By John Ibbitson

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

In Stephen Harper's soul, nothing surpasses the importance of reshaping the federation.

For this, he does not need the consent of Parliament. He will act on his own, launching the most profound changes to the shape of the Canadian federation since the patriation of the Constitution.

While this will be a government of the West and from the West, the ultimate goal of this transformation will be to settle, once and for all, the Quebec Question.

One of the least-noticed planks in the Conservative election platform is perhaps its most important. A Harper government will seek to sign with the provinces a new Charter of Open Federalism. (Here's hoping they come up with a more inspiring name.)

The charter would enshrine almost everything that premiers from Victoria to St. John's have been demanding for 20 years. Once it was signed, no federal government could enact a shared-cost program without majority provincial consent; any province could opt out of the program with full financial compensation, provided it created a similar program of its own.

Provincial governments would participate in the drafting of any international policy that affected their spheres of jurisdiction. Grant and equalization programs would be adjusted to redress the imbalance between federal revenues and provincial responsibilities.

Finally, Quebec would have the unique right to separate representation at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Add to that plans to elect senators, and you have the essence of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, the failed social-union negotiations and the aspirations of every Quebecker who is not a hard-line separatist, all rolled into one package.

And there it would end. Because the flip side of Mr. Harper's strongly decentralist agenda is a new and uncompromising approach to the question of Quebec sovereignty, an approach that will drive Quebec separatists to distraction. Numerous conversations with people close to Mr. Harper, and Mr. Harper's own writings and statements, make it perfectly clear that this prime minister would refuse to join in any future referendum game.

A Harper government would not accept the right of Quebec to secede from Canada. If the Parti Québécois wins the provincial election expected next year, and if PQ Leader André Boisclair attempts to hold a referendum on separation, Ottawa will largely stand aside from the campaign.

In that case, the referendum would not be a contest between sovereigntist forces led by the Quebec premier and federalist forces led by the prime minister. A Harper government would not recognize a Yes vote, regardless of the size of the majority. It would refuse to enter into sovereignty negotiations with the Quebec government, and if compelled to enter those negotiations -- by the Supreme Court, say -- it would not accept sovereignty as a possible outcome.

Finally, it would never cede federal responsibility for first nations in Quebec, for other Quebeckers who wished to remain in Confederation or for federal properties or resources.

Those who believe Quebeckers must be coaxed, not coerced, into staying inside Confederation, will warn that such an extreme position could deliver a Yes vote in the next referendum, followed by a unilateral declaration of independence. Carried to its extreme, they warn, Mr. Harper's obduracy could lead to civil war.

The Tory response is that such a clear stand, accompanied by genuine accommodation in areas of legitimate provincial concern, will put an end to the debate altogether. And in the realm of practical politics, a Harper government will do everything it can to support the Liberal government of Jean Charest, hoping to secure his re-election and a reprieve from a sovereigntist confrontation.

All this will force a rethink of Liberal, Bloc and PQ strategies. It could make the Conservative Party the dominant voice of federalism in Quebec: a new federalism, flexible in areas of policy but uncompromising on the fundamentals, and radically different from anything that has gone before.

It's just another new idea from Stephen Harper that we're all going to have to get our heads around.

John Ibbitson

----

I have a few ideas of my own as to what I think he'll try to do.  

---

Ibbitson may be reaching if he thinks Harper can pull that off.  #1)  A Constitutional Amendment would be needed for the senate to become an elected body, but I do agree that's on his list.  And if that is the last thing on his list how is he going to manage to do it after everyone discovers what his agenda is?   I'll assume the order is more carefully planned by Harper than what John has written.  :)  

It will be interesting to see if he can get the premiers of the provinces to sign up for his agenda.  They just all be greedy enough to fall for that part of the plan.  

Sounds like Harper is going to go down the same route that doomed Mulroney, assuming that provincial demands are limited and finite, and offering a package top satisfy them. Once he sits down with the premiers and offers this, that is the bargaining position the premiers will start from, and they will demand more powers. Does Harper think he can stare them down? It didn't work for Trudeau, and Harper's no Trudeau.

By MARC S. ELLENBOGEN

TORONTO, April 8 (UPI) -- In October 1993, I had been visiting old friends in Toronto. I had come across from Calgary and had spent the last days leading up to the elections in Hamilton, Ontario. I joined the activist minister, the Reverend Kenneth E. Sherman, and his wife, Professor Caroline Bayard of MacMaster University, in a local pub for the election returns.

As the returns came in I was numbed. I was aghast. I felt as though I was the last person in Canada supporting Prime Minister Kim Campbell and the Progressive Conservative Party.

Not that it mattered -- as a U.S. citizen I could not vote for the Canadian prime minister. I had met Kim Campbell as defense minister, the first woman to hold the position in a NATO country; I very much liked her. It would be another 12 years before I would meet her again -- and host her -- in Prague as a guest of the Prague Society and Global Panel.

The Progressive Conservatives would be obliterated that dreadful October day -- all seats but two lost, including the prime minister's. The Bloc Quebecois, under Lucien Bouchard, had pushed the Conservatives out in Quebec and the Reform Party, under Preston Manning, had done the same in the Conservative strongholds of British Columbia and Alberta. The Liberals, under Prime Minister-to-be Jean Chretien, would take Ontario. While the Conservatives had received the second highest number of votes, they had failed to secure seats in Canada's "first past the post" system.

Here it was nearly 13 years later. Again I found myself in Hamilton and Toronto. It was the first day of the 39th Canadian Parliament. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada (the Conservatives had remorphed from the Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives) were poised to hold their first sitting as the government in 13 years -- albeit as a minority government.

I watched with great interest the reports and interviews on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the local Toronto stations.

In the January 2006 Canadian federal elections, I had preferred Prime Minister Paul Martin. Like many Canadians, I felt it was time for a change. But I thought Paul Martin, the person, was the better candidate. I had been impressed with him as finance minister. I felt he deserved more time to bring the government around. After all, the Liberals -- notwithstanding a nasty and despicable funding scandal -- have done well for Canada in their nearly 13 years in power. For most Canadians, the elections were less about Mr. Harper and his abilities than a protest vote against the long-serving Liberals.

Yet again, I was out of sync with Canada.

I have watched Stephen Harper's development over the years. I have found myself agreeing with him on economic and defense issues, but disagreeing with him on social issues. I do not see it as the role of government to enter peoples' bedrooms. Mostly though, I do not see Harper as having the political maturity to lead a government.

Stephen Harper was first elected to the Federal Parliament in 1993 as the Reform Party candidate for Calgary-West. In 1997, he had left Parliament to become Vice President of the National Citizens' Coalition, a Canadian Advocacy Organization. In 2002 he won the leadership of the Canadian Alliance, becoming Leader of the Opposition. In 2003, Harper co-founded the Conservative Party of Canada, ran for its leadership and won. He challenged Prime Minister Martin in 2004, but lost.

The Speech from the Throne officially opens every new session of parliament. And, so it was on this day -- April 4, 2006.

The Speech from the Throne is Canada's version of the State of the Union Address. In Canada, as with most parliamentary democracies, the prime minister is not the head of state. As such, the governor general reads the speech, though it is in fact the agenda of the party in power. The current governor-general of Canada is Michaelle Jean who is Canada's head of state and representative of the Queen of England.

The speech highlighted Harper's agenda for Canada. It spoke of bringing accountability back to government; of lowering taxes and helping ordinary working Canadians and their families; tackling crime; providing child care choice and support; ensuring Canadians get proper health care; and ensuring a Canada that is strong, united, independent and free.

In Toronto that evening, I went to dinner with the vice president of a company which manages a large and prominent Canadian Public Pension Fund. We spoke of Harper and his agenda. As with many Canadians, he had voted for change, not for Harper. That afternoon, I had spoken via phone with a former Conservative foreign minister. Both were in a wait and see, and support, mode.

I have heard these ideas many times before in the United States, most recently from President George W. Bush.

As far as I am concerned, Mr. Harper still does not cut the mustard.

--

(UPI Columnist Marc S. Ellenbogen is chairman of the Global Panel Foundation and president of the Prague Society for International Cooperation. A Senior Associate at Syracuse's Maxwell School, he is based in Berlin and Prague. Ellenbogen may be reached at globalpanel.org or praguesociety.org)

UPI

Minister's office denies remarks made
Apr. 20, 2006. 05:21 AM
LES WHITTINGTON OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA—Trade Minister David Emerson is telling former associates privately that he is frustrated being a member of the Conservative government, according to an ex-aide.

His main complaints are that the government is too partisan and too tightly controlled under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the ex-aide says.

Emerson, the former Liberal industry minister, set off an uproar when he switched parties and joined Harper's government on Feb. 6, the day it was sworn in, two weeks after the Jan. 23 election.

Jay Epworth, Emerson's legislative assistant when he was industry minister in the Paul Martin government, said Emerson recently told him he has been shocked by the Harper government's fierce adversarial approach.

"Behind closed doors, the Conservatives are worse partisans than the Liberals ever were," Emerson said, according to notes Epworth wrote after his conversation with the minister.

"They hate the f---ing Liberals and they're doing everything they can to screw them," he quoted Emerson as saying.

Emerson had been explaining that the partisan nature of politics is "just something he was not able to really wrap his head around," recalled Epworth, who is now the legislative assistant to Opposition Leader Bill Graham.

"He was telling me what Harper was like in cabinet," Epworth told the Star. "His words were that Harper's a hard-ass, that he is incredibly focused but has no people skills and that, if in the cabinet meeting he disagrees with the opinions of one of his ministers, he makes it perfectly clear that he believes the minister is wrong and that his way should prevail.

"And I said, it seems to me that he is running the whole show over there," Epworth recalled. "And Emerson said to me, `He's definitely got a tight grip on things.'"

Another source said Emerson has told other former associates that he is chaffing at the tight rein Harper is exerting over his cabinet ministers, whose public utterances are being carefully controlled by the Prime Minister's Office. As a high-profile Liberal minister in the Martin government, Emerson had considerable leeway in his activities.

Repeated attempts to reach Emerson were unsuccessful.

But Bob Klager, his communications director, denied categorically that the minister had ever made such comments to Epworth or any other source.

"I think they're desperately misinformed," Klager commented, adding he was speaking on behalf of Emerson. "The minister views his role and his colleagues with the highest respect. He's regarded by them as an invaluable asset. And he's making active and meaningful contributions to this government daily."

The conversation with Epworth took place while Emerson, as he often does, ate lunch at his desk in his office on the third floor of the Confederation Building down the street from Parliament.

During the initial public outcry over his defection to the Liberals in February, Emerson explained he decided to switch parties because he is not a partisan politician.

By being in cabinet, he felt he could best serve his riding and B.C., Emerson said.

Last weekend, he said his current situation is feeling "normal," according to a report by Canadian Press.

"Every once in a while, the locusts descend on me and it creates situations that are a little abnormal, but I carry on with my work," said Emerson, adding that he respects his critics.

Epworth, asked to evaluate Emerson's remarks to him, said, "I don't think he was feeding me a line or anything. He was saying what he felt."

Emerson also said he is not content being in the Conservative cabinet and would like to get out of politics if he could, according to Epworth.

