As the results of the 13th ballot of the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race were read on May 27, 2017, Maxime Bernier faced the podium stoically, waiting to hear his name called. The Quebec MP was a longtime frontrunner in the race, and as ballots rolled in that afternoon, his chances of becoming the Leader of the Opposition were high. His opponent, Andrew Scheer, sat across the aisle. Then, the announcer began: “And the next leader, of the Conservative Party of Canada, with 51 percent of the vote…” There was a dramatic pause. Scheer responded with a pursed oooh, looking toward his wife. Bernier continued to stare forward, blinking, his face resolute.

The second announcer continued. “Le prochain chef, Andrew Scheer.” A smiling Scheer embraced his wife. Bernier smiled. He had found himself the Hillary Clinton of the CPC—losing to the young upstart. At 38, Scheer was named the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada—a job previously filled for more than a decade by the impervious Stephen Harper.

But when the results came in that evening, I thought to myself: Who the f&%$ is Andrew Scheer?

I’m not the only one asking this question. As a host of Canadaland’s politics podcast “Commons,” I stood with a recorder and camera alongside my producer in Toronto’s Eaton Centre just two weeks earlier in an attempt to ask questions about the upcoming leadership race. Those who stopped were largely unaware of who the candidates were, let alone what they stood for. Not a single person who stopped mentioned Scheer when asked to name potential candidates.

Scheer was the dark horse, or rather, chubby-cheeked dappled pony who rose out of the ashes of Kevin O’Leary’s withdrawal to win the derby. Midway through the race, Scheer was so far off the radar that This’s own December 2016 roundup of frontrunners failed to include him.

There were signs of change in the spring, by which Scheer had asserted a spot as a third-place option behind O’Leary and Bernier, albeit a more distant one. Polls repeatedly put Scheer in this position, with a March 8 Mainstreet poll slotting O’Leary and Bernier in the lead and Scheer trailing by more than 10 percent. A week later, The Hill Times, an independent politics and government newsweekly, listed Bernier, O’Leary, and Scheer as the top contenders, noting them as the first and second choices of several conservative insiders. Scheer, it appeared, was the “next best option” for many. In April 2017, the Winnipeg Free Press noted that Scheer had the support of several MPs but was lagging support from where it counted: from the party members who would be voting. But by the vote in May, Scheer had a clear path to victory. In the first round, the smiling candidate had 21.82 percent support on the first ballot—just seven points away from Bernier. Scheer edged past him on the 13th round by a mere 1.9 percent—despite being the first choice of fewer people in the ranked ballot system.

The youngest of the leadership candidates, Scheer and his ascension to the position of CPC top dog seems rather unremarkable when compared to the path of his predecessor. Like Harper, Scheer held no cabinet positions prior to his election as party leader (though he served much longer than Harper did before he became party leader). But while Harper had been lauded as a prominent player during his time as part of the Reform Party, Scheer has remained under the radar as Speaker of the House of Commons. It’s a role he has held since 2011, focusing on presiding over debates rather than participating in them, unable to vote unless there was a tie that needed breaking.

By all accounts, Scheer is the quintessential aw-shucks white guy—a church-going family man well-liked by the members of his party. He smiles all the time. He’s a safe choice for the Conservatives; he’s not going to post red pill memes on Twitter, like Bernier, or take selfies with joggers, like Justin Trudeau. Instead, he’s going to show up in a blue plaid shirt and a cowboy hat at the Harvest Hills Alliance Church pancake breakfast. His working-class, son-of-a-deacon background will surely be used as a foil to Trudeau’s perfectly coifed, Vogue magazine-appearing, son-of-a-prime-minister elitism.

Going into the race, the CPC wanted to be armed and ready for a fight. But it’s not clear what kind of a fighter the Conservatives have served up in the blue-eyed boy from Regina. Certainly, he doesn’t appear to possess any new weaponry, nothing we haven’t seen before in a more strident form in Harper—the same man who was voted out of power on the promise of the cleansing tide of Trudeau’s sunny ways and change. Scheer seems like weaker sauce, a mild-flavoured alfredo holding the pale noodles of the various CPC factions together. And it’s not clear that this sauce—this “Harper with a smile”—is the right choice for what lies ahead.

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Originally from Ottawa, Scheer was first elected to public office as an MP in the riding of Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask., in 2004. He was just 25, having moved there only two years before. He narrowly defeated longstanding NDP MP Lorne Nystrom in an election that saw the NDP routed, winning 19 seats nationally but losing all seats in Saskatchewan. Scheer was not well known, though he was involved in politics as a teenager volunteering for the Reform party. In 2006, Scheer was appointed one of three Deputy Speakers. Five years later, he won the election for Speaker of the House of Commons; he was the youngest person to ever hold the position. By 2015, he was appointed Opposition House Leader, a role he held until he threw his hat into the Conservative leadership race.

Throughout his campaign, Scheer positioned himself as a consensus candidate focused on the issues uniting conservatives. But his policies were curt and underdeveloped: The plan for ISIS was to “ensure we are doing all we can,” and the budget would be balanced by “reduc[ing] spending across government and focus[ing] on making sure money is spent more efficiently.” Still, the tagline on his site read, “Andrew will unify Conservatives to defeat Trudeau in 2019.”

