Light a Candle for Canada at Nuit Blanche

The Department of Culture is urging those who are attending Nuit Blanche in Toronto this saturday to stop by the Lower Ossington Theatre, 100A Ossington Avenue, just north of Queen Street West to Light a Candle for Canada.

"Light a candle for all that will be lost if the Harper Conservatives win a majority government. Consider the social, cultural, educational and economic crises that will befall Canada under their majority rule, and join us in our efforts to defeat the Conservatives at the polls on October 14. 

Bring your photographs of happier times, bring your odes to health care, day care, and senior care; bring a pail of clean water and a plate of untainted food; bring wilted flowers, your aging parents, your asthmatic friends, the melting polar ice cap and sing a sad song for Canada."

I've been wondering today if Harper actually wants to win this election. It is no secret that Harper has some disdain for the arts but artists, at least most of them most of the time, are fairly apolitical. They may have ideas and opinions but relatively few of them get involved regularly in election campaigns. They sit quietly and observe for the most part, vote on election day and then get back to their work (generating 1.1 million jobs, generating 84 billion in economic activity and 7.4% of GDP.) They are usually working much too hard in fact to have much time for fancy galas (even if they had something to wear.)

So why Harper would stir up a hornets nest? 45 Million is, as election promises go, spare change. It is only 15% of what this election (that Harper promised not to call) is going to cost. Yet by axing those programs right before the election call he has activated the normally quiet arts community and damaged his chances in Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes. Not only Harper done this but many of those artists are now finding their voices on other political issues (the environment, human rights, the anti-war movement etc) and building alliances. It is surely one of the dumbest political moves in recent Canadian history. That is, it is dumb if you want to win. If you want to lose because you know economic disaster is on the horizon and you want to get back to the safety of the opposition benches and blame someone else then it's very shrewd.