The Tyee: Harper Government and it's abuses of power..continued, 9 -12

On August 11th we published part of this article from the Tyee.  We continued the list on August 20th. We continue with the list.

Tyee staff and contributors have compiled a list of 70 government assaults on democracy and the law.  As a list of 70 is pretty difficult for anyone to verify all at once we will post a few at a time.  To read the entire list at once go to this link.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/10/Harper-Abuses-of-Power-Final/

 Conservative MP Admits He Lied to Parliament

As opposition members claimed the Harper government was out to rig election rules in its favour, Conservative MP Brad Butt rose in the House of Commons to say why the bill was needed -- all the voter fraud he had personally witnessed. Weeks later he rose again to say his statements were false. Delivering his strained apology, he failed to explain why he lied in the first place.

Conservative House Leader Admits to Mockery of Question Period

Criticized far and wide for farcical answers in question period, Paul Calandra, parliamentary secretary to Harper, made a tearful apology for abuse of the democratic process.

Harper Maligns the Supreme Court Chief Justice

The Prime Minister took the unprecedented step of alleging inappropriate conduct by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. Facts undermined the credibility of the PM's position.

Conservatives Engage in Abuse of Process with Omnibus Bills

Harper's party pushed legislation through Parliament via omnibus bills, the scale of which Parliament had never seen. Such bills are widely condemned as an abuse of the democratic process, because they blend and bury so many controversial laws within one dense package. Harper himself once railed against them, and his born again love for them made his own MPs queasy. Referencing such bills, former auditor general Sheila Fraser said that "Parliament has become so undermined that it is almost unable to do the job that people expect of it."

'Parliament has become so undermined that it is almost unable to do the job that people expect of it.' Former auditor general Sheila Fraser on Harper's omnibus bills.