And Scheer has plenty of people to unite. There are the populist Kellie Leitch fans, a small but loud and grumbling far-right faction. The social conservatives, such as Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux, want to push religious right social policies. The libertarians, and the centrist Red Tories, are still kicking. But for all his talk about unifying, it’s unclear what Scheer will choose to unify his party around. He has yet to define “conservative values.” When he speaks of bringing all conservatives under a “big party tent,” what will that tent hold?

Right now, it is even hard for the average Canadian to know what Scheer stands for. At the time of publication, his website is completely devoid of any content other than a “thank-you” and a link to the CPC fundraising page, his 26 policy positions previously outlined wiped. Of those positions, he seems only to parrot the anti-Trudeau sentiment of former interim leader Rona Ambrose and the ideas of his mentor: a focus on taxation and savings, like home energy; an emphasis on forestry, gas, and oil; scrapping the Carbon Tax; a balanced budget in two years; and some focus on the family views of the future. Conservatives are generally united on these basic fiscal and economic policies, and Scheer’s rallying call around these “consensus ideas” is a safe bet as new leader.

It seems clear that Scheer will stay far away from hot-button social conservative topics, despite his clear social conservative voting record. A practising Roman Catholic and son of a deacon, he voted and spoke out against same-sex marriage and personally opposes abortion in 2005. Later, in 2016, he voted against adding gender identity and gender expression to the Human Rights Act and Criminal Code. But Scheer manages to do an awkward jig around these topics. Shortly after announcing his leadership campaign, he appeared on CBC’s Power & Politics; when asked whether he would promote and defend same-sex marriage, Scheer danced around the question like the artful dodger, responding that it was “the law of the land.” When asked directly if he supported it, Scheer stuttered and stammered some nonsensical words before admitting that he had his own personal beliefs and faith background. He reluctantly added that to build a national, viable coalition, he wouldn’t revisit the debate.

Fiscal policies, meanwhile, weren’t enough for Harper to win another majority and weather crises related to social issues. Harper’s fight against the wearing of niqab to citizenship ceremonies, for instance, backfired in his 2015 campaign. And it’s hard to think that Scheer can or will avoid social issues and debates of morality when many of the candidates for the Conservative leadership made it a race about these very issues. His closeness with far-right publication the Rebel, Ezra Levant’s merry band of bandits—a site that Scheer has granted several interviews to—is troubling. His comments on withholding funding from universities that don’t foster a climate of “free speech,” a hot button social issue, directly contradicts that principle.

Instead of dwelling on these social positions, Scheer has tried focusing on positivity. “I’ve always thought that it’s much more effective for all kinds of Conservatives—but especially social conservatives—to talk about the things that we’re for in a much more positive way,” he told Christian outlet Lighthouse News in May. But if party unity is channelled into a single-minded focus on defeating and attacking Trudeau, this positivity may go out the window.

Scheer’s social issues polka will present a major challenge in his search for unity—and for a long-term vision for the party. As our populace ages, the “old-stock Canadians” who vote Tory are being replaced with a younger, more diverse, left-leaning populace who care about these issues. To have any sense of longevity, the Conservative party must grow to come up with fresh ideas that appeal to a range of Canadians, and in particular, younger demographics. Because the youth are coming: While voters in the 65-74 age bracket had the highest participation rate in the 2015 election, voter turnout in the 18-24 age bracket increased by 18.3 percentage points, and those 25-34 increased by 12.3 percent. These Canadians and newcomers to our country face a set of different problems from the bread and butter of the old Conservative base. The election of the Liberal party in 2015 showed that the Harper ways couldn’t stand up to Trudeau’s promise of change. It is the Conservatives, not the Liberals, who are painted as out of touch, despite what the CPC press releases may say.

In choosing Scheer, a renewal seems difficult. A social conservative policy focus would be a bad strategy, out of touch with most Canadians. The people—at the very least, the young people poised to inherit the nation—want change. The Conservatives had an ever-so-slight glimmer of hope during this year’s leadership race, in the fresher ideas of a Bernier or Michael Chong; ideas that sounded different from the party of old and might have appealed to a broader swath of Canadians with a move toward a fiscally conservative, socially liberal small-c conservatism. But with Scheer, staying the Harper course does not look like the reinvigoration that they desperately need.

Stephen Harper didn’t hide what he thought of working people. His government waged attacks against collective bargaining. They tried to force unions to develop overly bureaucratic measures to make their finances public to non-members. They resisted and dismantled social programs that help people, even if they had few or no benefits through their work. And they oversaw changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program that threatened the livelihood of as many as 70,000 workers.

When he was elected in 2015, Justin Trudeau promised a new era of cooperation with workers. He has been friendly with labour leaders. He has tried to show that he can work with business and labour. He has gone to union conventions to promote his party’s agenda. His reception has been generally positive.

But in October, the honeymoon ended. While at a young workers’ conference, Trudeau faced his first, direct protest.

As we say good riddance to 2016 and look forward to 2017, Trudeau’s approach to workers will help voters gauge just how feminist, progressive, and worker friendly he really is. Will he keep his promises to working people? Here are five issues to watch for 2017.

Canada Post

When Harper cut door-to-door mail delivery in 2014, he sent a signal to Canadians: public services, even long-standing ones, can be eliminated. Shrouded in a discussion about modernization (even though the corporation continues to be profitable), the Conservatives used Canada Post as a proxy to wage an attack on good jobs and collective bargaining.

