I used totalitarianism because with Harper it's all or nothing, The government has to work WITH the opposition parties, especially in a minority government, in order to get anything done. If you force feed legislation, not allowing representation from the majority of Canadians to at least offer ways to possibly improve legislation, of course they will vote against it, but if you bring forth a new law, and allow discussion into the details, these laws would pass much quicker. Instead, we get name calling and nit-picking from all parties, while bills get stalled, and the Tories were just as guilty of stalling their own bills this year when opposition parties offered to fast track some, yet the Tories delayed bringing them back for a vote, sometimes for several months. Also lumpimg a large number of bills into one piece of legislation will meet resistance, as the opposition may agree to all but a few of the elements, but those few elements can keep them from supporting it, instead of either breaking it down and passing 8 out of ten laws, and further debating the rest, instead of holding up all ten indefinitely. And harper may be forcing his caucus to vote for things against their will, but we'll never know because nobody in that caucus is allowed to fart in public without prior written approval from the PMO, with a strict outline of answers to an even stricter list of questions allowed to be asked..
And to the other question. I've been out for two years, and it's been a fight since, and even before my release. A fight with Veterans Affairs, currently awaiting an appeal hearing with VRAB, which will take place roughly 38 months after initially submitting the claim. At the review hearing VRAB said that they believed my account of an accident on ships, since the accident report that I filled out wasn't in my docs, but they said it was of their opinion that if my back injury was serious enough to cause a disability, I would have sought more medical treatment than I did, which was around every second year (pain meds and physio) for 6 years prior to my release, and my claim for aggravated knee OA was denied, stating that the worsening of the OA was coincidental, and the Orthopedic surgeons report was speculative at best, after losing 4 degrees of cartilage on my right knee in the three months following surgery on my left knee (pensioned). Then when released, my VAC pension that they did grant was deducted from my SISIP, to a tune of almost $1500.00 per month, for which we have class action certification hearing in Feb. I've also been fighting for VIP housekeeping, as with the deductions, my wife had to start working part time to help pay bills, leaving me to take care of the house, which I cannot do well because of my disabilities, but VAC stance is that they don't care if my wife works or not, if she is physically fit, it is her sole responsibility to clean the house and be my nurse, which is putting a real strain on the marriage, to the point I've been sleeping on the couch for the last several months. I'm in pain 24/7 and all I ask is to be treated fairly by the country I was disabled serving and the government that is ruling it.
I certainly hope that you are not trying to imply that this tactic was dreampt up by the Conservative government of Steven Harper :
