Globe & Mail Offers Explanation for its Endorsement of Harper: We Did it for the Jackboots

Now that the knives are out in the Conservative caucus, the Globe & Mail editorial board has offered an explanation for its endorsement of the Conservative Party for the election, just one week ago.  You will recall that, at the time, the Globe & Mail said it was fine with the Conservative Party's principles, but it wasn't fine with Harper. That led it to the seemingly demented position that it endorsed the Conservatives for a new mandate but called upon Harper to resign immediately after the expected victory.

For the record, the same editorial board has now offered a run-down on the Conservative Party principles that, you will recall, it said were worthy of a new mandate just a few short days ago:

it weakened democracy, under the pretext of fighting non-existent cases of voter fraud, by making voting a bit harder under the Fair Elections Act. The party talked about defending citizens’ privacy rights, but in the name of fighting terrorism it handed intrusive powers to government via Bill C-51. It gutted the long-form census, falsely invoking privacy rights. The Conservative government sometimes gave the impression of being at war with evidence and science – thumbing its nose at elites who believed it might need more of both.

In the name of law and order, it picked fights with judges and the Supreme Court. Using the excuse of national security, it defended its glacially slow, nearly impenetrable bureaucracy for Syrian refugees. For the sake of oil industry and pipeline jobs, it gave the impression it was monkeying with environmental review processes – which unfortunately made it even harder for new pipelines to gain public approval. And on the pretext of promoting social cohesion, it sowed social divisions by inventing a crisis over the niqab.

That's the Globe's position, then: a party that is hostile to democracy, took steps towards creating a police state, "thumbed its nose" at science, fought against the rule of law, and invented crises to sow divisions among Canadians is the party that should form government in Canada.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide upon the legitimacy of the Globe's politics. The editorial board owes us an answer to the following question: is their "national newspaper of record" a bastion of liberty and freedom of expression, or an enabler of fascism?

I'm Sixth Estate, and we'll talk again tomorrow.