The Liberals promised to restore door-to-door mail delivery. They negotiated a contract with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in December 2016, and sent the question of door-to-door delivery to a committee where Liberals members held the majority. The committee recommended expanding Canada Post’s services and agreed that daily delivery should continue. They didn’t recommend postal banking, a service that would offer Canadians basic and cheap banking services. The NDP issued its own report, criticizing the committee for this oversight.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has been calling for an overhaul to Canada Post for years. They envision an organization that can undercut the high costs of banking, dispense medical marijuana, and deliver food to Northern Communities, among other services.

If the Liberals are interested in sustainably transforming Canada Post, CUPW’s recommendations should be considered carefully. But their committee report suggests that they prefer to limit the scope of Canada Post’s mandate, which will surely result in more job losses, worse service and even the demise of the postal service itself. What will the Liberals ultimately decide?

Phoenix payroll system

The federal government is the direct employer of hundreds of thousands of workers. Due to the implementation of the Phoenix pay system, 82,000 workers have had problems with their pay, in some cases not being paid at all. More than one year after the Liberals took office, there were still 200,000 transactions that had not been completed, and 18,000 workers who still had problems with their pay.

According to the Public Works and Government Services website, as of January 11, there was still a backlog affecting 8,000 workers.

The new pay system was implemented six months into the Liberals’ term. Even though this decision was made prior to their election, the way in which they’ve handled it has been a disaster. How much longer will workers have to manage with these problems?

Bill C-27

On October 19, the Liberals introduced legislation that would amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, called Bill C-27. It would give employers the option to not fund employer’s contributions for pension plans. This opens the possibility for employers to reduce benefits, even retroactively.

The change would apply to Crown corporations and federal public sector employers. The Canadian Labour Congress called the legislation “a betrayal,” that “was even rejected by the Conservatives.”

Removing the legal requirement that corporations fund their pension contributions would threaten billions of dollars in pension money. That’s money that older Canadians rely on to buy food and pay for housing costs. 

Childcare

During the 2015 election, the Liberals rejected the NDP’s plans to create a national childcare system. Instead, they implemented individual fixes, such as offering families more money through a universal child benefit.

Of course, when there’s no childcare available, more money available for families doesn’t quite fix the problem.

In late December, a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report showed that childcare costs are climbing and families are increasingly desperate. When parents can’t find childcare, their ability to hold a full-time job is threatened.

The Liberals have promised a pan-Canadian framework, but work hasn’t yet started on the framework. In 2017, this will be a critical policy area that Canadians should watch. Will the framework create enough spaces? Will there be a cap placed on fees? Will they deliver before the next election, or will the results of this work be put towards voters at the next election?

Temporary Foreign Worker Program

The changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program that were brought on by Harper’s Conservatives are only now coming to bear, and how Trudeau and his ministers reform the program will have important implications on hundreds of thousands of workers and their families.

As most of these workers fall under provincial labour jurisdiction, the big question is: will Trudeau allow more of these workers to immigrate to Canada and work here as citizens? How will they reduce exploitation?

Already, they’ve scrapped a rule that forced Temporary Foreign Workers to wait for four years to come back to Canada after having completed a four-year work period. As they campaigned to “fix” the program, ensuring that workers can find paths to permanent residency or citizenship will be critical.

Photo courtesy Instagram/justinpjtrudeau.

K, however, was a little overwhelmed when trying to listen to a story her grandfather was telling. She saw it as a lack of manners—exactly how it would have seemed to a young girl outnumbered by loud grown-ups. She hadn’t yet grasped the latitude adults grant each other when celebrating. As K saw it, we were obstructing her grandfather. Everything she had learned in life until then told her we were in the wrong.

She tried to silence us. I looked to my girlfriend to see if there would be a hush or an idle threat of bedtime (I had yet to earn a say in such matters). Sure enough, the moment came: she went over to K’s chair and pulled it out. Here we go, I thought. But instead of chiding her, she moved K over to her grandfather’s lap and he told his story directly to her. The rest of us continued on. Problem solved.

The moment stuck with me. It illustrated how quickly I assumed some kind of reprimand was necessary. My girlfriend, to her credit, chose to empathize with her daughter’s point of view and solve her problem. Though I know hers was the better decision, I still doubt that my internal reaction to the situation was particularly unusual, or that it had anything to do with K’s actions at all.

There’s a strong connection between the behaviour we expect from children and what we experience in the public at large. If we’re faced with adversity we think is illegitimate—at home, at work, or in line at a coffee shop—the easiest response is to enforce compliance without debate or explanation. No talking back. No questioning the boss. No butting in line. Growing up, I knew this as the “because I said so” rule. Employed by my parents, teachers, coaches, and eventually my peers, it meant the response was predetermined. I’ve always felt that shutting someone down like this was a desperate grasp for dominance. Such brutal effectiveness is hard to deny, though—and it is understandably addictive.

Dropping the proverbial hammer allows those in dominant positions to temporarily enjoy the illusion of willful obedience. But other crises will undoubtedly emerge, and regularly forcing weaker parties to comply can only lead to resentment and weakened capacities for compromise. We often hear campaigning politicians lauding disagreement as the lifeblood of democracy, although they entertain it as little as possible in practice. Our system is designed to suppress dissent with prorogations, omnibus bills, and majority governments.

