You know a Conservative Government is out of line when...

... the editorials in the Calgary Herald, a paper that is usually a mouthpiece for the Harper Conservatives is taking them to task for an action. In this case the Herald editorial writers, normally people who haven't met a union they couldn't slam, are calling out the Harper Tories for ordering the striking Air Canada and locked out Canada Post workers back to work only hours after the strikes happened.

For once they're right. There was no need to tell the workers of a private company, one that was experiencing no disruption of service and one that has competitors so the travelling public would have an alternate choice for flying if there were service disruptions. Also, though the post office is a more essential service, again there are alternatives and the actual lock out was only a couple of hours old. In both cases, no time was given for the negotiation process to work its way through.

Basically, what the Harper government is doing is removing the Canadian worker's right to bargan collectively and to strike. They know they can't do that directly through legislation (that pesky charter of rights getting in the way) but the can put such a chill that it would make strikes impossible. Then they would have the neo-con dream world of no unions (or at least ineffective ones) so that the large corporations can drive wages and benefits for average Canadians down and eliminate hard won health and safety clauses. After all, CEO's making $millions need to make even more $millions or the world will go spinning off its axis.

If this is the ideological claptrap we are going to expect from the Harper Tories for the next, Stephen Harper had better enjoy his single term of majority. There are enough unionized workers in those marginal Ontario ridings that could swing the vote to other parties that will send the Conservatives to the opposition benches and Stephen Harper into the dustbin of history. I would suggest that a massive email campaign from those marginal ridings might change some minds in the Tory caucus about Harper's leadership, since dear leader brokers no dissent and the voters in Ontario have been known to actually change their votes. Enough southern Ontario Tory MP's feeling the heat may slow the Harper anti-union train down by putting the fear into Harper that he won't be PM for life.

I suspect that Harper will go ahead with his plans, after all he has a majority and doesn't have to listen to anyone any more. I also suspect that he and the rest of the Alberta caucus are under the mistaken belief that, like the Alberta voter, the Ontario voter will forget how to vote for any one else. This is only the start of the damage that Harper will inflict on the country. The only possible bright side is that he does so much damage to Canada that it will be a long, long time before people outside of Alberta vote Conservative again.