Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical Makeover - Hardcover

A scathing indictment of a prime minister determined to remake Canada.

In Party of One, investigative journalist Michael Harris closely examines the majority government of a prime minister essentially unchecked by the opposition and empowered by the general election victory of May 2011. Harris looks at Harper’s policies, instincts, and the often breathtaking gap between his stated political principles and his practices.

 

 Harris argues that Harper is more than a master of controlling information: he is a profoundly anti-democratic figure. In the F-35 debacle, the government’s sin wasn’t only keeping the facts from Canadians, it was in inventing them. Harper himself provided the key confabulations, and they are irrefutably (and unapologetically) on the public record from the last election. This is no longer a matter of partisan debate, but a fact Canadians must interpret for what it may signify.

 

Harris illustrates how Harper has made war on every independent source of information in Canada since coming to power. Party of One is about a man with a well-defined and growing enemies list of those not wanted on the voyage: union members, scientists, diplomats, environmentalists, First Nations peoples, and journalists.

 

 Against the backdrop of a Conservative commitment to transparency and accountability, Harris exposes the ultra-secrecy, non-compliance, and dismissiveness of this prime minister. And with the Conservative majority in Parliament, the law is simple: what one man, the PM, says, goes.

 MICHAEL HARRIS began his award-winning career in journalism at CBC Television, where he became the host of The Harris Report, an investigative and current affairs show. He worked for The Globe and Mail as Atlantic bureau chief and in Ottawa. Harris was founding publisher and editor-in-chief of The Sunday Express, the St. John’s newspaper that broke the story of the abuse of boys at Mount Cashel orphanage. His bestselling book, Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel, became a prize-winning documentary. His journalistic work has sparked four separate Royal Commissions of inquiry, including one on the wrongful conviction of an aboriginal man, Donald Marshall. Harris is the author of eight books, three of which have been made into movies. He currently writes for ipolitics.ca.