It was just after my Easter dinner that Bill C-51, Canada’s controversial “anti-terror” legislation, flew through Parliament without much debate. Framed by the government as a necessary measure for keeping us safe, the few who spoke out against the bill were tarred as terrorist sympathizers. During committee debates this past March, Conservative MP Rick Norlock maligned the senior counsel for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. “Are you simply fundamentally opposed to taking terrorists off the street?” Norlock asked. MP LaVar Payne then mused that Greenpeace Canada shouldn’t worry about the bill unless the organization itself was a national security threat.

The Conservative party rhetoric coaxes us to be tough on our enemies, but their bill forces us to be tough on ourselves by broadly redefining security threats and diminishing Canadians’ access to vital information. With this new law, Parliament made an aggressive statement: we will have an obedient nation. And despite the promises from opposition party leaders to alter the legislation after this October’s federal election, reasonable dissent doesn’t resume its former health after it’s been crushed. It becomes something more bitter and intense. When I consider my emotional reaction to the bill’s passage, part of me wonders if I narrowly avoided fomenting the same feelings in K during our Easter dinner.

The recent surge of stories about police abuse against unarmed black civilians in the U.S. has too generated an international conversation about power, who has it, and how it’s misused. In The New Yorker’s August 2015 profile of Darren Wilson, the former police officer who killed Michael Brown and incited Ferguson’s unrest, Wilson describes his perspective on life as a refutation of historical context. “What happened to my great-grandfather is not happening to me. I can’t base my actions off what happened to him,” he said. Context is inconvenient for Wilson because it prevented him from doing his former job the way he wanted to do it—by assessing only the immediate moment. His myopic view of the power he represented, and ultimately misused, echoes in the Harper government’s ad hominem attacks on critics. Refusing to negotiate meaningfully with dissent only exacerbates divisions. No press release, community engagement plan, or election promise can rebuild public trust once breached.

Power today is less a goal than a verdict, a privilege shored up in defence of an ever-increasing roster of enemies. Our superhero movie franchises portray it as both a responsibility and threat, and these fantasies hint at a darker undercurrent in the mirror of popular culture.

What Tony Stark does with his Iron Man suit isn’t as worrying as the tempting dream that such a suit should exist to set the world right. Our enthusiasm for billionaire Bruce Wayne’s extralegal vendetta against Gotham’s criminals hinges on a common agreement on the black and white of right and wrong. Somewhere in Christian Bale’s gravelly timbre, there’s a hint of former Conservative MP Vic Toews’ binary thinking: “Either stand with us or with the child pornographers.” Oppressive actions like C-51 don’t begin and end in party ranks, nor do they originate in comic books. They’re rooted in our broader cultural attitudes towards obedience.

In Stanley Milgram’s 1961 psychology experiment, he famously duped participants into thinking they were administering an audio-based word-pairing test to fellow volunteers in another room. With each incorrect answer, the attending scientist commanded the person asking questions to shock their peer at increasing voltages. Milgram found that, when prodded by an authority figure, 65 percent of participants were willing to go to the maximum of 450 volts. (There were no actual shocks—only actors and prerecorded howls of pain.) As Milgram wrote in 1974, “the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.” He goes on to connect a person’s early experiences with authority to their adult perspectives on obedience. This is what concerns me most as someone new to parenting.

I don’t know if there is an ideal obedient state to seek out in children. Contributing to a person’s growth is complex but I’m learning to be a positive influence on K. In the conversation we had after Easter dinner this year, my girlfriend told me it’s important to consider the kind of person we want her daughter to become. If K is to be someone who is unafraid to stand up to power, that process has to begin now. Its genesis is in the small moments when we negotiate our control.

I’m here—I hope—to meet Anawa, a Cameroonian mother in indefinite detention, and her son, who was born in the facility. Alpha must stay with his mother at all times, even when she’s in the shower. While she carries his weight, she must also live knowing that her daughter, Tracy, not yet 10, is growing up without her in Nigeria. Anawa is imprisoned for a simple, all-too-common reason: coming here, to Canada. She hasn’t been charged with a crime and has not had a trial. She’s held because Cameroon won’t issue travel documents for deportation and Canada will not set her free for apparent fear she’ll disappear.

Anawa’s story is as much a national tragedy as it is the result of a decade of degradation in the manner in which Canada treats those people who flee oppressive circumstance in hope of refuge. A system that—over the past nine years under the federal Conservative government—has gone from bad to worse. It’s the result of policy that continually seeks to remove basic rights to those our federal government considers outsiders. It’s thanks to a persistent messaging campaign to brand people as undesirable—or worse, criminal. Today, the walls of detention centres like the one in Rexdale act to hide the mistreatment of the disenfranchised and promote a culture of fear. A culture that often prevents the mistreated from speaking about their experiences with the media, or anyone.

So I wait.

IT’S A STICKY DAY in early May, and I’m sitting in a slowlyfilling courtroom at the Ontario Court of Appeals. I’m here to watch as the End Immigration Detention Network (EIDN) and a team of lawyers appeal a ruling denying habeas corpus to immigrants in detention. Basically, they want the court to prove that indefinite detention is justified. Even for the experts, the legal framework proves difficult to navigate. “I don’t know every section [of immigration code] anymore,” one of Anawa’s lawyers tells the court. “I used to know it all, but it’s been amended so much I just can’t keep up.”

