An Open Letter

to Stephen Harper, PM of Canada.

You are a disgrace. You are a dreadful leader and your policies on everything from the environment to Canadian detainees at Guantanamo Bay evince your self-centred, smug, arrogant worldview. You are a tireless sychophant, an opponent of women's rights, gay rights, and more interested in capitalistic expansion than in health care and humanitarian projects. Even when your complete insensitivity produces an almost-admirable effect, it is for the wrong reasons. I very nearly had to align myself with your apparent stand on the Beijing Olympics until I realised that your absence was blamed on scheduling conflicts. Some people might take a scheduling conflict and use it to make a stand; you've taken what could have been an admirable stand on human rights and the idiocy of the free-spending spree that is the Olympics and turned it once again into a petty, trite, and laughable day-planner malfunction.

The merest whiff of a media blackout in what was once a relatively shining example of democracy and liberty in the western world should have been enough to ensure your early political demise. Your continued presence as the national and international representative of my country makes me shudder at thoughts of returning to take up my career and live out my life under your reactionary, right-wing, short-sighted, militaristic, and archaic governance.

The world does not need another politician more interested in numbers than people, in the short-gain over the long-loss. We need leadership that demonstrates the best of the people being lead, not the worst - or even the lackluster mediocre. We worry that children lack respect, are more given to instant gratification, indifference, and apathy - yet we offer them examples of how these strategies seem to work at the highest level. You are the leader of what could be the brightest and best country in the world, gifted with wealth, health, beauty, and difference. You have squandered that opportunity.

I can only hope that the damage you do is minimal and repairable. And may you always itch in unreachable places.