Anthony Furey: The Canadian Looney Left Takes To Foreign Publications To Slander Canada

You'd never know this is how Canada is actually viewed internationally
if all you went by were batshit crazy Canadian Looney Left columnists

It’s now apparently a hazing ritual for the most theatrical columnists of the left to speak ill of our country in foreign publications.

Last month Toronto novelist Stephen Marche wrote a piece in The New York Times entitled The Closing of the Canadian Mind. Earlier this month East Coast writer Parker Donham penned The Case Against Stephen Harper in the magazine The Atlantic.

Then the Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick took to Harper’s Magazine the other day to one-up these screeds with How Stephen Harper Ruined Canada.

While it should be designated cruel and unusual punishment – both against Canada and good taste – to reprint any of her essay, it’s important you see how silly this all is, so bear with me.

She alleges Harper “spent a lifetime plotting to transform Canada into a nastier version of Texas.” That “he really wants a government that’s too small to help its citizens.” She describes his caucus as “obedient, dark-suited, rural, punitive, women-despising MPs.”

She says Harper described the NDP as “a kind of proof that the devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.” He did say that, but most Canadian political observers know it was said as a joke.

Then she claims John Baird was “put in charge of the budget.” No he wasn’t.

It’s fair to assume the only reason this essay made it to print as is, is that the editors at Harper’s Magazine don’t know Canadian politics enough to challenge their writer to substantiate her outlandish claims. Usually their essays – while still unapologetically leftist – are far better argued.

Now, normally a columnist shouldn't waste too much time or space complaining about another columnist at a competing publication. But this is more than that.

At first glance, it appears these three misanthropes are just speaking extremely ill of Stephen Harper and his policies. That’s fair game in partisan politics.

But to argue that Harper has “ruined Canada” is also to imply that Canada has been ruined. That it’s damaged. That it’s become a bad place...