IF THERE’S BEEN one constant since Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party came to power, it’s change. Policy has changed rapidly and seemingly at random, with the consistent misdirection acting as an obstacle for immigration lawyers and experts. “Every month is a change,” says Loly Rico, the president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, “and every month is a cut.”

In nearly a decade of conservative power, Canada has gained an abysmal record in caring for those seeking asylum—the most egregious of which is arguably our country’s new and unusual habit of indefinitely detaining refugee and immigration claimants without providing any documentation as to why. In fact, in July the United Nations Human Rights Commission Report chastised Canada for this very practice.

Take Anawa’s case. Facing female genital mutilation, she fled Cameroon to Finland, then to the U.K. and, eventually, to Canada. By that time, she was pregnant with Alpha. Lacking official documentation and identification, upon arrival she was put in the detention centre where she and Alpha now live. She has no release date.

Laced through the policy upheaval is also a shift in the tone in which Canada speaks about refugees. This government is openly hostile, introducing terms like “bogus claimants” and “abusing our generosity” to the public lexicon. Rico, once a refugee herself, says “[Refugees] are not coming because of what we have. They’re coming because they need protection.” Syed Hussan of the EIDN echoes that statement: “The idea that Canada, or any international agency, gets to decide who is and who is not worthy of safety is absurd.”

Stripping a claimant’s humanity with such language allows abuses of power to slip by—and become a norm. Anawa’s lawyer, Swathi Sekhari, worries whenever a client speaks to the media. “The [Canadian Border Services Agency] can be quite subversive with their actions,” she says, “I would say even violent.” Guards can punish detainees for speaking out—either in the yard with verbal abuse or, at times, in detention reviews. “All of a sudden you can be declared as being uncooperative,” she adds.

MANY TYPES OF IMMIGRATION have felt the effects of structural decay—including migrant workers and caregivers. Hussan, who’s also with the organization No One Is Illegal, says that to focus on one stream or another is to confuse the problem. “People are just people trying to move,” he says. When people are fleeing oppression their only concern is getting out, and they will choose the path they think is most likely to help. Each stream has its own pitfalls. Migrant workers, for example, don’t have their housing covered under workplace safety laws even though they’re forced to live where they work.

I’M STARTING TO REALIZE I won’t get to speak to Anawa. It’s my third time visiting the detention centre—a place that, in anything but name, is a prison. While I sit on this side of the glass, she’s being herded back from lunch where Alpha may have been playing with a new friend. He has to make new friends a lot. Most of them move out eventually, into a world he doesn’t understand. Each time I’ve gone I’ve seen her warm, welcoming face and his unbridled pent-up energy as he bounds around the visitation area. She corrals him as she tells me she can’t talk. Not today. I’ve been waiting a while, but at least I get to drive home after. For the time being, she’s already there.

Later, in 2010, Harper’s position softened, but only slightly. Amidst public pressure, particularly from aboriginal leaders, Canada signed a letter of support for the declaration— even though the government remained wary of its contents. This fact was reiterated in 2014 when Canada was the only country to raise objections over the declaration’s outcome document, meant to provide a framework for countries to follow and set minimum rights standards. The feds said they worried the document could provide “veto” power to aboriginal groups, despite the fact that the word veto isn’t even used in the document. Equally disappointing, it also called the agreement an “aspirational” document, suggesting it wasn’t achievable—or, at least, that the government had no concrete plans to do so.

Perhaps such sentiments shouldn’t come as a surprise. Under Harper, the federal government has also consistently chosen industry over aboriginal interest (see: the much-protested Northern Gateway Pipeline, for example); eliminated First Nation Band and Tribal Council funding for advisory services, limiting the ability of councils to assess and analyze government legislation; drastically cut funding for First Nation political organizations; completely ignored pressing aboriginal issues such as the emergency state of Canada’s murdered and missing women; and missed meaningful opportunities for change, such as it did with its bungled communications (or rather lack thereof) with members of Idle No More, one of the most significant protest movements in Canada’s history.

No wonder, then, that in 2013 when James Anaya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples, visited Canada, he declared that we are facing a “crisis” when it comes to aboriginal rights. “Amidst this wealth and prosperity,” he said, “Aboriginal people live in conditions akin to those in countries that rank much lower and in which poverty abounds.” Not much has changed since—but, by now, such a change is long overdue.

When the Conservative government rushed to pass the bill into law last year, Justice Minister Peter MacKay repeatedly told media outlets that the government considers sex workers as victims in need of saving. Workers are not breaking any laws by selling sex, however it is illegal for someone to purchase it. Prohibitions are also against activities involved in the sex trade, like a client communicating with the intention of buying sex or advertising the sale of someone else’s sex trade services.

It is also illegal for establishments like massage parlours or escort services to sell sex. It is legal to be a sex worker, thought it is near impossible to legally work. The government believes it’s simply trying to deter people from entering sex work. But Johns scared of legal punishment are more likely to be anxious and, as a result, aggressive. This means sex workers have less time to clearly communicate terms; there is not enough time to adequately screen. It doesn’t help that it’s also illegal for sex workers to work together—further lessening safety. A year old in November, the new legislation has already done a lot of damage, particularly amongst those it is supposedly trying to save.

