As we’ve written before, we’re so happy for our neighbours to the south (and for us in the rest of the world) that their long national nightmare will soon end. This November, the worst president in at least 100 years will be evicted from the White House, taking his neanderthal brand of Conservativism with him.

But just as Americans realize the folly of Bush’s brand of policy and prepare to put it in the recycling bin of history, Stephen Harper’s Canadian government is mining it for ideas.

The crime bill that just passed the senate after much macho posturing from Harper is a good example of the Prime Minister channelling his friend the decider. It raises the age of consent from 14 to 16, which will do nothing to protect children from abuse but plenty to drive adolescent sexuality into the shadows where abuse occurs. The bill also implements a bunch of dumb mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, possibly unconstitutional presumptions of guilt for other crimes, and an absolutely idiotic “three strikes” law that has proved disastrous in the United States.

The overall effect of the law on the Canadian public is bad, though it’s fairly clear Stephen Harper doesn’t care a whit about its practical value — he wanted a law that would make him able to strut about what a big strong lawman he is, and that’s what he got.

Furthermore, Canadians who gloat that we can watch The Sopranos on network TV while American regulators work themselves into a lather over Janet Jackson’s nipple should be aware of a provision in the recent budget that would deny tax credits to “offensive” movies containing sex.

Evangelical Christian agitator Charles McVety was publicly gloating in the Globe and Mail last week that it was his holy rolling that inspired the provision. Let’s be clear that there is much room for reasonable debate about how and to what extent the government should subsidize the Canadian film industry. But to withhold funding available to others based on a religious morality is outrageous — in penalizing films for their content, Revenue Canada is to act as a censor. It seems just un-Canadian.

Jim Flaherty, too, has the Bush bug. The “biggest spending finance minister in Canadian history,” as Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s calls him, has brought the balanced budget into jeopardy even as we teeter on the edge of recession by doling out ill-considered GST cuts.

Cutting taxes to throw the budget into deficit is a move straight out of the Republican playbook. So too is then lecturing others on how fiscally responsible you are while you ruin the government finances. See how spendthrift Flaherty has the gall to lecture the Ontario government about its money management skills, even though it was Dalton McGuinty’s government who had to clean up the deficit-riddled books after Flaherty’s time in the Ontario cabinet. We’d suggest Flaherty should “stick to his own knitting” (as he’s fond of putting it) rather than lecturing those more competent than he is on subjects he clearly doesn’t understand. But he’s not taking cues from us, he’s following Bush, whose lack of understanding and penchant for talking patent nonsense is legendary.

Of course, Americans also face an inspiring choice of replacements to the current failure. Not so in Canada, where the opposition Liberals led by Stephane Dion have walked out on votes, supported a budget and hemmed and hawed for over a year, thereby allowing the Conservative minority government to have its way with the country. They talk a good game about what’s wrong with Harper — their website may yet draw a defamation lawsuit from the prime minister — but Dion is almost acrobatic in his ability to avoid putting forward a real alternative for Canadians.
A shame, that.

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