From the outset of his political career, Stephen Harper’s overriding mission has been to dismantle Canada’s nascent version of social democracy and ultimately change the deeply rooted system of Canadian collectivist values that supports it. Over the past nine years in government, he has advanced toward that goal incrementally but inexorably.

In the conservative quest to shape public debate in recent years, no tool has proved more useful than the think tank. Nobody understood this better than the director of the ultra-right wing U.S.-based ATLAS Foundation, who once stated that his mission was “to litter the world with free-market think tanks.”

Why are we standing on the edge of the climate change cliff, about to collectively jump yet completely in death denial, too busy shopping or fixating over the Leafs’ latest blow-out?

The willingness of much of the Canadian media to go along with the Conservative narrative about Stephen Harper’s “moderation” has allowed the prime minister to wage a discreet class war against working people without attracting too much attention.