HarperIndex.ca to be archived – Harper's agenda no longer hidden

Straight Goods to introduce news site with broader mission – HillReport.ca – when Parliament returns...

(HillReport.ca was planned for January 2010 but has been delayed, following Stephen Harper's surprise prorogation of Parliament on New Years Eve.)

OTTAWA, December 22, 2009: As of December, 2009, Straight Goods News is ceasing and archiving its HarperIndex.ca project. Although articles posted to the site will remain publicly available, the site is going to be replaced with a new news site called HillReport.ca, which will focus on national news from Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

We thank everyone who contributed to HarperIndex.ca or supported the project, and we hope you can bring that support to the new project. HillReport.ca is being launched so we can broaden our journalistic focus. Please join us at HillReport.ca in the New Year.

To a real extent, HarperIndex.ca has outlived its original purpose. When it was introduced, in May 2007, Stephen Harper was still difficult to read for many Canadians. That no longer is the case. When HarperIndex.ca was launched, we believed Harper had a hidden agenda intended to downplay his extremist political roots so as to attract urban and eastern Canadians. ...

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Posted: December 22, 2009

Colvin's gagging and public smearing highlight callousness

OTTAWA, November 20, 2009, a special HarperIndex.ca report: The reaction to diplomat Robert Colvin's report, that top advisors gagged him when he tried to report widespread torture of Afghan detainees captured by Canadians, revealed the Harper government's callousness in two ways. First, the government, according to Colvin, who served as a top diplomat in Afghanistan, willfully ignored urgent reports from him in 2006 and 2007 that all detainees, guilty and innocent, were subject to torture, including being beaten with rubber hoses and electrical cable, shocked with electrical current, and raped. ...

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Mining companies should uphold Canada's standards abroad – Bill C-300

by Ish Theilheimer, with files from Lori Steuart

OTTAWA, November 20, 2009, a HarperIndex.ca report, with YouTube video: Environment, social justice and labour advocates are urging federal opposition parties to pass a private member's bill that will enable Canada to hold its mining companies accountable for their international activities. Bill C-300 was introduced by Liberal MP John McKay in February 2009, although not all his caucus members appear to solidly support the measure. The bill implements recommendations from the March 2007 final report of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Roundtables, which reflected the consensus of a multi-stakeholder advisory group with representatives from industry and civil society groups. If it passes, C-300 will put in place human rights, labour, and environmental standards that Canadian extractive companies receiving government support must live up to when they operate in developing countries, or risk losing federal grants, tax breaks and other supports. ...

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Gun control politics revised Canada's political map

by Ish Theilheimer, with files from Anne Cummings and Lori Steuart, video by Kevin Caners

OTTAWA, November 6, 2009, HarperIndex.ca, with YouTube video: This week's House of Commons vote of support for legislation to kill Canada'a controversial long-gun registry is another chapter in a narrative that has been instrumental in electing and re-electing the Harper Conservatives to government. ...

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