"He said he would have quit by now but his wife wouldn't let him."

Epworth added: "You know what else he said to me? He felt that his influence in this cabinet would obviously be much less than in the last cabinet.

"And I said, `Well, duh, minister, they don't really trust you. They're glad to have you on side, but they're not going to trust you.'"

Emerson, a former British Columbia public servant and corporate executive, has told confidantes he is deeply wounded by the adverse public reaction to his abrupt decision to abandon the Liberals and join the Tory government right after the election, a source said.

Since joining the Harper cabinet, Emerson has been dogged by protests from voters in his Vancouver-Kingsway riding who say they feel cheated by their MP's decision to jump to the Tories.

In Vancouver this week, Harper dismissed the demonstrations.

Asked if he was willing to accept the protests as the price of having Emerson in the Conservative party, the Prime Minister said, "Absolutely. The same 10 people every time. You know, it's kind of getting old hat, isn't it?"

Revelations about Emerson's discontent come at a time when Harper's management style is attracting increasing attention.

The Prime Minister's efforts to discredit Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro — who investigated Harper in connect with Emerson's defection but found no wrongdoing — have raised eyebrows.

Also, the Prime Minister has been accused of muzzling his ministers and engaging in heavy handed information control.

Harper is also under fire for deciding, contrary to his previous arguments, to handpick the MPs who will chair the influential House of Commons committees.

Toronto Star

---

The article reveals Harper's style of governance. How ironic that Emerson crossed the floor to be in Harper's cabinet and now he finds he doesn't doesn’t like being there. :) Sweet justice!

BILL CURRY

Ottawa — Prime Minister Stephen Harper is choosing which Conservative MPs will become chairs of Commons committees, reversing a parliamentary reform that he championed while leader of the Official Opposition.

Opposition members are concerned that the role of MPs will be significantly weakened as a result, because the chairpersons' loyalties will be to the Prime Minister rather than the MPs on the committees, who may at times wish to publish reports critical of government policy.

The new selection process is expected to be used next week, according to Saskatoon-Wanuskewin Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott, who issued a press release titled "Vellacott accepts Prime Minister's Nomination as Committee Chair."

Mr. Vellacott is one of the more controversial MPs in the Conservative caucus, an evangelical pastor who frequently issues anti-abortion press releases.

Mr. Vellacott told The Globe and Mail he has been told he is the Prime Minister's choice to chair the Commons aboriginal affairs committee and is therefore unlikely to be challenged when chairs are selected next week.

Mr. Harper was a vocal critic of appointing chairs when he was leader of the Official Opposition. In 2002, he co-wrote a letter to The Globe with Chuck Strahl, now the Minister of Agriculture, accusing the Liberals of "posturing" on parliamentary reform.

"Standing committees of the House should not simply be extensions of the Prime Minister's Office, and members of Parliament should choose their committee chairs by secret ballot and set their own agenda, free from the Whip's direction," Mr. Harper and Mr. Strahl wrote.

In the fall of 2002, Mr. Harper successfully divided the Liberal caucus by proposing a motion that committee chairs be elected by secret ballot, rather than appointed directly by the Prime Minister. The motion passed when Paul Martin and his supporters in the Liberal caucus broke ranks with then-prime-minister Jean Chrétien.

At the time, Mr. Harper scoffed at Mr. Chrétien's suggestion that the prime minister must select the committee chairs to ensure regional and gender balance.

But now in office, Mr. Harper is planning to avoid the elections by pre-selecting one Conservative MP per committee to put their names forward as chair. This would mean that the person would be acclaimed and a secret ballot unnecessary. Earlier this year, all MPs approved new rules stating that all committee chairs except three must be a government MP.

Mr. Vellacott said the appointments are based on a range of issues and ensure no one is elected chair who has a large workload in other areas.

"If you just bring in a total crap shoot, that probably doesn't serve the interests of the members or the party, because one of those members may be assigned to another committee that has [a] heavy meetings schedule or they may have some other responsibilities," Mr. Vellacott said in explaining the need for nominations.

Mr. Harper's spokeswoman, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, said other Conservative MPs are free to trigger a vote by putting their names forward to challenge the government's recommendation.

"I don't believe there's any kind of restriction at all. If someone else on the committee wanted to stand for chair, they probably could stand for chair and then the vote would be a secret-ballot vote," she said. "I don't believe there would be any objection from the [Prime Minister's] office, as long as they were qualified to chair a committee."

Liberal MP Mark Holland said the move is a sharp change from Liberal practice under former prime minister Paul Martin, where there was no direction from the centre. Mr. Holland said Liberal MPs on a committee would meet and decide who would be the party's choice for chair.

"It's a big change and a disturbing one," he said. Committee reports are a key area where backbench MPs can influence policy debates in Ottawa, he added, predicting the change could limit the likelihood of committee chairs advocating controversial recommendations from MPs.

Mr. Holland said Mr. Harper's plan to nominate committee chairs is part of a larger trend of centralizing power in the Prime Minister's Office in contradiction of previous promises, pointing to the appointment of the Conservative caucus chairman instead of elections and Mr. Harper's limits on cabinet ministers' interaction with the media.

"There's really a sense here that they said one thing to get elected and now have really reversed course and have brought forth some very autocratic measures that I think are undoing a lot of the progress that was starting to be made -- and frankly, I think a lot more needed to be made -- on this idea of democratic renewal," he said.

New Democratic MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis disputes Mr. Holland's assertion that committee chair elections were free from interference under the Liberals.

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis predicts the only impact will be on the Conservatives' image as reformers.

"It certainly does affect the pretense that they created of having more democracy," she said.

Globe and Mail

-----

Harper, unsaid, so I won't put double quotations around it, 'I supported that when I was in Opposition, but now as Prime Minister it's not to be advantage, so I've changed my mind.'

Talks close to being finalized
MPs won't get to vote, official says
Apr. 21, 2006
BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA—The upcoming renewal of the NORAD agreement — a pillar of Canada-U.S. military relations — will be debated in the Commons but MPs won't get to vote on the treaty.

That's the word from an American official who expects the issue will go before Parliament in the coming weeks.

But it seems that debate will fall short of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's campaign vow to have new international treaties ratified by the Commons.

Negotiations to replace the existing five-year agreement that governs the North American Aerospace Defence Command have been ongoing for months and are now close to being finalized, officials in both countries say.

The issue of renewing the defence pact, formed in 1958 to defend Canada and the United States against Soviet bombers and missiles, was to go to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this week for consideration, according to the American official, who asked not to be identified.

That would clear the way for Canadians to "set their agenda for a debate" and finalize their approval of the new binational deal in the coming weeks, he said.

The U.S. official said he expected the debate to happen soon since the current NORAD agreement expires May 12. "The wheels are turning," he said.

However a "take note" debate on the new agreement, which will likely set out an expanded role for NORAD, wouldn't be binding and would offer MPs no opportunity to vote on the deal.

An official with Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said yesterday no decision had been made whether the new agreement would go before the Commons for a debate or a vote. Calls to the Prime Minister's Office seeking comment were not returned.

During the election campaign, the Tories vowed that Parliament would be responsible for "exercising oversight" over Canadian foreign policy.

That would include presenting "international treaties before Parliament for ratification," according to the platform.

Toronto Star

-----

This is the second time Harper has done this. A “take note” was done for the deployment of the troops in Afghanistan, several MP’s didn't bother to take their seats in parliament.

IAN BROWN
May 12, 2006

When it comes time for history to bestow a permanent nickname on Prime Minister Stephen Harper — to label his stretch as Canada's leader, the way “Slick Willie” Clinton or “Uncle Louis” St. Laurent sum up theirs — someone should give serious consideration to “Big Daddy” Harper as a contender for the honour.

Big Daddy Harper: It sounds good, no? Big Daddy connotes a big political boss with a big, strategic mind, which describes Mr. Harper to a T. There's even an American undernote, like a name out of Tennessee Williams, that hints at Mr. Harper's sympathy for the methods and ideas of Republicans from Texas and other parts south.

But Big Daddy Harper is even more appropriate for another reason. To judge from his first four months in office, Mr. Harper is running the most hands-on, centrally controlled federal government in living memory, a government so Harper-centric and so micro-managed by the Prime Minister's Office it feels literally patriarchal. If Big Daddy Harper is a control freak — and no one denies it, even if they won't speak for attribution — he is a control freak on purpose, in order to come across as a firm and fatherly leader, one prime ministerial enough to deserve a majority in the next election.

Consider the evidence:

Last month, to avoid bad press on an issue he has tied firmly to the Conservative brand, Mr. Harper banned the media from filming the return of the bodies of four Canadian soldiers who died last month in Afghanistan.

Instead of decentralizing power as promised, Mr. Harper has funnelled more and more control straight into the Prime Minister's Office. The PMO now pre-approves everything Tory ministers and MPs do in their political lives. They've been ordered to speak less to the media, and banned from gassing about the government's plans.

When they do speak (to order lunch, maybe) they have to stick to the government's five priorities — the federal accountability act, GST cuts, child care, crime and medical waiting lists — virtually idiot-proof subjects. Big Daddy's boys aren't just on message; they're all message, all the time.

Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien approved big speeches and major pronouncements. But Mr. Harper and his team vet even MPs' letters to small-town newspapers. “Paul Martin was accused of micro-managing,” a government insider says.

“But this guy micro-manages more. The business of government has ground to a halt on anything that isn't a declared priority.”

Ministers who break these rules are spanked by Mr. Harper, hard — and in public. Peter MacKay, Mr. Harper's Minister of Foreign Affairs, has been hauled onto the carpet to be flogged so many times, it's beginning to look as if he likes the pain.

He was reprimanded most forcefully for suggesting that some aid might still flow to the Palestine Authority from Canada, despite the election of Hamas.

When Mr. MacKay tried to hire Graham Fox, the clever son of Bill Fox, Brian Mulroney's old pal, as his chief of staff, Mr. Harper vetoed the move — on the grounds that Mr. Fox once wrote an in-house critique of Mr. Harper's performance in opposition.

Some say the real reason is that Mr. Harper considers Mr. Fox too crafty to be working for Mr. MacKay, a potential contender for Mr. Harper's job.

No one is allowed to contradict government policy, even in their imagination. Last month, Marc Tushingham, an Environment Canada scientist, published H otter Than Hell, a novel about global warming. He was instantly prohibited from promoting the book because Mr. Harper's government was quietly cutting its Kyoto Accord budget by up to 80 per cent that week.

“It's science fiction,” points out Elizabeth Margaris, the book's publisher, “set 50 years in the future.”

No matter. “I obviously not only hope, but expect, that all elements of the bureaucracy will be working with us to achieve our objectives,” Mr. Harper replied. That's Big Daddy.

For years openly scornful of reporters (“he blames the media for the 2004 loss,” one insider explains), the prime minister has now declared war on the parliamentary press gallery. The PMO no longer advertises the time and location of cabinet meetings, which means reporters can no longer scrum ministers as they leave the weekly brain mash.

As a result, they've resorted to buttonholing ministers as they climb into their limos. The PMO recently volleyed back by asking cabinet ministers not to park their limos near the members entrance to the House of Commons, so as not to tip reporters that a cabinet meeting is in session. Mr. Harper himself has allegedly resorted to sneaking up to the meeting on a freight elevator. All these antics make the nation's business look like a high-level game of sardines.

