Canadian journalists are active accomplices in Harper’s culture of deceit.

It is a far more damning statement to conclude that Canadian journalists are accomplices in Harper’s culture of deceit, rather than the Canadian media at large, because it is at the individual by individual level that Canadian journalists have allowed Stephen Harper to rule this country in a culture of deceit and patent lies.

There are no more striking examples of this than the circumstances surrounding (1) Harper’s income trust tax., (2) Harper’s attempted bribe of Chuck Cadman and (3) Harper’s cover up of the torture of Afghan detainees. Each of these instances represents an ascending degree of offence by Stephen Harper, that was also marked by a degree of disconcerting co-optedness of the press.

Each of these three examples involve cover-ups. But where was the investigative journalism that would have nipped this culture of deceit in the bud? It was virtually non-existent in the case of income trusts or the attempted Cadman bribe. What began in the context of the income trust tax which was based on a falsehood, elevated itself to a criminal offence in the context the Chuck Cadman attempted bribe , which then elevated itself into an attempted cover-up of the known torture of Afghan detainees, an offence under international law. Left unchecked, a culture of deceit quickly grows and can readily permeate Ottawa.

Meawhille Canadians have been making, what is termed in legal circles as “false reliance” on the press. Falsely thinking that the press is actively engaged in protecting Canadians’ interests by ferreting out the truth, regardless of the consequences. Clearly, such is not the case, hence my conclusion of “false reliance”, as between Canadians and the Canadian press and those who inhabit the Canadian press.

I have a moderate degree of confidence that the Canadian press will do a reasonable job in ferreting out the truth about the Afghan detainee torture matter, given that this alleged offensive is offensive to everything that Canadians stand for and completely counter to why we are in Afghanistan lending support to the US in their time of need, in the first place.

Did it not occur to the individuals who inhabit Canada’s media on an individual by individual basis, that perhaps this escalating degree of offense by Stephen Harper is the function of the fact that YOU allowed him to get away scott free with his patent lie known as tax leakage?

I ask the same question of the Opposition Leaders and the 308 paid elected Members of Parliament, the supposed guardians of Canada’s democracy.

Unlike proving the falsehood of tax leakage, proving whether these Afghan detainees were tortured or not, is something that will be difficult to prove with certainty after the fact. This seems to now be the entire basis on which Peter MacKay and the Harper government intend to defend themselves as they plaintively argue “where’s the proof”.

Meanwhile in the context of the press and Harper’s income trust tax, no-one apart from Diane Francis of the Financial Post was asking for the proof. As basic and fundamental as such a concept is, she was the ONLY journalist to reason in one of her many articles on Harper’s income trust fraud that the onus in on Harper and his government to “Prove the case or drop the tax”.

Why is it that the absence of proof becomes the principle defense for the Harper government’s handling of the Afghan detainees torture scandal, and yet the absence of proof is also the standard by which the Harper government is able to implement its income trust tax? Why would such a double standard be allowed to exist? That said, which do you suppose is inherently more “provable” in nature? The existence of tax leakage or the existence of torture? And yet this standard of proof is being applied in a totally inconsistent basis. The absence of proof is meant to absolve the Harper government of wrongdoing in the torture of Afghan detainees and meanwhile the absence of proof is the basis on which the Harper government allowed the income trust tax to proceed.

The income trust tax was the financial equivalent of a road side bomb. An Improvised Explosive Device. It is dirty pool in the extreme. Canadians were promised by Stephen Harper that a vote for him meant that he would never tax income trusts. He became a traitor to his own promise nine months later by doing the exact opposite. As offensive and morally reprehensible as that was, the even more morally reprehensible act was for Harper to cite a rationale for his reversal that is completely false, namely the false allegation that income trusts cause tax leakage. This was Harper’s phony alibi for why he was compelled to detonate that roadside bomb, infilcting a $35 billion on those who had entrusted him with their life savings, and causing wholesale foreign takeovers and the massive loss of tax revenue for ALL CANADIANS.

In a cascading series of bad conduct, the worst conduct was that of the press who did nothing whatsoever to challenge the assertion of tax leakage being made by the deceitful Harper. Tax leakage is an infinitely determinable construct, no different than determining the balance in your bank account at the end of each month. Harper was clearly lying about tax leakage and there were any number of highly reputable groups to cite in making such a counter claim, specifically the work of HLB Decision Economics, BMO Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets and PricewaterhouseCoopers, all of whom concluded there was NO TAX LEAKAGE from income trusts.

So what did Canadian journalists do? They completely misreported on this issue and allowed Harper to get away with this demonstrable lie during the first nine months of his term in minority government.

As much as we have Harper to blame for the inherently deceitful person that he is, we have individuals in the press, people like Terry Corcoran, Eric Reguly. Amanda Lang, Margaret Wente, David Olive, Bob Hepburn, and Jonathan Chevreau, and a litany of others who actively fostered Harper’s blatantly false notion of tax leakage, to blame for the culture of deceit and a tolerance for Harper’s blatant lies, that ensued.

Look where that has gotten us?

The problem that started with Harper’s tax leakage lie, only escalated, such that lies became institutionalised to the point where we are being governed by outright lies and zero proof to support any of these false contentions. Thanks to all of the aforementioned wimps in the media for the culture of deceit that you allowed to ensue.

Somehow these incredibly naive “journalists” thought they could get away with their pathetically low standards of journalism and that Canadians would readily accept their collective bunk about tax leakage and that somehow Canada was charting a better path to the future lead by a person, Stephen Harper, who is a pathological liar, as first evidenced by his tax leakage lie.

Thank God we have people of simple honesty and fortitude like Diane Francis, Tom Zytaruk, Richard Colvin, Linda Keen and myself to speak truth to power, since the media are all too busy cowering in the face of power and promulgating Harper’s next greatest lie, in order to hang on to their pathetic jobs as compromised journalists and outright shills for big business........while selling Canada and all Canadians down the river.

You are active accomplices in Harper’s culture of deceit. That will look really nice on your resume, as you hope to land that next job. Problem is, there aren’t many job postings these days, or hopefully in the future for “Shill Wanted: Ability to compromise, kowtow and bend-over, are prerequisites.”