From one day to the next, we went from 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers in Canada to 159 lakes and rivers protected.”

On second thought, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May put it pretty well too: “In Bill C-38, Stephen Harper cancelled and gutted environmental laws brought in by Brian Mulroney. He’s now moved on to destroy environmental law brought in by Sir John A. MacDonald.”

And who gave the Conservatives the blueprint for gutting the Navigable Waters Protection Act? The pipeline industry. The new legislation gave them a big plum: Along with power lines, pipelines were removed from the legislation altogether.

After eight years in office, Harper’s promise to regulate the energy sector remains as empty as the look behind his eyes. There’s a reason the Green Party just enjoyed the best fundraising year in its short history. May, like most Canadians, sees the big picture: All Stephen Harper has done in office is play shortstop to big business.

Canada now has more corrupt companies on the World Bank’s blacklist than any other country in the world. A stunning 115 of those companies are comprised of disgraced engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and its subsidiaries — the same company that the Harper government supported with an $800 million loan guarantee to build the dubious Muskrat Falls power development in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Big business keeps telling workers they can’t have defined benefit pensions. Yet 43 per cent of Canadian CEOs have reserved that option for themselves. The PM has nothing to say about the gulf between worker and CEO pay packets.

The Conservatives have ignored the great issue of the age — the environment — and have offered instead a robber-baron vision of Canada built on unsustainable development and inflated oil prices. The lion’s share of the benefits have gone to foreign corporations and speculators.

Albertans get a tenth of what Norwegians get from the sale of their non-renewables. Since the public owns those resources, this amounts to a form of theft.

The Harper government has sabotaged international efforts to set a bolder course on global warming. How badly has he betrayed the environment? We’re talking Benedict Arnold here: He has transformed Environment Canada into just another oilpatch stooge, violating the purpose for which it was created.

And for the third time in a year, the Harper government is trying to stop an investigation into Canada’s environmental record. Although there is evidence that chemicals from toxic tailings ponds created by the tar sands are seeping into adjacent groundwater in Alberta, the Harper government is trying to terminate a proposed NAFTA probe into the environmental effects of tailings ponds. Poison leaching into the ground — and Harper doesn’t want a factual record.

Of course he doesn’t. He didn’t want a factual record on endangered polar bears or salmon farm pollution. And remember, this is the guy who didn’t mind selling asbestos to other countries when it was being treated as a deadly carcinogen here in Canada.

Strike two against Stephen Harper is his personal failure to give Canadians a more open, ethical and democratic government. That is, after all, what got him elected in 2006 (that and a little cheating during the campaign). So it was beyond hypocritical this past week for the PM to portray himself as a champion of democracy and free speech after the dreadful killings in Paris. He even politicizes tragedy.

Here is the real man … the one who dedicated his entire communications effort to smothering free speech, who undermined access to information, the life-blood of any democracy, with endless delays in handing over government documents that belong to us. In some cases, his government has simply — and unconstitutionally — refused to fork them over. He has also mused about charging $200 per access request — which would certainly suppress the urge to ask.

The real man has muzzled his own workers — even demanding loyalty oaths from them. He wanted the right to ask prospective government employees about their politics. He has viciously attacked any individual or institution that opposes him, from former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The real man repeatedly has tried to turn the Internet into a servant of the police state, disguising his intent with nonsense about child pornographers and “protection.”

The real man has starved the opposition of even the most basic information about the budget and deprived Parliament of the ability to debate legislation through the cynical use of enormous omnibus bills.

Sheila Fraser has named the disease. Laws are being passed in Stephen Harper’s Canada without scrutiny. (That didn’t seem to bother the dear host of CBC’s The Current when she interviewed on my new book. But it bothers me, and a lot of other people, a great deal.)

The real man doesn’t speak to his fellow premiers as a group, banishes journalists from public buildings and thinks Sun News is where it’s at.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that Harper’s reaction to the robocall scandal would be new legislation that will make it harder to catch cheaters the next time. And trust me, there will be a next time. So let it be said clearly: Stephen Harper is a champion of screwing free speech and democracy at every opportunity.

What’s strike three? Canada is not Harperland. Stephen Harper is not who we are.

Canadians don’t want to see medicare slowly reduced to a ghost of its former self by a prime minister who once headed an organization created to destroy it.

Despite the stunning selfishness of some of its stars, Canadians don’t want to see the CBC brought to its knees and “restructured” by a man who prefers public relations to journalism.

Finally, Canadians don’t want to save money on the backs of veterans who didn’t take to the closet in the face of clear and present danger — especially when Harper has so egregiously used the military for political gain. There has to be more for our soldiers than bullets and beans.

Stephen Harper will definitely come out swinging when he comes to the plate. He will drag out the usual mantra to continue his reign of error — that only Steve can protect us from terrorists, only Steve can protect us from recession, and only Steve has the stuff of leadership.

I don’t think it’s working this time. I suspect that when Mighty Steve strikes out, there will be joy in Mudville.

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.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.