The Prime Minister now tries to limit the numbers and kinds of questions reporters ask, and has adopted the Bush White House strategy of favouring friendly questioners.

No surprise, then, that Mr. Harper eats through press secretaries the way some people pop Tums. Bets are now being taken on Parliament Hill that Sandra Buckler, his second director of communications in three months, won't last past June.

The real power in the prime minister's press office is widely acknowledged to be Ms. Buckler's underling, press secretary Carolyn Stewart Olsen, a former Reformer and ER nurse whose loyalty is so fierce that her nickname is “Clifford.”

Mr. Harper bypasses the national media more and more — taking last minute trips, covering up visits by foreign statesmen such as the president of Haiti, waiting three days to reveal that Canada has renewed its commitment to NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command — and instead travels the country to talk to local TV stations.

“His hair,” one Ottawa matron insists. “Just look at his hair. Is that not the hair of a control freak?”The Prime Minister's iron grip extends to his private life. His wife, previously known as Laureen Teskey or Laureen Teskey Harper, now prefers Laureen Harper — almost 30 years after Maureen McTeer kept her maiden name.

In the PMO, Mr. Harper consults a small circle of advisers that includes Ian Brodie, his young and smart chief of staff, another Reform loyalist (who reportedly tried to make staffers stand up whenever Mr. Harper walked into the room for his morning briefing, to no avail); the aforementioned Ms. Olsen; and Patrick Muttart, an image doctor in his 30s who reportedly does for Mr. Harper whatever it is Karl Rove does for George Bush.

Mr. Muttart was the brain behind the recent rebranding of the official government of Canada website — the huge and traditionally non-partisan source of government information that now looks like a Tory party recruiting ad, “true Tory blue, with a real maple leaf, instead of that fake one on the flag,” as one PMO intimate describes it.

Then there's the scurrilous and untrue rumour that made the rounds in Ottawa, claiming that the Prime Minister long ago secretly changed his date of birth from April 20, 1959 — a date that kept showing up in news reports — to April 30. Why? Because, the rumours said, Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, and Mr. Harper resented the potential comparison.

In fact, Mr. Harper's birthday is and always has been April 30. “But the fact that the April 20th date kept showing up in stories?” says a former Harper aide and confidant. “That would very definitely be interpreted by the PMO as proof that the evil media were out to destroy him.”

The Harper team's emphasis on restraint and discipline has had a Spartan and sobering effect on what in chummy Liberal days was known as Athens on the Rideau.

The government's new accountability act, its cure for Liberal corruption, is one of the programs the Harper team has singled out to publicize before the next election.

“There's definitely been a big change as a result,” one well-connected Ottawa socialite notes. “There's a little bit of a chill in terms of going out to lunch and expensing it.” Two of Ottawa's best restaurants closed after the Tories' righteousness about the sponsorship scandal made civil servants shy about spending money on meals.

After it was revealed last week that Tory MPs had attended a Senators playoff game as guests of a corporation, the PMO instantly issued a statement declaring that the Prime Minister and his son had also attended a game — but paid for their own tickets. Big Daddy is always cleaner than clean.

The controller-in-chief has affected Ottawa's personal style as well. Sober is the new black. Navy blue suits are in, especially worn American style, waist-high with cuffs slightly short above glistening shoes (Mr. Harper's most notable sartorial habit). The mantra you hear most often in Harperville these days is “get it done.”

But Mr. Harper is also reaching beyond his comfort zone. He's increasingly close to Senator Marjorie LeBreton, a long-time friend of Brian Mulroney whose roots are in the Progressive Conservative rather than Reform branch of Torydom.

Mr. Harper is still cool and aloof and uncomfortable in groups: “Stephen likes humanity,” a former aide says, borrowing a punchline from a Peanuts cartoon — “it's people he can't stand.” But he relies more and more on his wife Laureen, who is invariably warm and extroverted. (She still rides her motorcycle around Ottawa, but tries to restrict the number of photographs of her on it.) “The joke around Ottawa,” another socialite says, “is, ‘I wouldn't want to have dinner with him, but I'd love to have dinner with her.'”

The most significant fashion Mr. Harper has introduced to Ottawa is conversational — verbal concision, the snappy, efficient, well-parsed point.

“He likes smart,” the socialite has noticed. “He likes brains. He likes people who make their points in concise, precise ways. He can say in 15 seconds what Paul Martin needed a minute and a half to say. In fact, the only time you see him humble is when he turns to his aides for help in French. That's really hard for Harper, because he's never searching for words.”

In recent days, rumours have begun to circulate that Mr. Harper has even limited his ministers' opportunities to speak in cabinet meetings. Instead, he has begun to meet them privately beforehand, hear their proposals and then make their presentations himself. That's Big Daddy, for sure.Naturally in partisan Ottawa, a lot of people claim Mr. Harper's love of command and control makes them nervous.

Greg Weston, Ottawa columnist for Sun Media, has been covering Parliament Hill for 30 years. “I don't need the PMO to do my job,” he says. “But the control concerns me. This is the way they're going to be running the country. It's not just early game jitters. This is part of a deep-rooted belief set. It's almost a culture.”

To thwart the Harper team, Mr. Weston has urged reporters to ferret out the home numbers of cabinet ministers, and to hound them in restaurants and in public. But in Harperville, it isn't where you talk that's a problem: it's talking, period. Talking invites debate; debate implies uncertainty; uncertainty is not prime ministerial. The name of this show is Big Daddy Knows Best.

“But what does that say about how Harper sees the Canadian public?” Mr. Weston counters. “They can't be trusted with information? It has to be a fait accompli, and then I'll tell you about it.”

Mr. Harper and his crew claim (without citing evidence) that only the media care about how much access the media get. A more accurate and potentially more damaging charge is that Mr. Harper treats the media — and therefore Canadians — like children. Mr. Harper and his team are betting a majority of Canadian voters prefer it that way.

But even Liberals in Ottawa acknowledge that Mr. Harper's hard hand on the tiller (and the mainsail and the jib and the centreboard and the transom) is a sign of his skill as a political strategist.

His cabinet is junior and inexperienced and needs to be schooled; the media are an obstacle that needs to be overcome; absolute control is the only answer.

“People in the government have been talking about the Harper government as the hub-and-spoke model of management,” one Tory insider says. “I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, because there aren't that many spokes. The joke among people working in the PMO is that it's more like a single point.”

The prime minister's intimidating aura derives from his sharp tongue and mind, his “temper, which can go to 5,000 degrees instantly,” according to a Tory insider, and from his intellectual combativeness, which can verge on the vindictive.

Meetings, according to a Tory close to the Prime Minister, are “intellectually elbows up. He talks over you. He can ignore you. When you push back at him, he can be okay. But no one does. It is a controlling atmosphere. PMO's a very unhappy place to work, very stressful, because of the control.”

Belinda Stronach, who knows Mr. Harper from her days as a Tory, says that “it's his nature to not trust very many people,” and thinks he avoids input when he lacks first-hand experience of a complicated subject. “You can't always learn these things from a textbook. Maybe it's a bit of insecurity.”

That's a minority opinion. “Stephen's a very intelligent fellow,” a Tory lobbyist and acquaintance insists. “He's always been the smartest guy in his class. He has also mapped out the obstacles between him and being the Prime Minister of a majority that can implement its plans. Among the obstacles are some of the people who work for him.”

Some of those people are cabinet ministers. “MPs are egos on Viagra, with two feet,” says another rabidly loyal Conservative with close ties to the Prime Minister. Keeping them quiet remains a major challenge until the Harper team wins a majority.

“We were routinely instructed to phone them and say, ‘Shut your mouth,'” a veteran says. “In the old days, under the Progressive Conservatives, if you did that, they'd say, ‘Bite me,' and hang up. But that's not the Reform way. Still, to call an MP, and say, ‘You're a goddamn idiot' before he'd said anything — that was weird.”

Like any CEO, Mr. Harper is trying to manage two opposing forces — the managerial impulse to be steadfast and reliable, and the creative urge that produces ideas. The danger is that he will ignore the creative impulse, because it makes him nervous.

“It's a way of controlling things,” a senior Harperite explains. “Harper's very message oriented, as we all are. But that's one of the great ironies of this: Political discourse has gone all to hell around here as a result. The bandwidth of political discussion in Canada and Ottawa is now extremely narrow — in the sense that all of the messaging that comes out of the PMO is written by a very small number of people. It destroys political discourse, because all the rest of us are doing is repeating bullets.” Dissatisfaction in the back benches is growing.

Control, of course, as any careful father knows, is only ever temporary, and always an illusion. Mr. Harper is too smart not to know this. But he may also be clever enough to take strategic advantage of the inevitable.

Just this week, having slandered Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court, Tory MP Maurice Vellacott was forced to resign as chairman of a parliamentary aboriginal-affairs committee. He was originally suggested for the job by Mr. Harper.

Worse, Mr. Vellacott released his resignation later to the public. The letter was breathtaking in its wackiness — long, loopy, irrational, illogical, ungrammatical and unapologetic. He slagged the Liberals for forcing him out. He praised “historic monogamous marriage.” He dipped and soared. He thanked Mr. Harper and his sovereign God (twice). All in all, the letter was hard evidence that there are still bats in the Tory/Reform belfry — the kind of outburst Mr. Harper has worked so hard to control and suppress.

But Sandra Buckler, Mr. Harper's director of communications, claims the PMO never vetted Mr. Vellacott's screed. Instead, he let his boy blow apart all on his own.

Maybe it was strategic. Next to an exploding cannon like Mr. Vellacott, Big Daddy Harper looks wise, temperate, compassionate — maybe even calm enough to deserve a majority.

Ian Brown is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.

Globe and Mail

-----

All the clues were there before the election, but the Liberals had to be replaced. That left only Harper to elect and he has the right-wing Reformers as part the baggage he brought to office. He managed to stifle them during the election, but had to give some positions to his the Cabinet and committees. Time isn’t being his friend—Harper will self destruct despite his attempts to manage the more radical elements of his party.

And he won’t be successful at managing the news—the more he leans on them, trying to restrict their access, the more they will resort to imaginative ways to get stories. There will be more critical stories about him such as this that come to the eye of the public. It just isn’t possible to silence or manage reporters no matter which or how many consultants he hires.

Mr. Harper and his crew claim (without citing evidence) that only the media care about how much access the media get. A more accurate and potentially more damaging charge is that Mr. Harper treats the media — and therefore Canadians — like children. Mr. Harper and his team are betting a majority of Canadian voters prefer it that way.

No, Harper treats the media and the Canadian citizenry like the enemy - exactly like the hard right wing cabal in the US does - because they are one of the only forces that can prevent him from executing his radical right-wing plans.

The enemy against which the Bush Administration girds its loins is not al Qaeda, but the American public (against whom the bulk of its deception, disinformation and psyops campaigns are targeted), and Harper has studied that "Coup d'Etat In The 21st Century" playbook from cover to cover. Harper's government resembles a group with something to hide, like a group of coup plotters or a criminal conspiracy, because that is precisely what they are.

but isn't there a more pertinent noun to describe electric blue, man-high Conservative lettering? "Irony" should be "Harpocrisy". :-)

Quote from Sandra Buckler,
PMO spokesperson defends Tory media strategy
Monday, May 15, 2006.

