by Joyce Murray, Liberal candidate Vancouver Quadra

After May 2nd, one of two people will be Prime Minister: Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff. As a Liberal candidate, it is my task to highlight the stark contrast between the inclusive, family-oriented vision of Canada offered by the Liberal Party versus the dangerous ideological control of the Harper Conservatives.

On spending priorities, these differences could not be clearer: the Liberals would cancel Stephen Harper’s expensive jets, prisons and corporate tax cuts and redirect those big dollar investments towards education, health care, and growing our green economy.

But these differences go much deeper. Canada has never seen a government with so little respect for the core principles of democracy, which give all citizens a voice in the political decisions that affect their daily lives.

Stephen Harper deliberately misled Parliament and deceived Canadians about the true cost of the F-35 stealth fighter jets and prison expansions. The Speaker of the House confirmed Harper’s contempt of Parliament on both counts, the first of such rulings in the history of all 54 Commonwealth democracies. Harper (contemptuously) tried to make “contempt of Parliament” sound like a bureaucratic technical term, but what it actually means is contempt not only for the democratic process, but also for each and every Canadian citizen.

The contempt ruling was not just a ‘one off’; it was a response to the Harper government’s deliberate misinformation of Parliament – also known as lying – on multiple fronts. Harper has refused to be accountable to independent officers of Parliament and muzzled civil servants and his own candidates and ministers. He has also smeared, sidelined or fired those who did not toe the ‘Harper Government line.’ Not surprisingly, his own ‘public’ election campaign events had Conservative troops obsessively track (creeping) voters on Facebook, enlisting the RCMP to throw out curious young people associated, even distantly, with the Liberals.

Soliciting the RCMP, however, does not mean the Conservatives are accountable to the law. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Four members of Harper’s inner circle face criminal charges relating to the Conservative 2006 “in and out” scandal and several of his Senate appointees also face criminal charges. Most recently, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were criticized in an Auditor General’s draft report for illegally siphoning money, supposedly designated for border security, into a $50 million G8 slush fund for vanity projects in a minister’s riding.

This election offers two options for voters that are more deeply divergent than most people realize. If Stephen Harper returns as Prime Minister, he will further his efforts to eliminate access to safe injection sites, a measure that saves lives every day in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Four out of the nine Supreme Court Justices reach mandatory retirement age within the next four years, enabling a future Harper government to make deeper and more long-term ideological changes to the Canada we know and love through the Supreme Court. In 2008, the Harper government unilaterally appointed a Supreme Court judge, bypassing the normal consultation process of Parliamentary hearings. Harper has criticized Canadian judges as “activist” and yet it is these Liberal-appointed judges who have upheld the rights of universal health care, same-sex marriage, women’s access to reproductive freedom and environmental preservation.

Michael Ignatieff offers a commitment to a clean tech economy, with environmental stewardship and energy efficiency driving economic prosperity – a clear alternative to the Harper Conservatives’ abysmal environmental record. Currently, Canada’s per-capita clean energy investments are only one-tenth of those in the US, hurting jobs and the growing green economy. At the climate negotiations in Copenhagen, I witnessed the Harper Conservatives’ obstruction of international progress on stopping climate warming, making Canada a global pariah – only Saudi Arabia’s performance index of 60 developed nations is lower. Stephen Harper has weakened the Canadian environmental assessment process several times and muzzled several of Canada’s key research scientists. While Michael Ignatieff will legislate the 40-year Liberal ban on North Coast tanker traffic, Harper will eliminate it entirely.

There are only two clear options. Consider the Liberal $13 billion surplus of 2005, in comparison to the Conservative $55 billion deficit of 2011. Consider the Liberal Party Family Reunification Immigration policy compared to the Conservative cut to annual family immigrant sponsorships from $20,000 to $11,000. Consider the Liberal open-door policy to refugees and immigration compared to the Conservative immigration backlog with more than one million people waiting for a decision.

Vote strategically, riding by riding, to end the Harper government’s secrecy, contempt and deceit – a threat to Canada’s valuable democratic political culture. Only one party can lead Canada on the road not taken in the past five years. It will take a Liberal government to work cooperatively with the other parties to restore and preserve the just policies, open democracy and clean environment of our great country.

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Joyce Murray represents the electoral district of Vancouver Quadra as a Liberal Member of the Canadian House of Commons and was previously a BC Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia from 2001 to 2005.