Conservative Party != Democracy

Stephen Harper spoke during the last election on how the Conservative Party was better than the others because it would be more open and accountable. So far, Harper's government and party have done everything to show that it's not going to be open and accountable. Items such as claiming that even MP's must win a nomination process but then making it next to impossible for someone to challenge an MP shows the level of hypocrisy the party will stoop to.

By claiming that people can challenge any riding, then setting impossible deadlines, and then rejecting anyone who manages to make those deadlines shows the Tories' true colours. They talk a good talk about accountability and making parliament more democratic, but they can't even manage to do that within their own party. It would appear that the reason Stephen Harper is such a micro-manager is that he's also a control freak. His actions seem to demonstrate this from how he keeps his ministers in check to how he stymies attempts by the grass roots of his party to rid themselves of cow-pies such as Rob Anders.

This recent action seems to indicate that like many mergers, the merger between the old Reform Party/Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives combined the worst aspects of both while discarding any good ones. The Reform/Alliance brought grassroots populism to the table, the PC's a system that protected its friends. The merged party seems to have gone the PC route with its current actions. Only lip service to the grass roots and what can only be eventual marginalization of this group. This will come back to bite the new CPC in the butt, since the formation of the Reform Party was caused by grassroots PC members who felt they were being ignored. They did it once, they'll do it again.

The same thing is happening with the Tories in government. All pretense of openness is going out the window and Harper rushes to bring the same level of closed government that the people of Alberta have come to expect. Like his provincial counterparts Harper refuses to talk to media that don't agree with him. Also, like his Alberta counterparts, Harper is only letting groups that agree with him come to "public" consultations. This is not the open government they promised the Canadian people last election. I suspect that Harper is hoping that the frozen out media outlets won't have the circulation to tell people what the Tories are doing. The problem is that some of the media outlets are national and wide read such as the Globe and Mail and the CBC.

It boils down to that the more extreme elements of the CPC are in charge. They can't push through their agenda with the less extreme public involved so they've got to keep it mum. It's no way to run a government and I think it will hurt them the next time Canadians go to the polls, outside Alberta at least.