"When we have something to say, Canadians are going to hear it, and they can take it to the bank."

CTV News

Rumsfeld used that same quote, but much earlier:

Pentagon deleted key comment from Rumsfeld transcript
Woodward 'surprised' by move
From Jamie McIntyre
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, April 22, 2004

“Rumsfeld two months before the invasion of Iraq that it was "going to happen," and he could "take that to the bank"”

CNN

Latest maneuver by Harper and press gallery::

Click to hear podcast of press briefing April 13, 2006

After getting the reporters to agree they would line up to ask questions: Harper then selected someone not in the que because it was a question he wanted to be asked.

-----

The press will only take so much of his control and Harper and the press gallery will be in a donnybrook:. I don’t believe Harper will win that war.

Background to Harper and the press gallery

by DavidAkin on
Thu 18 May 2006

(snip)

The spat between the PPG and the PMO has boiled down, essentially, to a fight over who gets to decide who will ask the questions when the Prime Minister holds a press conference. The PMO communications staff prefers to canvas reporters ahead of the press conference, note the names of the reporters who wish to ask a question and then, once the Prime Minister arrives, a PMO official calls out a reporter’s name based on the list. It is not a first-come, first-serve sort of thing. Generally, the names called out alternate between reporters for the French-language outlets and reporters for English-language papers. Some print reporters complain that electronic media seem to get more questions than print reporters.

In any event, so far as I’m aware, there have not yet been any accusations that some reporter or organization is getting frozen out because the PMO doesn’t like someone’s reporting. That said, the concern that this could happen is reason enough, the Parliamentary Press Gallery believes, that a representative of the PMO ought not to be the one deciding who gets to ask the questions. The Press Gallery stands ready to maintain its own list — as has always been the practice for any press conference at the National Press Theatre — and moderate a press conference in a professional and dignified manner. When that happens, the outcome is the same — a politicians answers questions put to him or her by a reporter and the reporter gets a chance to ask the question once he or she is recognized by another journalist who acts as the moderator of the press conference.

During the last election campaign, incidentally, the Prime Minister Paul Martin’s communications staff kept a list of reporters who wanted to ask questions and then they would call out a reporter from that list — just like the current PM is doing. During the week I was with him, covering the Martin for CTV News, I got all of two questions. We learned later that Martin’s team was very unhappy with our coverage of his campaign. Mind you, we weren’t as bad apparently in Martin’s eyes as The Toronto Star. During the week I was on the campaign with Martin, the Toronto Star reporter that week, Sean Gordon, got precisely zero chances to put a question to the Liberal candidate.

So that’s why the PPG believes that it’s more appropriate for journalists to decide who gets to ask the questions and the PPG executive stands prepared to conduct a dignified, professional news conference but one in which the list of reporters who will ask questions is maintained by the Press Gallery and not by a politician.

While I am a member of the Press Gallery — CTV pays my PPG dues on my behalf — I am not a member of the Press Gallery executive.

David Dakin blog

May 22, 2006
SUSAN DELACOURT
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be out on the road for much of this week, just as his government seems to be entering a new, tougher period.

Harper will travel to London, Ont., Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., by week's end, putting distance between himself and an increasingly nasty climate on Parliament Hill.

The Commons isn't sitting this week. But last week has been largely written up as one of the roughest for Harper since he took power on Feb. 6, featuring several less-than-positive displays of his leadership style — particularly his lack of tolerance for dissent and setbacks.

Harper reportedly made a tactical decision between the 2004 and 2006 elections: rather than trying to be liked, he would look for Canadians' respect.

Some of the developments last week open up questions into that all-important value of respect, not so much whether Harper is receiving it, but whether he and his team have any respect for those they see as mere obstacles to getting their way.

It's also a timely issue in light of a new book out this month by noted U.S. political writer Joe Klein, titled Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid. Klein appeared on CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition yesterday to talk about what he sees as the sad state of political debate in his country.

Some of what Klein is lamenting — politicians speaking down to the public through numbing repetition of "message tracks," focus-group-tested policies and avoidance of probing questions — are hallmarks of the Harper communications style, as well as the Liberal regimes that preceded it.

Equally toxic seems to be the "permanent campaign" mode that Klein also blames for the degeneration of political debate, in which leaders preside over a constant state of us-against-them. This was on display across partisan lines all over Ottawa last week, and no party covered itself in glory. But Harper in particular seemed to be on the pre-electoral warpath.

Facing a precarious Commons vote on the future of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan last Wednesday, Harper angrily pre-empted the result by announcing in advance that he would unilaterally extend the troops' mandate for a year, with or without Parliament's support. (He won the vote, as it turned out, with the help of some Liberals.)

Confronting the Commons committee defeat a day earlier of Gwyn Morgan, his chosen candidate for a new public appointments chief, the Prime Minister declared he'd just put the whole reform on hold until he had a majority government, when he could force it through Parliament.

What's more, the government announced it was beginning to wind down the long-gun registry without putting that decision to a parliamentary vote. As well, news emerged over the weekend that the Harper government is in the midst of withdrawing from the Kyoto air quality protocol by 2012 — again, without putting that decision to Parliament.

And then there was another public dustup with the parliamentary press gallery, which featured Harper cancelling a news conference because journalists would not go along with PMO's insistence on deciding who asks the questions at these events.

As a result, the PMO had to ask lobbyists and consultants to phone reporters and put out the "lines" Harper had wanted to convey for a midday news cycle.

Later in the day, it was an angry Harper who came out to witheringly disparage those who would oppose his public appointments commissioner or the Afghanistan mission. He said: "You know we're playing bigger games here," he said.

The problem, though, is that some of the "bigger games" don't look big at all when viewed close-up.

Though Canadians outside Ottawa may have a limited appetite for tales of power struggles between politicians and the press, this tension in the capital is quickly building to an unworkable situation for Harper, as evidenced by the fact the PMO communications team is no longer able or willing to impart even the most basic information to the media.

The press-relations job in Harper's Ottawa has been reduced to that of a low-level security guard, limited to shielding the Prime Minister and imparting little more than partisan banalities or "no comment" type of remarks. Cabinet ministers and caucus members are reined in, too, forced to scuttle out of the back doors of meeting rooms to avoid the waiting press pack.

Harper has also started literally speaking down to reporters from a perch on the stairway by the Commons when he does pause for the microphones. This blatant mimicry of former prime minister Brian Mulroney's style is curious, if Harper's goal is to keep his disdaining nature in check. Mulroney was not known at the end of his term as a prime minister in touch with the people.

If this was just an issue of inconvenience for the media, it wouldn't be worth noting at this point. But it's highlighting a Conservative obsessiveness about control that could backfire in the larger electorate if it revives fears about Harper's "hidden agenda." Or, in Klein's analysis, it could be an impediment to Harper's majority hopes if it begins to be seen as a tactic designed around the contention that people are too stupid to know anything beyond staged, scripted announcements and "priority" lists.

Toronto Star

Harper thumbs nose at national media
PM says he'll take his message to local news outlets after Ottawa press gallery refuses to play by his rules
May 24, 2006
ALEXANDER PANETTA
CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper says journalists on Parliament Hill are biased against his government so he'll be avoiding them.

The prime minister says the parliamentary press gallery seems to have decided to become the opposition to his Conservative administration.

He told a London, Ont., TV station on Wednesday that he is having problems with reporters in the capital that a Liberal prime minister would never face.

So Harper says he will take his message out on the road and deal with the less hostile local media.

"Unfortunately, the press gallery has taken the view they are going to be the opposition to the government," Harper told London's A-Channel.

"They don't ask questions at my press conferences now.

"We'll just get the message out on the road. There's lots of media in the country who do want to ask me questions and hear what the government is doing."

The comments were sparked by an incident Tuesday when two dozen Ottawa reporters walked out on a Harper event when he refused to take their questions.

The prime minister does not want to hold press conferences unless his staff choose which journalists ask questions from a list they compile. The Ottawa press gallery has refused to play by those rules.

Harper has groused publicly about an anti-Conservative bias in the media before — but not since becoming prime minister.

"I have trouble believing that a Liberal prime minister would have this problem," he said Wednesday.

"But the press gallery at the leadership level has taken an anti-Conservative view."

Ironically, senior Liberal officials earlier this year complained of an anti-Liberal bias in the national media.

In the dying days of the last election campaign, Paul Martin's staff grumbled that reporters were out to get them and were working to elect Harper.

One prominent media analyst said Wednesday the prime minister was being paranoid, and that his remarks were a strategic error that could backfire.

"Basically, what he's saying is the regional media can be trusted to be compliant. They will find that insulting," said Chris Dornan, head of Carleton University's journalism school.

"Just as the national press corps will find insulting the suggestion that they're all paid-up Liberal hacks.

"He's going out of his way to make enemies — and that's not a good sign."

The president of Ottawa's press gallery objected to Harper's comments.

"It's a little paranoid," said Yves Malo, a reporter with the Quebec-based TVA network, who urged his colleagues to walk out of the Tuesday news conference.

"I'm not anti-Conservative. I'm not pro-Conservative. I'm just a journalist who's trying to do his job."

Dornan said Harper's allegation is surprising because the Conservative government has generally received good coverage in the national media.

Harper earned mostly glowing headlines for the federal budget, for his new Accountability Act, for changes to the way Supreme Court justices are named, and for a cultural deal with Quebec.

But he also came under fire when he recruited David Emerson and the unelected Michael Fortier to cabinet. Harper has said he expected a negative reaction, but that it was worth it to build a stronger cabinet.

The government also received poor coverage when it announced journalists could no longer cover the repatriation ceremonies for soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Even so, Harper's government is off to a good start with Canadian voters.

Recent polls have placed his Tories above 40 per cent, which could put them on track toward a majority government.

Relations with the media began deteriorating just weeks after the prime minister took office.

The relationship is so poor that his spokespeople have asked registered lobbyists to act as intermediaries in dealing with reporters.

The Star

Journalists boycott Harper news conference as media battle heats up
ALEXANDER PANETTA

OTTAWA (CP) - About two dozen journalists walked out on Stephen Harper on Tuesday after he refused to take their questions, the latest chapter in an increasingly unseemly spat between the prime minister and members of the national media.

The scene of reporters boycotting a prime ministerial news conference was described by Parliament Hill veterans as a first. It resulted in Harper being forced to make his announcement on aid to Darfur to a small handful of reporters, photographers and cameramen outside the House of Commons.

The impromptu boycott was the latest move by journalists in their ongoing tug-of-war with the prime minister over who controls news conferences.

The Prime Minister's Office insists on choosing who gets to ask questions based on a list it compiles.

Officials say they're merely trying to install some order to the often chaotic ritual of parliamentary news scrums.

"It is unfortunate that a select group within the press gallery displays such hostility and exhibits disrespect toward the prime minister," said a Harper spokesman.

But the parliamentary press gallery is concerned that Harper wants to freeze out any journalists or news organizations that he dislikes.

