Harper rising in ranks of out-of-touch prime ministers
Headshot of Roy MacGregor
ROY MacGREGOR
rmacgregor@globeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
December 1, 2008
If Prime Minister Stephen Harper is indeed going down, it will be as the most successful politician in Canadian history.
The man who united the right and the left.
It is how he will go down as Prime Minister that puzzles at the moment, as this past week he has resembled some bizarre amalgamation of former prime minister Joe Clark, former U.S. president Richard Nixon and, unbelievably, former Roman emperor Nero.
Canada has a long history of leaders oddly out of touch with regular people, from Mackenzie King talking to his dead mother and dog, to Pierre Trudeau peering out the limousine window at the country lights and wondering aloud whatever do such people do?
But the lack of street sense - or even common sense - demonstrated last week took being out of touch to a new level.
If, as the Prime Minister appeared to be suggesting on Friday, the only proper answer to a vote of no-confidence against his minority government would have to be another election, then he knows nothing of the ground-level contempt out there for holding yet another useless electoral exercise bare weeks after the last.
Harper also seems to have no sense whatsoever of the fear - even if some of it is misplaced - that older Canadians have for their savings and their children, and younger Canadians have for their jobs and job prospects. To say such concerns will be addressed in a distant budget - since sharply moved up - simply fed the panic. And to allow his Finance Minister to boast a surplus is still possible is simply foolish. Surely such news warmed the hearts of those being laid off just in time for the holidays.
But then, to add to all this misconception by suggesting that the country would somehow benefit from dropping public funding of political parties - the mind boggles. Why not go all the way back to being beholden to big business? Though it's pretty hard to say, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country" with a straight face.
This Nixonian desire to crush the opposition by whatever means possible is alarming. The Prime Minister clearly doesn't understand that Canadians prefer to put their own boots to political parties.
It also speaks to the brilliance of the collective that chose to deny the Prime Minister a clear majority on Oct. 14. That he could not win 200-plus seats up against a hopeless Liberal Leader with a hopeless policy says as much about the people's trust of Harper as it does their disdain for Stéphane Dion.
The man who ridiculed Joe Clark for thinking he could govern as though he had a majority has fallen into the very same trap. In Clark's case, he couldn't count. In Harper's case, he couldn't see.
The Sunday rumours that the Prime Minister will now seek to prorogue Parliament and govern without it until the New Year is fascinating. And if that doesn't work, maybe he can bring in the army.
What this whiff of tyranny he let loose in the Centre Block has done is infuriate the opposition parties to a point where they say they will topple the government no matter how far the Conservatives back down.
Harper says that if they do so, only another election can properly decide matters. But he is wrong. If he asked Governor-General Michaëlle Jean to allow a fresh election, she would surely refuse, given the state of the world economy and the mood of the Canadian people.
In fact, given what has happened this past week, it is arguable that she would have been wiser not to have allowed the previous election that tossed out the fixed election date and settled nothing. When Harper argued that Parliament was "dysfunctional," what she should have said in return was "Make it work."
Back on Sept. 5, former Liberal cabinet minister and former senator Eugene Whelan wrote to the Governor-General begging her to say "No," and call on the other leaders to form a government. The privy councillor received a form letter back: "Thank you for writing ...."
Today, at 84, the farmer who held elected office for four decades says he's beginning to feel like "a messiah."
But no matter what the outcome - the compromising Conservatives carrying on, or a coalition in charge - Whelan wants it known that minority governments can work just fine.
He sat through the Pearson-Diefenbaker years when once the dust settled from the various battles, they came up with such matters as medicare, the flag, the auto pact and student loans.
"I must say," he wrote to the Governor-General, the 1960s "were some of the most productive years of my Parliamentary career."
Too bad, he says, no one ever bothered to show his letter to her. In his last year as agriculture minister, he says, he read and signed 18,772 letters, each one with a small "P.S." at the bottom "just so they'd know I had read it."
So he will try again, because he's never stopped believing that political solutions can be found to any problem his country faces.
"I'm like an old milk horse," he says from his home near Windsor. "They retired him after 30 years and every morning he still goes to the front gate to get his harness on." |
