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Part One of Robin Mathews' review of The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper's Takeover of Canada

Conservative Party Crimes.  Mel Hurtig Writes. 
For All Canadians.

The Arrogant Autocrat by Mel Hurtig – book review by Robin Mathews, June 2015

PART ONE

The book is small.  Compact.  Readable.  Important.  Read it.  Hand it on to your friends.  Above all … hand it on to friends who voted Conservative in the last election.

Mel Hurtig calls his new book The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper's Takeover of Canada.  ‘Chapter and verse,’ it itemizes Harper Conservative crimes against the people of Canada, against their laws, their trust in Parliament, their institutions, their economy, their special protections as a free people….

‘Chapter and verse,’ Mel Hurtig looks at crimes against the Democratic System, the environment, science and scientists, public knowledge and information, freely assembling community organizations, and – NEWS TO MANY – he points to the lies and frauds and “unfacts” and – you name it – by the Conservative government to falsify its gross mismanagement of the economy.  A growing loss of jobs.  A growing loss of living wages.  A growing loss of Canadian ownership.  A growing loss of Canadian industrial activity – not just sold but packed up and shipped out.  Hugely growing national indebtedness… and more.

The Conservative lying has been so persistent that many Canadians don’t know the painful truth about Harper Conservative destruction of the Canadian economy. Read The Arrogant Autocrat.  Find out how Canadians, dollar for dollar, are much poorer than they were ten years ago – as a result of deliberate Conservative Party policy.

I wrote, above, that readers should hand on The Arrogant Autocrat to friends who voted Conservative in the last election. “Oh,” you might say, repeating Conservative Party and Media lies, “Canadians don’t change their voting pattern.”  Tell a lie often enough, and it begins to sound like truth.

Most Canadians want a decent Canada – among them, most Conservative Canadians. (Not the super-rich, the One Per Cent.  They are different, whatever they claim to be politically.)  We know, just recently, the so-called “hardest-core Conservative province” (which, living there for a time, I never believed) – ALBERTA… swung….  How hard did it swing?

One third of “hard-core” Wild Rose Party voters (nearest to Stephen Harper’s position) switched their vote – and went for change.  One third of Progressive Conservative voters switched their vote – and went for change.  The NDP increased its vote, with those changes and a few others, by 400%.

Canadians want a decent Canada, whether they usually vote Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Bloc, Green, CPCML (Communist Party)… or other.  It is in the interest of the Harper corporate Falsifiers to say Canadians don’t change their voting patterns; especially that so-called “core-Right voters don’t change their vote.” 

Are our memories that short?

In 1993, the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney (somewhat less dishonest than Stephen Harper) plunged (with a quickly found ‘sacrificial lamb’ prime minister) from a 151seat majority to 2 seats.  But – as we are told – core Conservatives don’t change their vote.

The message from the neat, compact book – Mel Hurtig’s The Arrogant Autocrat - is “look at the truth of Conservative Party rule led by Stephen Harper – look at the   …/ ugly, criminal truth.  Then push aside the lies, the lies,
the lies flooding from Conservative Party headquarters.”

After that… hand the book to a friend, if possible to a friend who voted Conservative in the last federal election.  Even hard-core Conservative voters don’t like being lied to, cheated, robbed, treated as criminals, de-frauded of ‘national’ honesty, tricked out of deserved social care and key information about the country’s operation, its health, its prosperity.

Get the book.  Tell your local bookstore to order a bundle.  Or you, yourself, can order a copy (copies) directly from Chapters.ca or Amazon.ca.

Mel Hurtig has been fighting for Canadian self-respect and independence for more than fifty years – writing eight books on the subject in that time.

This, he says, is his most important book.  Maybe it is – because it’s not about a dumb, inadequate, inefficient, colonial-minded government doing silly, sell-out things.  It’s about what many of us believe is a flagrantly criminal government actively destroying Canada on behalf of insane, super-wealthy, greed-driven corporations, nut-case fundamentalists, and cabals of the One Per Cent wanting global power at the expense of decent people everywhere.

The members of the Conservative government of Canada – are drugged, whipped, coerced, and threatened into stupid, vicious, (and many believe) criminal conformity to neo-liberal, neo-fascist behaviour.  They must be removed, replaced, relieved of all power.  They must be defeated massively.

Get Mel Hurtig’s small, compact, readable, very important book, The Arrogant Autocrat.  It will help you see clearly the task ahead.

The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper's
Takeover of Canada -
by Mel Hurtig
Mel Hurtig Publishing, April 30, 2015
Dimensions:  154 pages, 8.5 × 5.5 × 0.36 in
ISBN - 10: 0994090102

See Part Two


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