"We can't accept that the prime minister's office would decide who gets to ask questions," said Yves Malo, a TVA reporter and president of the press gallery. "Does that mean that when there's a crisis they'll only call upon journalists they expect softball questions from?"

Tuesday's journalistic exodus came just moments after the Commons foyer had been chiming with the sound of good-natured repartee. There was the usual personal banter and gossiping among colleagues as reporters milled about while they awaited Harper.

Journalists also chatted about Darfur, about a coalition bombing that killed at least 16 Afghan civilians, and about the aboriginal protest in Caledonia, Ont. Those were among the issues they hoped to raise with the prime minister.

Harper spokesman Dimitris Soudas walked downstairs from the Prime Minister's Office to see which reporters wanted to ask questions, and prepared a list of names. Any reporter included on the list could get called upon to ask Harper a question.

But the Ottawa-based media have refused for almost two months to submit their names to any list prepared by the PMO.

After journalists refused to be placed the list again on Tuesday, Soudas announced that Harper would be on his way shortly - and he would not be taking questions.

The press gallery president then turned to his colleagues and suggested they leave.

Most agreed, including a reporter for The Canadian Press, although a CP photographer stayed. Several said there was no point sticking around if the event could be covered off a television set from any newsroom in the country.

Harper's interactions with the parliamentary press gallery are now limited to brief exchanges on a staircase, and a question or two in the company of a visiting dignitary.

Those are the unofficial rules in Ottawa, where the prime minister spends most of his time.

But he has been loquacious away from Ottawa, where reporters have accepted playing by Harper's rules.

He took questions from 11 journalists during a visit this month to Toronto, from 14 in Calgary, 11 in St. John's and 17 in Vancouver.

Harper was holding similarly expansive news conferences in Ottawa until the press gallery began setting up its own microphones at Harper events and lined up to ask questions.

Harper aides note that during election campaigns, former prime minister Paul Martin's staff also selected questioners from a list they controlled.

Some reporters covering the Liberals groused repeatedly when they felt they were being systematically ignored during the recent election campaign.

Recorder

-----

Some older article about Harper and his realtionships with the Parliamentary Press Gallery:

Harper won't be dictated to by national media

UOFAWEB

Harper, Press Gallery row intensifies

Politics Watch

Partial Timeline of the Battle Between Harper and Parlimentary press gallery:
January 26, 2006 to April 13, 2006

Apr 14, 2006 Harper muzzles people in his conservative government including cabinet ministers.

Yahoo

May 18 Broadcast of Harper snubbing press gallery dinner:

CTV video

In Harper's regime, Big Daddy knows best

Are the Prime Minister's control-freak tendencies his administration's Achilles heel, a threat to democracy, or the best route to a future majority? IAN BROWN eavesdrops on the whisperings in official Ottawa

Saturday, May 13, 2006

When it comes time for history to bestow a permanent nickname on Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- to label his stretch as Canada's leader, the way "Slick Willie" Clinton or "Uncle Louis" St. Laurent sum up theirs -- someone should give serious consideration to "Big Daddy" Harper as a contender for the honour.

Big Daddy Harper: It sounds good, no? Big Daddy connotes a big political boss with a big, strategic mind, which describes Mr. Harper to a T. There's even an American undernote, like a name out of Tennessee Williams, that hints at Mr. Harper's sympathy for the methods and ideas of Republicans from Texas and other parts south.

But Big Daddy Harper is even more appropriate for another reason. To judge from his first four months in office, Mr. Harper is running the most hands-on, centrally controlled federal government in living memory, a government so Harper-centric and so micro-managed by the Prime Minister's Office it feels literally patriarchal. If Big Daddy Harper is a control freak -- and no one denies it, even if they won't speak for attribution -- he is a control freak on purpose, in order to come across as a firm and fatherly leader, one prime ministerial enough to deserve a majority in the next election.

Consider the evidence:

Last month, to avoid bad press on an issue he has tied firmly to the Conservative brand, Mr. Harper banned the media from filming the return of the bodies of four Canadian soldiers who died last month in Afghanistan.

Instead of decentralizing power as promised, Mr. Harper has funnelled more and more control straight into the Prime Minister's Office. The PMO now pre-approves everything Tory ministers and MPs do in their political lives. They've been ordered to speak less to the media, and banned from gassing about the government's plans.

When they do speak (to order lunch, maybe) they have to stick to the government's five priorities -- the federal accountability act, GST cuts, child care, crime and medical waiting lists -- virtually idiot-proof subjects. Big Daddy's boys aren't just on message; they're all message, all the time.

Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien approved big speeches and major pronouncements. But Mr. Harper and his team vet even MPs' letters to small-town newspapers. "Paul Martin was accused of micro-managing," a government insider says.

"But this guy micro-manages more. The business of government has ground to a halt on anything that isn't a declared priority."

Ministers who break these rules are spanked by Mr. Harper, hard -- and in public. Peter MacKay, Mr. Harper's Minister of Foreign Affairs, has been hauled onto the carpet to be flogged so many times, it's beginning to look as if he likes the pain.

He was reprimanded most forcefully for suggesting that some aid might still flow to the Palestine Authority from Canada, despite the election of Hamas.

When Mr. MacKay tried to hire Graham Fox, the clever son of Bill Fox, Brian Mulroney's old pal, as his chief of staff, Mr. Harper vetoed the move -- on the grounds that Mr. Fox once wrote an in-house critique of Mr. Harper's performance in opposition.

Some say the real reason is that Mr. Harper considers Mr. Fox too crafty to be working for Mr. MacKay, a potential contender for Mr. Harper's job.

No one is allowed to contradict government policy, even in their imagination. Last month, Marc Tushingham, an Environment Canada scientist, published Hotter Than Hell, a novel about global warming. He was instantly prohibited from promoting the book because Mr. Harper's government was quietly cutting its Kyoto Accord budget by up to 80 per cent that week.

"It's science fiction," points out Elizabeth Margaris, the book's publisher, "set 50 years in the future."

No matter. "I obviously not only hope, but expect, that all elements of the bureaucracy will be working with us to achieve our objectives," Mr. Harper replied. That's Big Daddy.

For years openly scornful of reporters ("he blames the media for the 2004 loss," one insider explains), the prime minister has now declared war on the parliamentary press gallery. The PMO no longer advertises the time and location of cabinet meetings, which means reporters can no longer scrum ministers as they leave the weekly brain mash.

As a result, they've resorted to buttonholing ministers as they climb into their limos. The PMO recently volleyed back by asking cabinet ministers not to park their limos near the members entrance to the House of Commons, so as not to tip reporters that a cabinet meeting is in session. Mr. Harper himself has allegedly resorted to sneaking up to the meeting on a freight elevator. All these antics make the nation's business look like a high-level game of sardines.

The Prime Minister now tries to limit the numbers and kinds of questions reporters ask, and has adopted the Bush White House strategy of favouring friendly questioners.

No surprise, then, that Mr. Harper eats through press secretaries the way some people pop Tums. Bets are now being taken on Parliament Hill that Sandra Buckler, his second director of communications in three months, won't last past June.

The real power in the prime minister's press office is widely acknowledged to be Ms. Buckler's underling, press secretary Carolyn Stewart Olsen, a former Reformer and ER nurse whose loyalty is so fierce that her nickname is "Clifford."

Mr. Harper bypasses the national media more and more -- taking last minute trips, covering up visits by foreign statesmen such as the president of Haiti, waiting three days to reveal that Canada has renewed its commitment to NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command -- and instead travels the country to talk to local TV stations.

"His hair," one Ottawa matron insists. "Just look at his hair. Is that not the hair of a control freak?"

The Prime Minister's iron grip extends to his private life. His wife, previously known as Laureen Teskey or Laureen Teskey Harper, now prefers Laureen Harper -- almost 30 years after Maureen McTeer kept her maiden name.

In the PMO, Mr. Harper consults a small circle of advisers that includes Ian Brodie, his young and smart chief of staff, another Reform loyalist (who reportedly tried to make staffers stand up whenever Mr. Harper walked into the room for his morning briefing, to no avail); the aforementioned Ms. Olsen; and Patrick Muttart, an image doctor in his 30s who reportedly does for Mr. Harper whatever it is Karl Rove does for George Bush.

Mr. Muttart was the brain behind the recent rebranding of the official government of Canada website -- the huge and traditionally non-partisan source of government information that now looks like a Tory party recruiting ad, "true Tory blue, with a real maple leaf, instead of that fake one on the flag," as one PMO intimate describes it.

Then there's the scurrilous and untrue rumour that made the rounds in Ottawa, claiming that the Prime Minister long ago secretly changed his date of birth from April 20, 1959 -- a date that kept showing up in news reports -- to April 30. Why? Because, the rumours said, Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, and Mr. Harper resented the potential comparison.

In fact, Mr. Harper's birthday is and always has been April 30. "But the fact that the April 20th date kept showing up in stories?" says a former Harper aide and confidant. "That would very definitely be interpreted by the PMO as proof that the evil media were out to destroy him."

The Harper team's emphasis on restraint and discipline has had a Spartan and sobering effect on what in chummy Liberal days was known as Athens on the Rideau.

The government's new accountability act, its cure for Liberal corruption, is one of the programs the Harper team has singled out to publicize before the next election.

"There's definitely been a big change as a result," one well-connected Ottawa socialite notes. "There's a little bit of a chill in terms of going out to lunch and expensing it." Two of Ottawa's best restaurants closed after the Tories' righteousness about the sponsorship scandal made civil servants shy about spending money on meals.

After it was revealed last week that Tory MPs had attended a Senators playoff game as guests of a corporation, the PMO instantly issued a statement declaring that the Prime Minister and his son had also attended a game -- but paid for their own tickets. Big Daddy is always cleaner than clean.

The controller-in-chief has affected Ottawa's personal style as well. Sober is the new black. Navy blue suits are in, especially worn American style, waist-high with cuffs slightly short above glistening shoes (Mr. Harper's most notable sartorial habit). The mantra you hear most often in Harperville these days is "get it done."

But Mr. Harper is also reaching beyond his comfort zone. He's increasingly close to Senator Marjorie LeBreton, a long-time friend of Brian Mulroney whose roots are in the Progressive Conservative rather than Reform branch of Torydom.

Mr. Harper is still cool and aloof and uncomfortable in groups: "Stephen likes humanity," a former aide says, borrowing a punchline from a Peanuts cartoon -- "it's people he can't stand." But he relies more and more on his wife Laureen, who is invariably warm and extroverted. (She still rides her motorcycle around Ottawa, but tries to restrict the number of photographs of her on it.) "The joke around Ottawa," another socialite says, "is, 'I wouldn't want to have dinner with him, but I'd love to have dinner with her.' "

The most significant fashion Mr. Harper has introduced to Ottawa is conversational -- verbal concision, the snappy, efficient, well-parsed point.

"He likes smart," the socialite has noticed. "He likes brains. He likes people who make their points in concise, precise ways. He can say in 15 seconds what Paul Martin needed a minute and a half to say. In fact, the only time you see him humble is when he turns to his aides for help in French. That's really hard for Harper, because he's never searching for words."

In recent days, rumours have begun to circulate that Mr. Harper has even limited his ministers' opportunities to speak in cabinet meetings. Instead, he has begun to meet them privately beforehand, hear their proposals and then make their presentations himself. That's Big Daddy, for sure.

