Stephen Harper's NAFTA memo shows how little the former PM has changed
macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/stephen-harpers-n...
macleans.caPosted Oct 31, 2017, 12:25 PM UTC
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macleans.caWe got rid of him. Why are we still listening to him?
He and Tony Abbot should have onion eating contests in the washed up useless cunts retirement home.
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Why are we still listening to him?
Because we've entered the part of gaslighting where they make you question those facts you thought you knew and now you're not sure who you can trust.
The next step is to tell you that your abuser was right this whole time, if only you could have seen it before maybe this wouldn't all be your fault now.
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Who expected him to change?
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I would take him back in a heartbeat over this populist clown we have now
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Really? Why? What is he saying that you like here?
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Stop making me love Harper.
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Coolio, more not-news. Who cares? It's not like Harper is going to be running for any office; why even run this article?
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What a fucking loser Harper remains.
God, it’s amazing he didn’t dismantle Canada and cede our land to the USA while Prime Minister.
I always detested him for his piss poor stance on Iraq and marijuana reform and frankly spending necessary money on infrastructure but holy shit....
Like he really would be licking Trumps ass and wearing a MAGA hat wouldn’t he?
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Conservative and Liberal governments have been threatening to hand the US whatever it wants since there was a Canada. Trudeau's just gonna do it with a smile when you're not looking, as always.
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Well's is careful in his language, but, while pointing out that Harper's claims are "defensible", he also dismantles them, and concludes that Harper remains a narcissistic jerk.
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This got downvoted pretty badly, but thank you for this anyways. It's been weird seeing the MetaCanadians restart talking about Harper and trying to make him sound better than he really was. Shows how delusional they are when they're trying to talk so fondly about someone so poorly liked that Canada almost voted the NDP into power.
Harper was shit. His domestic policies were inefficient and his economical policies were narrow-sighted. Why the fuck would you concentrate so much energy into a non-renewable resource as people are starting to want to transition out of using it?
Makes no sense.
I always found the heavy focus on oil to be strange, when the world was moving away from it. Alberta built their entire economy around it, and look what happened...
He not only focused on oil, he stopped scientists from being able to publicly talk about global warming.
He also reclassified what lakes and waterways were protected while also shutting down the research facilities that studied those waterways which would make it easier for pipelines to build over and around them. He was willing to risk our waterways. I'd like to see a pipeline happen, we need better management of our resources but I also want to know that there is procedure and adequate risk assessment and mitigation strategy in place instead of just removing protect lands from being protected.
well, you need to consider that it was never about anything other than his own narcissism, and that for him the collateral damage was never a factor.
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Sorry, which election did this happen?
Are...you serious? You're here praising Harper and you have no idea of the only time the NDP got the official opposition spot?
lol! You mean the election that won the conservatives a majority? The NDP won official opposition status after the Liberals lost a bunch of seats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_2011
Please, just stop. You're embarrassing yourself.
Our budget was balanced and we survived a brutal global depression unscathed.
lol what?
We ran a constant deficit until the last election. IIRC, only the first and last years of his PMship had balanced or surplus budgets. On the last year, he sold GM stock as the fiscal year ended, resulting in a surplus and then tried to pass it off as masterful fiscal management, coinciding just in time for the next election against Trudeau.
We were also one of the slowest nations to recover from the depression! We trailed abysmally behind the US.
Dude... at least try to not completely bullshit.
Not true. There was a surplus the year before the election in 2014/15, and was on track for another surplus in 2015/16 until the Liberals took over.
So what? he bought GM stock with the same public purse money... adding to the deficit you're desperately pointing at. So we're allowed to count GM stocks as a liability but not an asset? Newsflash: Had he not bought the stock, the deficit would not have been as bad. And we escaped the depression unscathed
Facts are facts: he had a surplus, the Liberals are running deficits 3x-5x higher than they promised.
Selling the majority share of the Canadian Wheat Board to Saudi Arabia, helped balance that budget.
Cutting back in science to the point where decades of research were lost, helped balance the budget.
Besides the budget was already balanced before Harper was elected ($13.8 billion).
Dude Harper ran the single year largest deficit of all time, FACT.
If you go off nominal dollar values, sure.
However, Trudeau Sr. ran far larger deficits than that as a percent of GDP, including all four years of his last term.
(Meanwhile, down in the States, during that 2009 year when Harper ran a 3.6%-of-GDP deficit, the USA ran a 9.8%-of-GDP deficit. So you know, comparing to other countries during the Great Recession, Canada came out quite well)
Imme after the single biggest economic downturn of all time. Yes. And we didn't suffer 30% unemployment or see our banks fail.
Haha brave man. If there is one thing r/Canada hates it is pointing out the fact that history will probably remember Harper as the last PM To balance a budget.
Sometimes people say this sub is right leaning haha. All the hate you are getting for pointing out a fact proves otherwise.
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Harper has a colonial mentality. "If Uncle Sam tells us to jump off a cliff, we're jumping off the cliff."
The only part where he's wrong, is that Trump is going to pull out of NAFTA no matter what he does. If you cave on everything, Trump will just pull out more demands.
The point is to have a pretext for pulling out of NAFTA. And honestly, given how unpopular NAFTA is virtually everywhere the Republicans hold seats, I'm not sure he really needs one.
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Well Trump can try then we get to play our favorite US game "lets see what happens because no laws exist for this scenario".
NAFTA is the responsibility of Congress. EO's are not legislation and can be canceled by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has no interest in seeing the Executive and Legislative branch merge.
Lots of people debating what could happen but at the end of the day, its a congressional decision.
American.
EOs can be canceled by both Congress and the Supreme Court.
BUT Laws can be cancelled by the Supreme Court too. It's the same as a law in that respect.
NAFTA is a bit weird in that is wasn't ratified as a Treaty (which is a specific thing in US law, and not just an agreement with another country like it is in most of the world) but did go through Congress so its not EOable.