After raiding 20 Ottawa massage and body rub parlours late last April, police detained 11 women. These women will be deported, and this trend is likely to continue. If our federal government is so interested in saving sex workers, why would they put them through the trauma of Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) inspections, before sending them back to possibly more abusive situations? “Migrant sex workers are often the target of robbery and assault. They are afraid to report to police or seek help because they do not want to be deported,” Elene Lam of Butterfly—Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network told media in May. “Investigations under the guise of trafficking and police raids make the situation even worse. It makes people hide further underground, and makes them more vulnerable to violence and endangers their safety.”

Not that things are much safer in Stephen Harper’s Canada. Indigenous women in sex work operate in a nation where Indigenous people are over-represented in
prisons, and colonialism has normalized violence against Indigenous women. This oppression is only amplified when these women are in sex work, as is shown with the abductions and murders of Indigenous women, mostly sex workers, in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. This violence is so frequent British Columbia’s Highway 16 is called the Highway of Tears. “Native women are not afforded the same level of agency as everyone else,” Indigenous feminists and activists Naomi Sayers and Sarah Hunt wrote last January for The Globe and Mail. “They are merely passive bodies waiting to be violated.” Sayers and Hunt continue to say they have no faith that the Canadian justice system will protect them, when it is clear that they have a better chance of being arrested.

Take the recent case of Cindy Gladue, which has set a dismal, unfortunate precedent for dehumanizing court evidence. An Indigenous woman and a sex worker, she was killed four years ago in an Edmonton motel room. When her body was found, authorities discovered an 11 cm wound in the 36-year-old mother’s vagina. It appears to be caused by a sharp object, but Bradley Barton, Gladue’s alleged murderer, told the courts that his fingers caused the wounds during rough consensual sex. The victim’s actual vagina was brought to court as evidence. It was a move many see as a complete disregard for her life, as well as the female body.

This was also done before a jury that had only two women on it and did not include a single Indigenous person. Barton was initially found not guilty. Thankfully, protests arose across the country. It was announced during these rallies on April 2 that Barton’s acquittal was appealed. Good news, but the message had already been sent: In Canada, Indigenous women, especially those working as sex workers, are not seen as human. As Harper told Peter Mansbridge during a December 2014 interview on CBC, these women are not high on the Conservative radar.

The government is pushing their morals onto others, to the extent of endangering lives. Maybe, they should have attended the solidarity rally in June where the voices of sex workers could be heard loudly, demanding rights, not rescue. Certainly, I would have shared my markers.

What we have, largely, is a budget based in politics, not policy—more a campaign advertisement than an economic document. Thanks to a consistent and persistent PR campaign over the past decade, the government needed an operating surplus to uphold its claim of competent fiscal management—a necessity it deliberately created. Harper works tirelessly to convince Canadians the economy is simple. That spending is bad, taxes are bad, a balanced budget is good, and that no party understands that but his. If there’s any indication of Harper’s widereaching political success, it’s that today every party agrees a balanced budget is necessary; they only disagree on when they’ll get there.

Unfortunately, when a budget becomes a political answer, rather than an economic one, many Canadians lose. Let’s look at the document itself. It was never really balanced. With slumping oil prices and slow growth, a surplus wouldn’t come without consequences. The feds delayed the release of the budget by weeks so they could sell off $2.1 billion of its General Motors shares—a move Stanford, known for his past work with the Canadian Auto Worker’s Union, says will hurt future investment from GM. Then, it dipped into the Employment Insurance operating surplus for a cool $3.4 billion. (Meanwhile nearly 60 percent of unemployed Canadians are ineligible for EI.) Finally, the feds took $2 billion from the emergency contingency fund. And yet, we get headlines that boldly declare “balanced.”

In reality, the budget “bakes in growing income inequality” warns Armine Yalnizyan, a leading economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It’s low on meaningful investment. It barely nods to public transportation or infrastructure spending. There is nothing for Canada’s youth. What it does promise is a familiar pattern: tax breaks that disproportionately favour the wealthy, and new ways to reduce the abilities of government. And so we get a government that consistently seeks ways to reduce revenue streams, increasing dependence on a select few, such as Canada’s oil economy. “[The Conservatives] have no plan other than $100 a barrel oil,” says Yalnizyan. “That’s their economic action plan.”

In a way, it’s nothing new. Under Harper’s leadership, the Conservatives have been remarkably consistent in their messaging since the party’s victorious 2006 campaign. That platform declared “Canadians deserve to keep more of their own money,” which acted as a (often mis-) guiding principle for the government. Under Harper, the government slashed corporate tax rates, rolled back the (since renamed) goods and services tax, and introduced other boutique tax cuts. In doing so, the government deprived the treasury of over $300 billion, limiting the country’s resources during a tough economic recession.

An economy, however, needs an engine, argues Stanford—when the public isn’t spending money, it falls to the government to open its wallet. Instead, it cut off its source of revenue. When asked for the government’s guiding economic principle then and now, Yalnizyan answers quickly: “To write themselves out of a job description.”