Naturally in partisan Ottawa, a lot of people claim Mr. Harper's love of command and control makes them nervous.

Greg Weston, Ottawa columnist for Sun Media, has been covering Parliament Hill for 30 years. "I don't need the PMO to do my job," he says. "But the control concerns me. This is the way they're going to be running the country. It's not just early game jitters. This is part of a deep-rooted belief set. It's almost a culture."

To thwart the Harper team, Mr. Weston has urged reporters to ferret out the home numbers of cabinet ministers, and to hound them in restaurants and in public. But in Harperville, it isn't where you talk that's a problem: it's talking, period. Talking invites debate; debate implies uncertainty; uncertainty is not prime ministerial. The name of this show is Big Daddy Knows Best.

"But what does that say about how Harper sees the Canadian public?" Mr. Weston counters. "They can't be trusted with information? It has to be a fait accompli, and then I'll tell you about it."

Mr. Harper and his crew claim (without citing evidence) that only the media care about how much access the media get. A more accurate and potentially more damaging charge is that Mr. Harper treats the media -- and therefore Canadians -- like children. Mr. Harper and his team are betting a majority of Canadian voters prefer it that way.

But even Liberals in Ottawa acknowledge that Mr. Harper's hard hand on the tiller (and the mainsail and the jib and the centreboard and the transom) is a sign of his skill as a political strategist.

His cabinet is junior and inexperienced and needs to be schooled; the media are an obstacle that needs to be overcome; absolute control is the only answer.

"People in the government have been talking about the Harper government as the hub-and-spoke model of management," one Tory insider says. "I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, because there aren't that many spokes. The joke among people working in the PMO is that it's more like a single point."

The prime minister's intimidating aura derives from his sharp tongue and mind, his "temper, which can go to 5,000 degrees instantly," according to a Tory insider, and from his intellectual combativeness, which can verge on the vindictive.

Meetings, according to a Tory close to the Prime Minister, are "intellectually elbows up. He talks over you. He can ignore you. When you push back at him, he can be okay. But no one does. It is a controlling atmosphere. PMO's a very unhappy place to work, very stressful, because of the control."

Belinda Stronach, who knows Mr. Harper from her days as a Tory, says that "it's his nature to not trust very many people," and thinks he avoids input when he lacks first-hand experience of a complicated subject. "You can't always learn these things from a textbook. Maybe it's a bit of insecurity."

That's a minority opinion. "Stephen's a very intelligent fellow," a Tory lobbyist and acquaintance insists. "He's always been the smartest guy in his class. He has also mapped out the obstacles between him and being the Prime Minister of a majority that can implement its plans. Among the obstacles are some of the people who work for him."

Some of those people are cabinet ministers. "MPs are egos on Viagra, with two feet," says another rabidly loyal Conservative with close ties to the Prime Minister. Keeping them quiet remains a major challenge until the Harper team wins a majority.

"We were routinely instructed to phone them and say, 'Shut your mouth,' " a veteran says. "In the old days, under the Progressive Conservatives, if you did that, they'd say, 'Bite me,' and hang up. But that's not the Reform way. Still, to call an MP, and say, 'You're a goddamn idiot' before he'd said anything -- that was weird."

Like any CEO, Mr. Harper is trying to manage two opposing forces -- the managerial impulse to be steadfast and reliable, and the creative urge that produces ideas. The danger is that he will ignore the creative impulse, because it makes him nervous.

"It's a way of controlling things," a senior Harperite explains. "Harper's very message oriented, as we all are. But that's one of the great ironies of this: Political discourse has gone all to hell around here as a result. The bandwidth of political discussion in Canada and Ottawa is now extremely narrow -- in the sense that all of the messaging that comes out of the PMO is written by a very small number of people. It destroys political discourse, because all the rest of us are doing is repeating bullets." Dissatisfaction in the back benches is growing.

Control, of course, as any careful father knows, is only ever temporary, and always an illusion. Mr. Harper is too smart not to know this. But he may also be clever enough to take strategic advantage of the inevitable.

Just this week, having slandered Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court, Tory MP Maurice Vellacott was forced to resign as chairman of a parliamentary aboriginal-affairs committee. He was originally suggested for the job by Mr. Harper.

Worse, Mr. Vellacott released his resignation latter to the public. The letter was breathtaking in its wackiness -- long, loopy, irrational, illogical, ungrammatical and unapologetic. He slagged the Liberals for forcing him out. He praised "historic monogamous marriage." He dipped and soared. He thanked Mr. Harper and his sovereign God (twice). All in all, the letter was hard evidence that there are still bats in the Tory/Reform belfry -- the kind of outburst Mr. Harper has worked so hard to control and suppress.

But Sandra Buckler, Mr. Harper's director of communications, claims the PMO never vetted Mr.

Ian Brown is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.

Who's the boss

Let there be no doubt about who gets the TV remote at 24 Sussex Dr.

Since Stephen Harper's government came to power, much has been made of its penchant for control. Whether it be access for the media or comments made by ministers, the Prime Minister's Office is the clearing house for all.

But should we be surprised? Take a look in the rear-view.

Jean Chrétien

Paul Martin's short-lived PMO was obsessive, but Mr. Chrétien, while famous for giving ministers plenty of rope, left no doubt who was in control of the "friendly dictatorship." Anyone who didn't perform was gone. Any troublesome protester throttled. Brian Mulroney

It's pretty clear what Mr. Harper is using as his model. When Mr. Mulroney took office in 1984, his government soon took heat for being secretive, defensive and controlling. As The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson wrote in 1984: "The strategy, on orders from Mr. Mulroney himself, requires the PMO to orchestrate government information. It is called 'clearing the agenda' so that only one message -- the one the government wants -- gets out every day." Could have been written yesterday.

Or how about this from a Nov. 21, 1984, Globe editorial titled His Secret Society: "Mr. Mulroney prefers a one-ring circus" that "can be highly managed and much abetted by secrecy."

Over recording devices, however, he exerted far less control.

Pierre Trudeau

Not long after Trudeaumania subsided, he was accused of being dictatorial.

According to aide Jim Coutts, he corrected the grammar of his speechwriters and was "deeply involved in editing." Also, he did not like the fact that so many letters had to go out without his vetting, his cabinet meetings were secretive, and there was that War Measures Act too. Only Margaret seemed beyond his control.

Over the years, his personality seemed to wear everyone down. In 1984, obviously unaware of what lay ahead with Mr. Mulroney, a Globe editorial declared that "Pierre Trudeau had to go. The penchant for secrecy, the reluctance to talk to the press, the iron control he exerted over his ministers and the generally uncommunicative nature of his government -- it had to yield to the openness and candour of a party too new and fresh to have had time to development such cynical ways of thinking."

Right.

John Diefenbaker

In many ways, Stephen Harper is the avatar of John Diefenbaker. Like him, the Chief imposed strict rules on his cabinet. Discussions were to be secret (leaks drive all PMs crazy) and ministers were not to comment to reporters after meetings.

Peter C. Newman wrote in his 1963 book Renegade in Power that Mr. Diefenbaker "acted as if he were a silent partner in every cabinet minister's office," and that he treated his cabinet "like a delinquent Scout troop." To wit, since Dief didn't smoke, no one else was allowed to, either, so he had all the ashtrays removed from the Privy Council Chamber where the cabinet met.

Mr. Diefenbaker's predilection for control was also exhibited in the number of cabinet meetings he held. There were 826 in less than six years (almost three a week), according to Denis Smith's biography of one of Canada's more irascible leaders. His ministers chafed.

Some said Mr. Diefenbaker was running a one-man government, but in reality he was fatally indecisive, steadily losing control of everything -- even his own government.

R.B. Bennett

Few will remember Canada's Depression-era PM, but he liked to run his own show. He even controlled his own weight -- by eating a box of chocolates a day to maintain his considerable girth.

Mr. Bennett announced major policy items without telling his cabinet first. And then there is the famous (for some people) story of two friends who saw the Prime Minister walking down the street talking to himself. "What's he doing," one asked the other. "Why, he's having a cabinet meeting," was the reply.

Compiled by J. D.M. Stewart, who teaches Canadian history at the Bishop Strachan School in Toronto.

Workopolis.com

May 18, 2006
Pariahs' Society

Here's a riddle: What's worse than being a lobbyist in Stephen Harper's Ottawa?

Answer: Being a member of the parliamentary press gallery.

We know this to be true because of a strange development on Wednesday, after Harper pitched a fit and refused to hold a press conference with Ottawa reporters because they wouldn't agree to have the PMO decide who got to ask questions.

This was at noon. The problem, however, was that the Prime Minister's Office actually had a message it wanted to transmit to the media for the midday news cycle about why Harper was holding a vote on Afghanistan in the Commons later that day and why it would be a mistake for MPs to vote against extending the mission to 2009.

So, at 1:30, the PMO got on a conference call with some Tory lobbyists around town (yes, contrary to popular myth, they have not been reassigned to the Arctic under Harper's acccountability crackdown.) Without saying why they couldn't phone reporters themselves, the PMO issued a request for lobbyists to step in and feed some lines to selected political reporters at major news bureaus. Dutifully, several of them stepped up to the plate and made the calls as requested. They were friendly, courteous, informative, even funny -- everything the PMO communications staff can't seem to be these days.

But it does raise the question: just what is Harper paying his communications people to do, if they have to "contract out" civility to lobbyists? That's a whole larger riddle.

-----

May 17, 2006
One good sulk deserves....

Speaking of taking all your marbles and going home, today was the second consecutive day for Harper to stage a sulky walkout. On Tuesday, learning that the Commons operation committee had nixed his choice for a public appointments director, Harper abandoned the idea of a commission all together and said he'd wait until he had a majority government. So there.

But David McGuinty, MP for Ottawa South, has another idea. Hey, how about Justice John Gomery, the guy who investigated the Liberal sponsorship scandal, as the director of Harper's new squeaky-clean commission? As McGuinty said in a news release yesterday:

“If the Prime Minister is serious about reforming the appointments process - something I’ve supported from day one - he will nominate someone with the multipartisan credibility to get the job done."

And if Harper doesn't like that idea, McGuinty said, he could also the Commons operation committee to come up with a new short list of candidates.

The ball, or the marbles, are back in Harper's court.

-----

May 17, 2006 at 04:24 PM |
Listing out of control...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had intended to talk to reporters today about his government's controversial plan to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan through to 2009.

But communications staff in his office have been keen to control who gets to lob questions at Harper when he makes himself available.

However, the Parliament Hill press gallery has rebelled at the efforts to vet the questioners and yesterday reporters refused to sign up on a PMO list to ask a question.

Instead, reporters seeking to ask questions were lined up behind a microphone, an arrangement that has worked well in the past but one the current PMO doesn't like.

Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Harper's press secretary, waded into the group of reporters to try and broker a compromise. But she found that the reporters, unhappy at the PMO's moves to limit media access to the government, were in no mood to accede to Harper's demands.

The result? Harper cancelled his meeting with the media.

