LTTE: PM's radical past not to be forgotten

[tuvor]

After a year of watching the media act as little more than a public relations firm for the Stephen Harper government, I was grateful for Ian Urquhart's overdue suggestion that Harper's old Reform party cronies might have an "anti-native streak."

The truth is, because of the media's deliberate attempt to flush Harper's radical past down a memory hole, many Canadians are starting to forget that he was the founding member of a political party that embraced every conceivable form of bigotry in existence.

From MP Art Hanger's planned "fact-finding" trip to Singapore to watch naked teenagers being tortured, to Leon Benoit's meetings with a high-profile white supremacist to discuss immigration policy, to the party's open-door policy for countless anti-immigrant and anti-native activists, the Social Credit-Reform-C.R.A.P-Canadian Alliance-Conservative party has always been far more extreme than the media are willing to admit.

Urquhart's reminder of our governing party's true history is a small, but nevertheless a very important, step in the right direction.

If the media have any interest at all in enabling democracy through informed consent, Harper's past should be a stain he carries around with him for the rest of his political life.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1154123417204&call_pageid=970599119419

(Is any of this on the record? Reliable sources, links would be appreciated.)