Which brings us to today. In place of a truly thriving economy, we get policy made for politics. Canada’s economy is fragile. The oil slump is real, and the country’s dependence on the energy sector has been exposed. People aren’t spending money. Economists say the economy shrunk in the first quarter of 2015, and that will likely continue. We have a budget that isn’t made to govern and an economy that isn’t made for the majority of Canadians. For Stanford, an evaluation of this government is easy. “The economy,” he says, “has performed worse under the Harper Conservatives than any other government in Canada’s post-war history.” Well, in every way but politics, that is.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, meanwhile, announced that the government’s operative budget will— based on overly-optimistic projections—actually sit in deficit at the end of this year. But that never really mattered to the Conservatives. It was the headlines they were after.

Yet, at the same time, rights on paper don’t always translate into lived rights. And, despite our reputation as a supposed LGBTQ leader, Canada itself is still missing important on-paper rights. Over the past nine years, our federal government’s actions when it comes to LBGTQ rights have been inconsistent—even confounding.

Here in Canada, for instance, queer youth are grossly misrepresented amongst the homeless population, accounting for 25–40 percent. Members of the federal Conservative Party have also actively blocked the advancement of trans rights at home with endless delays of Bill C-279, which seeks to give transgender people basic Charter protections. The back-and-forth doesn’t stop there: The feds cut funding to gay organizations, such as the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network in 2012 and Pride Toronto in 2010—yet a 600-person gay Conservative party called Fabulous Blue Tent was thrown in 2011 to bring gay Conservatives together during the Party’s convention. That same weekend, the Tories passed a resolution supporting religious organizations’ refusal to perform same-sex marriages. Previously, in 2005, Harper had campaigned on the promise to repeal same-sex marriage.

And, it doesn’t stop there. Here, we examine the Conservatives sad, confusing track record:

TRANS RIGHTS
Within the Conservative Party, there are LGBTQsupportive caucus members, but they are in the minority, despite the now-biennial Fabulous Blue Tent party. When Bill C-279—to grant transgender Canadians equal protection under the law—passed through the House of Commons, only 18 of 155 Tory MPs voted in favour. Conservative MP Rob Anders called it a “bathroom bill,” insisting its goal was to give creepy men access to women’s washrooms. All other party MPs who voted were unanimously in support of C-279.

The bill is currently sitting in the Conservative-dominated Senate, and will almost surely be killed at election time—having to retrace its process through the House again. Now more than 10 years in the making, this would be the second time the bill was forced back to square one. Yet, if passed, it will give trans people legal recourse against things such as being fired and being denied housing, and will also make sky-high rates of violence punishable as hate crimes.

HARPER TRIES TO MOVE BACKWARDS
Opposing queer rights is nothing new for Harper. Early on in 1994, he fought plans to introduce same-sex spousal benefits in Canada. In 2005, after same-sex marriage was legalized, he promised to bring legislation defining marriage as “the union of one man and one woman.” When this plan was defeated shortly after his election, he decided to leave the issue alone, saying, “I don’t see reopening this question [of marriage] in the future.”

FUNDING CUTS
After more than 20 years of federal funding, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network faced cuts in 2012 because it “may have used the funds for advocacy.” After receiving a “significant portion of its funding from Ottawa” over its entire existence, the organization sought renewal of the same funding but the Public Health Agency of Canada rejected 16 of its 20 proposals.

In 2006, shortly after taking power, the Conservative Party also cut the entire budget of a program called Court Challenges, which had made public funds available for individuals launching human rights challenges in court. Used by those making challenges on the basis of sexual orientation and more, the fund had helped homosexual couples secure spousal benefits and achieve equality protection. Harper’s chief of staff from 2005-2008, Ian Brodie, used his PhD to argue the program unfairly empowered homosexuals and other minority groups. The Conservatives had killed the program in 1992 originally, only to have it revived by the Liberals. Now the Cons have resuscitated it, but with a narrowed focus on only linguistic minorities.

PROGRESS, PR, OR SOMETHING ELSE?
Canada’s immigration office under Harper worked with Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees to fast-track 100 gay Iranians into Canada, saving them from possible execution. Harper also personally lobbied Uganda’s president in 2009 over a law that would imprison gay people for life. Canada even gave $200,000 to Ugandan groups to fight the law. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has made repeated international public statements condemning countries that criminalize homosexuality, and during the 2014 Olympics Baird and Harper spoke out against the Russian “gay propaganda” law that makes it illegal for anyone to distribute gay rights materials.

Yet, speaking against the criminalization of LGBTQ people is not the same as active support. In regards to Russia in particular, Ontario Conservative MP Scott Reid, who chairs the Commons’ subcommittee on international human rights, said it’s an issue of freedom of speech. Saskatchewan Conservative backbencher Maurice Vellacott said he believes LGBTQ folks should have basic protections, but that he wouldn’t want his kids exposed to “homosexual propaganda.” These attitudes offer insight into the mixed messages of the Conservative Party when it comes to queer rights. Whatever its motives are for this dissonance, the fact remains there’s a lot of work to be done in this country before queer liberation becomes a reality.

Also problematic: In 2010, when the Conservatives cut the long-form census, they also nixed the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, better known by its acronym, PALS—those who received the survey were the same people who, on their census form, said they had a disability. PALS was used to track the needs of Canadians with disabilities, and looked at everything from rates of poverty, violence and abuse, to quality of housing, education and employment, and participation in community and civic activities. From there, government, but also more importantly advocacy groups, could use the data to better determine needed supports. The government has since introduced the Canadian Survey on Disability, but acknowledges that its data sets can’t be compared to PALS because of different questions and, notably, a different definition of the actual term “disability”—stunting a body of research. The new survey also received fewer responses, which advocates feared.