The Star blogs, Notebook

-----

When I think of bias, it's something that is done unfairly. Bias, isn't when reporting is an accurate depiction of the state of affairs between Prime Minister Harper and the Parliamentary Press Gallery. It's not the job of the press to write favourable articles about him or his government. If Stephen Harper has brought this confrontation on himself, then he'll just have to work to correct it. The press wrote unflattering articles about his predecessar, the former Prime Minister, Martin before the election and at various times during his time in office.

Harper didn't come under the close scrutiny of the press until he was elected as the Prime Minister. In his previous role as Leader of the Opposition, his messages weren't the focus of articles. He wouldn't now be the target of the press, unless he played his part to create it.

Harper isn't a stupid man, but the trend is there that he's playing partisan politics. There has to be a payoff to Harper that escapes me.

Could someone venture a guess as to what the advantage is of playing partisan politics? I can't for the life of me think of one thing--seems like it will backfire?

I do have to add that I used to post comments at the Globe and Mail after their articles, but it's become so confrontational that I seldom bother anymore. It's usually libs against cons, which I find boring. Very seldom are issues addressed, it's mostly bashing each other and nothing gets resolved. Hardly ever is there discussion about the message of the article--they're just content to rip each other apart. And increasingly I'm seeing articles in major dailies where reporters are framing their articles like American right-wing radio, the object of which is just to pit one person against another using emotional appeals rather than logical presentations.

May 26, 2006
RICHARD GWYN

A useful rule of life — right up there with that to restaurant-goers of never tipping on the tax part of their bill — is never to allow yourself to want anything too much.

The risk is that you might get it.

This has just happened to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Harper once said he wanted very, very badly for Alberta to be surrounded by "a fire-wall." Without this protective barrier, he declared, the centralist Liberals in Ottawa would steal away some of Alberta's oil revenues, claiming this was to help widows and orphans across Canada, but in fact it was merely to buy votes.

Harper, though, is no longer an alienated Albertan but Prime Minister of All the Canadas. These days, his biggest policy challenge is dealing with Canada's "fiscal imbalance." His plan involves taking money from Alberta, and from Ontario, and re-distributing it across the rest of the country.

In exchange for this, Harper will get two benefits. Because Quebec will be by far and away the biggest beneficiary, he will be able to claim to have Saved Canada (yet again).

And he will win enough extra votes in Quebec to gain a majority in the next election.

At this critical instant, Harper's "fire-wall" has gushed out of the ground. Premier Ralph Klein has just declared he will fight "tooth and nail" any attempt by Ottawa to take away any of Alberta's oil and gas revenues under the guise of a new equalization program.

He would take legal action, said Klein, and engage in a "political showdown."

Mostly, Harper has brought this upon himself. His "fire-wall" notion always was superficial, and a pandering to local paranoia.

Harper's entire "fiscal imbalance" policy is superficial. It's a solution to a non-existent problem.

No fiscal imbalance, as between the provinces and Ottawa, exists. The provinces have the constitutional right to raise all the revenues they need from exactly the same sources that Ottawa has used to bring itself into fiscal balance, and indeed into fiscal surplus.

Provinces that are in deficit are so by their own choice. This is most especially true of Quebec. It has over-generous social programs, such as the lowest university fees in North America, as a result of which its universities rank near the bottom in the country. Also, because its social payments are so lavish, Quebec has an inordinately high unemployment rate and, consequently, reduced tax revenues.

In one respect, there indeed is a fiscal imbalance. It's not at all the one Harper keeps talking about. By a hidden device known as "double equalization," Ontario gets far less than it should from many cross-Canada programs to which Ottawa contributes funds. No Ontarian should hold their breath expecting this to get fixed, ever.

Harper is also a victim of circumstances. Opposition parties have to oppose. While in opposition, Harper constantly attacked Ottawa for colonialist-type centralization and for interfering in the constitution-given, very possibly God-given, right of all provinces to do whatever they want in their sphere of jurisdiction. (An ever-expanding sphere, as most recently by Quebec into foreign affairs, with Harper's full approval.)

Opposition leaders have to believe that the government they oppose is made up of power-crazed centralizers. Once in office, they discover the embarrassing truth. The reverse is true: Canada is already, and has long been, the most decentralized country in the world.

Harper is now trying to come to terms with reality. His government's recent budget actually described the magnitude of Canadian decentralization and the minimal size of any fiscal imbalance.

Yet Harper's on record as promising to fix the fiscal imbalance. And he's on record as calling for Alberta to be surrounded by a "fire-wall."

At least remember — in restaurants, never tip on the tax.

Toronto Star

A sometimes questionable period
Five months into the Tories' minority rule, the Star's Ottawa bureau looks back on the intense political season

Jun. 26, 2006
OTTAWA BUREAU, TORONTO STAR

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has his first parliamentary session behind him and it will be almost three months before MPs sit in the Commons again.

Before memories fade of this short, but intense political season, the Star's Ottawa bureau has assembled a list of the highs and lows of the early months of Conservative minority rule. Here are some of the more memorable moments of the past five months:

LOW — A befuddled opposition. The New Democrats and Liberals were opposed to the Conservative budget. But when the budget bill came up for a final vote, Liberal and New Democrat MPs uttered nary a peep of protest, unaware the vote was even in progress. So much for a vigorous, alert opposition.

LOW — Paul Martin's decision to skip the vote on extending Canada's mission in Afghanistan — the very mission that his Liberals launched.

HIGH — Paul Martin does, however, introduce two bills in a bid to save his old child-care agreement and the Kelowna aboriginal accord. Some former prime ministers would be too busy serving on boards and giving speeches to be bothered with backbench work.

LOW — Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre (Nepean-Carleton). Opposition MPs were up in arms after Poilievre allegedly made a rude gesture in the Commons recently. One reason why this young Ottawa member of Parliament needs a lesson in grace and dignity.

HIGH — Harper slips off to Afghanistan as his first foreign trip in March, boosting troop morale and underlining his commitment to the military.

LOW — Liberal leadership contender Joe Volpe claims he is raising the standards of the party when he gives back $5,400 in donations he accepted from teenagers. If he had high standards, some could argue, he wouldn't have accepted them in the first place.

LOW — None of the Liberal leadership candidates and no one in the party brass has the guts to come out and criticize Volpe's dubious donors' list.

LOW — Harper issues a release saying he's "loath to co-operate" with Bernard Shapiro's probe of David Emerson because the ethics commissioner is a Liberal appointee. Harper voted in favour of Shapiro's appointment in the Commons.

LOW — Harper slips out of a meeting with Premier Dalton McGuinty in Toronto and heads over to the convention centre, where he hails Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory as Ontario's next premier.

LOW — Harper sulks and walks out of his accountability-act press conference when he loses a bid to control which journalists ask the questions. Note: this press conference was about ACCOUNTABILITY.

HIGH — Liberal MP John Godfrey is given a clean bill of health after a worrying scare that forced him to abandon his bid for the leadership.

LOW — Harper refuses to attend an event for former parliamentarians because there will be Liberal ex-MPs in the crowd.

LOW — Harper outlines three crime bills, including a new surprise measure on mandatory minimum jail terms for drug crime, without consulting Justice Minister Vic Toews, and does it on Toews' home Manitoba turf as Toews is sitting in the audience.

LOW — As Manitoba's Red River floods, Harper views disaster area by helicopter and refuses to answer questions, even from local reporters, at or after the "photo op."

HIGH — Canadians, overall, approve of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's first budget, featuring targeted tax cuts.

LOW — But Flaherty uses sleight-of-hand to claim he was lowering personal income taxes when he actually was raising them. The trick: He pretended that the Liberal mini-budget in late 2005 never happened, even though tax cuts in that mini-budget had already appeared on the tax forms Canadians were filling out in the weeks before Flaherty's budget.

LOW — NDP MP Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Buckley Valley) tells newspaper columnist he's scared to question the RCMP about the shooting of a young man in his B.C. riding. "Taking on the police is an extremely dangerous thing to do. You can ruin your career," he says. Nice to have politicians with backbone.

LOW — Conservatives back out of federal deal to help relocate trouble-plagued Kashechewan reserve in northern Ontario.

HIGH — Harper's popularity in Quebec keeps the separatist Bloc Québécois party on the run.

LOW — Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day is unavailable to print reporters to comment on terror arrests until three days later.

LOW — Day's end-run around Parliament by granting an amnesty to gun registry lawbreakers, more than a month before tabling a bill in Parliament to kill the registration of long guns, a bill that has yet to pass the Commons.

HIGH — Harper meets leaders of Muslim community in Toronto after high-profile terror arrests, and in Vancouver praises Canada's "diversity."

Toronto Star

-----

Hmmm...I counted 16 Lows to 6 Highs and one of the highs was attributed to former Prime Minister, Paul Martin. That's not very inspiring for this session of parliament lead by the Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

Canada can't fulfil its promise if the U.S. closes its shell
Harper gets positive signals from a low-key Washington trip
Jul. 7, 2006
JAMES TRAVERS
NATIONAL AFFAIRS COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON—What's on Stephen Harper's mind is now on his lips. Anyone who bothers to listen will learn what's worrying the Prime Minister and where his government will lead Canada this fall.

In conversation here with George W. Bush and later with the press, Harper made it crystal clear the federal government's first priority is an open America. "If the U.S. becomes more closed to its friends, the terrorists win," he told reporters at the White House.

That's much, much more than a war-on-terror bumper sticker. In a handful of words Harper connected the most important dots in a multi-layered relationship: Security, the economy and a border that must remain a conduit, not a barrier.

Without security, an economy facing ominous threats will trip over the growing obstacle of the 49th parallel. A concern since 9/11, that's now central to Conservative thinking as Harper prepares a new agenda that will carry his government past his famous five election promises and into more challenging territory.

Not surprisingly, one of his priorities, now reduced to three, is the environment, an issue even Conservatives recognize is so sensitive they will have to design a credible alternative to Kyoto.

Another is sorting out the so-called fiscal imbalance with the provinces. But tucked in there is Canada's ability to meet growing challenges from China and India as well as from a lengthening list of smaller tigers hungry for larger shares of global markets.

Prospering in that economic climate requires not only robust investment in the country's bricks and mortar but also in its social infrastructure. It demands hard and immediate reconsideration of policies that cross the spectrum. Making Canada more competitive means adjusting education to meet the higher needs of the knowledge economy and reforming current immigration practices to ensure new arrivals can contribute to the economy and fulfill Canada's promise.

It also will lead to changes in a tax system that currently discourages marginal workers and corporate innovation.

None of that will be easy and may well be impossible if the United States, bruised from its foreign adventures and unsure of its neighbours, withdraws into a shell.

Tougher border controls already legislated for 2008 by Congress are just one symptom of a disease that would poison trade and tourism.

Harper's prescription is holistic medicine. He's aligning Canada with the U.S. internationally while working with an equally concerned Bush administration on first slowing new border controls and then ensuring the range of acceptable documents will keep people, goods and services flowing.

What Harper gets in return are positive signals mixed with a lot of Texas bonhomie. Relaxed and playful on his 60th birthday, Bush heaped praise on the Prime Minister he called "Steve" and on Canada for sending troops to Afghanistan and arresting 17 terror suspects in Toronto.

Being chums with an unpopular U.S. leader isn't usually smart domestic politics for a new Canadian leader trying to morph a minority mandate into a majority.

