corporate and think-tank researcher

Framing

Stephen Harper repeats U.S. Republican lines on energy

19 Apr '12

To welcome in the 2012 U.S. election year, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum gave a New Year’s Eve speech in Ottumwa, Iowa, in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. By rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, Santorum warned, U.S. President Barack Obama was “pandering to radical environmentalists who don’t want energy production, who don’t want us …

How the media shaped the Vancouver election

17 Nov '11

An Angus Reid poll reported by The Globe and Mail and CTV News a few days before the 2011 Vancouver civic election asked respondents about the issues important to them. Topping the list were: providing good sanitation services, ensuring public safety, enhancing the overall quality of life, protecting the environment, dealing with homelessness and poverty, …

Big Media’s Sway Will Be Tested at Ballot Box

02 May '11

(This article was first published in The Tyee on May 2, the day of the election.) Most corporate news outlets buttressed Harper’s drive for a majority. But has the game changed? Richard Nixon famously declared “I am not a crook” in his televised defence of his handling of the Watergate affair. After that everyone thought …

Will Corporate Media Determine Election Outcome?

27 Mar '11

If most of us still get our information about elections from the corporate media—including the CBC—then the way the media frame the campaign could determine the election’s outcome. Will Harper finally get his long-sought majority, so he can move from incremental change to the blitzkrieg approach perfected by the New Zealand Labour government in the …

Reframing Public Education: Countering School Rankings and Debunking the Neoliberal Agenda

31 Jul '10

1. Introduction and study overview West Vancouver real estate agent Brock Smeaton thinks highly of the Fraser Institute‘s report card. “Independent assessments of educational institutions such as the Fraser Institute‘s annual ranking of BC schools consistently place West Vancouver schools in the upper echelons,” he wrote on his web site touting West Vancouver homes. Parent …

War On Public Schools Rages

29 Apr '10

Supporters of public education need to realize they’re in the middle of a war for its future, and they’re losing. The Fraser Institute’s school report-card program is merely the opening salvo in a campaign to strip public education of its funding and direct the resources to the private and nonprofit sectors. Every year the institute …

The Flip-Flop Drumbeat

26 Mar '07

CanWest, CTV play along as Tories label Dion. Is Stéphane Dion a flip-flopper? When you think of him, do you picture a fish out of water, flipping and flopping in a desperate attempt to get back into the (main)stream? If enough Canadians believe he is, Dion stands to lose the next election. That’s what happened …

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Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada

harperism cover

Margaret Thatcher transformed British political life forever. So did Ronald Reagan in the United States. Now Canada has experienced a similar, dramatic shift to a new kind of politics, which author Donald Gutstein terms Harperism. Among its key tenets:

A weakened labour movement – and preferably the disappearance of unions – will contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity
Cutting back government scientific research and data collection will improve public policy-making

The success of Harperism is no accident. Donald Gutstein documents the links between the politicians, think tanks, journalists, academics, and researchers who nurture and promote each other’s neo-liberal ideas.

Framing

Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada

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