Perhaps that data could have been used to help the government figure out how to spend the near $40-million budget for the Opportunities Fund, a fund designed to help those prepare for, maintain or find employment. Unfortunately, in 2013-2014, the government failed to allocate one-quarter of its funding—undermining yet another promising initiative for those with disabilities.

Since that first speech, Canada’s international environmental reputation has shifted quickly under the Harper Conservatives. We were once considered an influential environmental leader, but now are what famed environmentalist Bill McKibben calls, “an obstacle to international climate concerns.” That’s thanks to several major changes, the breadth of which we’ll review here.

INTERNATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT
After signing the Kyoto Protocol on carbon pollution in 1997, Canada withdrew 14 years later in late 2011. It’s the only country to have done so. Then in 2013, the government pulled out of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification—and again has done so solo. Established in 1994, the convention is a key legally-binding international agreement addressing environment, development, and sustainability. Listen: you can hear Canada’s diplomatic credibility crumbling.

DEMOLISHING LAWS
In 1992, the Government of Canada enacted the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, created to evaluate and mitigate negative environmental effects possibly caused by industrial projects. In 2012 the entire act was repealed and replaced with “CEAA 2012.” The new version applies to a much smaller scope of projects, expands ministerial discretion, and narrows the scope of assessments. The Canadian Environmental Law Association called this “an unjustified and ill-conceived rollback of federal environmental law.”

After the change, nearly 3,000 environmental project assessments were cancelled. As a result, environmentally- harmful projects will face less red tape in gaining approval. “It’s streamlining the review process for our pipelines,” quips Peter Louwe, communications officer for Greenpeace Vancouver.

RUINING PROTECTIONS
Besides weakening The Fisheries Act to the point where it doesn’t protect most fish, the Cons have also rewritten The Navigable Waters Protection Act so that it no longer protects most lakes and rivers. “There is no environmental protection for our waters unless there’s a commercial aspect to it,” says Louwe. Since Canada contains 20 percent of the world’s fresh water as well as the world’s longest coastline, changes to these acts are of worldwide concern.

SILENCING SCIENCE
After Environment Canada senior research scientist David Tarasick published on one of the biggest ozone holes ever found over the Arctic in 2011, he was forbidden to speak with media for nearly three weeks. Once given permission, his calls were supervised by Environment Canada officials. In speaking of the incident, he wrote to a reporter, “My apologies for the strange behaviour of EC [Environment Canada],” adding if it were up to him, he’d grant the interview.

All federal scientists now face regulations from Ottawa deciding if they can talk, how, and when. Approved interviews are taped, and often approval is not forthcoming until after deadlines have passed. When this happens, journalists receive government-approved written answers. Between 2008-2014, the federal government cut the jobs of more than 2,000 scientists. In 2014, it announced plans to close seven of its 11 Fisheries and Oceans Canada libraries.

HIT ’EM WHERE IT HURTS
Environment Canada, the government department charged with protecting the environment, is quickly having its capacity drained. Between 2010- 2012, the federal government cut 20 percent of its budget (made official right after the Cons became a majority), and from 2014– 2017 another 28 percent will be cut. This translates to hundreds of job losses and lost programs.

Environment Canada’s ozone-monitoring program, host to the world’s archive of ozone data and relied upon by scientists worldwide, several monitoring stations closed due to lack of funding, and the lone person running the archives was laid off.

The list goes on: the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which has provided research on sustainable development since 1988, and was established by a previous Conservative government, is no more. Also included in the cuts: Monitoring for heavy metals and toxic contaminants, the Climate Action Network, Sierra Club of B.C., The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, and many other organizations.

AUDITS
Meanwhile the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is auditing charities. In 2012 the government tightened rules and created a special budget so the CRA could check on charities’ political activities. EthicalOil.org, founded by Harper’s aide Alykhan Velshi, made a series of complaints to the CRA about environmental groups. The David Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada, Equiterre, and Environmental Defence, three of those EthicalOil.org targeted in its complaints, were audited—though the government denies any link with CRA’s activities.

THE KICKER
“I think C-51 should just be repealed because of the way it targets First Nations and environmentalists,” says U of T’s Stewart. This piece of legislation, adopted in June, adds power to security agencies collecting information on anything that “undermines the security of Canada,” including interfering with economic stability or “critical infrastructure.” It also gives the Canadian Security Intelligence Service power to react to these perceived threats. Many environmentalists and activists believe this means them. An RCMP document obtained by Greenpeace labels the “anti-petroleum movement” as a growing and violent threat.“There’s not much more damage that one person would be able to do to the environment of a country,” says Vancouver’s Louwe, referring to Harper.

And yet, the Harper government hasn’t managed to build any pipelines. In the face of such blatant injustice, Canadian people have risen up, building a stronger environmental movement that is not only more resolved, but broader, including people from a wider range of backgrounds and interests than before. And Stewart points out that although this government has done a lot for industry, the more obvious it becomes to the public that its government is acting as a cheerleader for big oil, the less social licence industry has in people’s minds. And this means that whatever the legacy of the Harper government leaves us, it also leaves a more politicized, involved, and activated country of people who will do what it takes to protect what matters.