But Wednesday's power dinner with what amounted to the Bush war cabinet along with yesterday's meeting and lunch were more beneficial than a too vigorous public slap on the back.

Bush might have been reading from Harper's briefing notes when he emphasized the importance to the U.S. of trade with Canada. More surprising, he made a point of volunteering that the two countries would go beyond fighting terror to end genocide.

Both are important presidential asterisks attached to a relationship that inevitably tilts toward the interests of the dominant partner.

In effect, Bush was acknowledging both Ottawa's concern about sharing future continental prosperity and the Canadian worry that waging war in Afghanistan is keeping it from making peace in Darfur.

It remains to be seen where those openings lead. In Canada, increased economic integration is a politically charged issue better supported by business leaders than voters, and so far there's more talk than action about ending the Sudan massacres.

What is increasingly apparent is the way ahead for the ruling Conservatives. In a scheduled half-hour press conference, Harper managed to touch, if not necessarily push, the hot button issues shaping his second session agenda.

Parse his words and find the environment, NAFTA, and the importance of open yet secure borders to current continental trade and future economic competitiveness. One way or another, each touches a cross-border relationship that at the moment is unusually harmonious.

Not even glitches in the latest attempt to end the softwood lumber dispute — problems both leaders say will be solved, presumably with incentives — disrupted the flow of good news. If there is any doubt about the trip's success it's only the usual concern that a capital that sees world leaders almost daily is blasé about Canadian prime ministers.

Harper exacerbated that problem by opting for a low-key visit. More puzzling still, Canada's friend and ally story is being muffled here by his government's fixation with controlling both messenger and message.

Strange as it seems, the memorable outcome of this trip is that Canadians now know more about federal Conservative fears and plans than Americans learned about a neighbour trying so hard to be agreeable.

Toronto Star

-----

What Travers refers to in his last paragraph

Jul. 20, 2006
JAMES TRAVERS

PARIS—For a cautious, controlling prime minister, Stephen Harper is taking an enormous risk. Harper is gambling that personally picking up Canadians fleeing Lebanon will be seen as part of a daring rescue, not a publicity stunt.

The difference between the two is largely in the eye of the beholder.

Those who accept the importance of gestures will find sincerity in the decision; cynics will see a politician trying to salvage a situation that has gone terribly wrong.

Harper makes a straightforward case. As he explained his abrupt change of plans here, timing and geography put him in a position to help Canadians needing help.

"It's more than a symbolic trip, he said. "There is real need for air support in Cyprus."

So why, then, are Harper, his wife, a skeleton staff including a photographer, as well as his public relations team and RCMP bodyguards, taking up needed seats?

Why aren't they maximizing the assistance by sending an empty aircraft across the Mediterranean to the island nearest Lebanon?

The official answer is that it is too dangerous for the Prime Minister to fly on commercial aircraft. He has no choice but to stay with the plane, detour to Cyprus and bring home to Canada about 120 of the thousands fleeing Beirut by ship.

That strains credibility. It's hard to believe that taking a scheduled flight — or waiting for a government plane to arrive here — would expose Harper to more danger than flying into a chaotic region and then out again with 120 very upset people escaping a war.

Personal risks aren't the only ones the Prime Minister faces. At the best of times, events rarely unfold predictably in the Middle East and these are far from the best of times.

Reports from Beirut suggest Canada's late-starting evacuation was snarled and confused. Instead of greeting Canadians relieved to see their prime minister, Harper was likely to be meeting furious citizens asking embarrassing questions.

It would be surprising if they didn't want to know why Canada, with the largest number of citizens in Lebanon, trailed others in launching its rescue effort. Even stranger if they didn't have strong opinions on Harper's seemingly cavalier acceptance of the civilian dangers inherent in Israel's "measured" response to Hezbollah kidnappings.

Of course, the Prime Minister's gamble could pay handsomely. Those arriving at Larnaca, Cyprus' air and seaport, may be so pleased to be going home that they shelve anger and put politics on hold.

It's also possible they, along with other Canadians watching at home — and, ultimately, voters — will accept that Harper was speaking from the heart here when he said; "We believe this is the right thing to do and that's why we are doing it."

Harper has made gut, instinctive decisions before. He astutely chose a surprise visit to troops in Afghanistan as a first foreign trip and was highly praised.

But there are important differences.

Intense planning and tight security defined the Afghanistan trip while this one was thrown together in less than a day and turns on good luck.

What is certain is that Harper will be criticized. As he said here, that's inevitable in situations this complex.

Some arrows will fly from opponents crying political opportunism. More will come from emergency experts who understand that the last thing officials struggling with a crisis need is the arrival of the Prime Minister.

Even lesser VIPs inevitably absorb time and energy better used helping those in trouble.

And, as Harper has been repeating for days, bureaucrats are already working around the clock on Canada's largest-ever evacuation.

Their workload just expanded exponentially. Along with stripping the Prime Minister's plane to increase seating and then getting it safely in and out of Cyprus, officials will have to select and screen passengers flying with him to Ottawa.

Even without the inevitable hitches, that won't be easy. It won't even be welcome if the lucky few conclude they are being used as political props.

At very best, Harper gets out of this trip news coverage that temporarily replaces, and perhaps ends, stinging attacks on his government's laid-back response to the attacks on Lebanon and evacuation management. Instead of being accused of flying home with a half-empty plane, he would be praised for being useful.

Praise for politicians is rare and, after a tough week on the road, would be appreciated by the Prime Minister. This trip began badly with an unwise comment on a conflict that demands subtlety as well as some understanding of its convolutions.

Among many other things, the Prime Minister was clearly unaware that so many Canadians would be affected by Israeli attempts to weaken Hezbollah's control of southern Lebanon. Instead, he seized the moment to reassert Ottawa's support for Israel without enough thought about the consequences.

Now, depending on interpretation, he is either making amends or trying to erase memories of the mistake.

However history and voters finally assess it, Harper's flight is more than a risk and a gamble: It's a step into the unknown by a prime minister who puts extraordinary value on control.

Toronto Star

-----

Count me as a cynic. His public relations team was on board—they could easily have taken a commercial flight.

World view clear, but politically risky
Aug. 26, 2006
THOMAS WALKOM

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's rock-solid support for Israel's actions in Lebanon should come as no surprise. It results not simply from Harper's desire to score points with Canada's traditionally Liberal Jewish voters (although that's part of it). It stems also from his firm belief, articulated well before his Conservatives won the last election, that Canadian foreign policy must be based on the morality of certitude.

Put simply, he believes in choosing sides and staying there. He has no sympathy for those who argue that in places like the Middle East or Afghanistan, competing claims must be understood and dealt with in order to come up with workable solutions.

In Harper's moral and political universe, a country makes its alliances with others on the basis of shared core values. And then it supports those countries, no matter what.

Hence, his comments early on in the Lebanon war that Israel's actions were a "measured" response to provocations by Hezbollah.

To many, including former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, as well as the leaders of Amnesty International, Israel's massive bombardment was anything but measured.

Amnesty has called Israel's actions war crimes. Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, has warned that both Hezbollah and Israel may be held culpable for crimes against humanity.

But for Harper, all this is carping. In his world view, the morality of means takes second place to the morality of ends. That Israel killed almost 10 times as many civilians as Hezbollah is irrelevant; for Harper, Israel's cause was just and that is all that matters.

Harper spelled out his moral vision of foreign affairs three years ago in a publication called Citizen Centre Report. While not referring specifically to either the Middle East or Afghanistan, it is an essay that illuminates his approach to both conflicts.

"The emerging debate on foreign affairs should be fought on moral grounds," he wrote then. "Current challenges in dealing with terrorism and its sponsors ... will be well-served by conservative insights on preserving historic values and moral insights on right and wrong ...

"These are debates where modern liberals (with the exception of Tony Blair) have no answers; they are trapped in their framework of moral neutrality, moral relativism and moral equivalence. But conservatives should have answers. We understand, however imperfectly ... that politics is a moral affair ...

"Conservatives must take the moral stand, with our allies, in favour of the fundamental values of our society including democracy, free enterprise and individual freedom. This moral stand should not just give us the right to stand with our allies but the duty to do so and the responsibility to put `hard power' behind our international commitments."

As an intellectual theory of foreign affairs, Harper's vision is not new. It echoes that of U.S. neo-conservatives, particularly their disdain for what they call moral equivalence, or what used to be called fair-mindedness.

Fair-mindedness is based on the notion that in any dispute, both sides may have legitimate complaints. If polls are right, it is also viewed by most Canadians as one of the country's fundamental values.

But to neo-cons, fairness is a value too often abused. It allows those whom neo-cons view as demonstrably evil to be treated with the same respect as the patently good. In the neo-con view, Hezbollah rocket attacks against civilians are crimes, but Israeli missile attacks against civilians are not — even if the latter are far more destructive. Actions matter less than the motives behind them.

Perhaps the most striking element of Harper's approach is his sense of absolute certainty. They are no shades of grey. Any Afghan fighting Canadian troops is an enemy of freedom. Any Lebanese civilian fighting Israeli invaders is a terrorist.

For that reason, every struggle everywhere takes on existential dimensions. If the war in Afghanistan is a battle between good and evil, we have no choice but to fight there — even if, as my shrewd colleague Jim Travers has argued, our military efforts there are pointless.

So far, Harper's Manichean stance has discomfited the Liberals (not a difficult task these days). But polls indicate it has cost him support among the public.

This too should not be surprising. A great many Canadians are uncomfortable with black and white views of the world.

Harper may dismiss their reluctance as moral relativism. But for a lot of people in this country, considering both sides of the argument is still considered a virtue.

Toronto Star

that has become so warped and twisted that it pits one citizen against another in its goal to get majority government. Mostly they appear to be of an authoritarian nature where every problem looks like a nail. The mindset is without nuance. What must it be like to live in the province of Alberta if you're not a Conservative? From what I've seen, most don't have a sense of humour--that's probably too like being a human being; knowing you make mistakes and to be able to laugh at yourself for making them instead of beating yourself with a whip.

I had read some of Harper's papers before this election and he's scary. He suffers from moral relativism and is conviced that conclusions he reaches are justified and seldom questions them after he makes up his mind. His leadership style is anything but leadership driven. He dominates his cabinet and places little trust in people he appointed to those positions. He's narcissistic which can be dangerous in World Leaders I suspect having power feeds their ego and acerbates what could have been a mild condition had they not been in powerful positions.

Harper has botched Afghanistan: Hébert
Mission could lose him election
PM's Quebec support at stake
Sep. 6, 2006
CHANTAL HÉBERT

Toronto Star

-----

Analysis: Confidence in mission is latest casualty
Sep. 5, 2006
GRAHAM FRASER

Toronto Star

-----

Harper rewrites book on being PM
He rarely retreats, never explains, says Ottawa Bureau Chief Susan Delacourt
Sep. 5, 2006

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper was chided by critics over the weekend for failing to properly explain to Canadians why this country is fighting in Afghanistan.

Even a couple of supporters of Harper and the Afghanistan mission conceded on CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup on Sunday that the Prime Minister wasn't particularly good at explaining or talking to Canadians about the mission there.

But this is coming to be seen as one of Harper's signature traits — viewing communication as a one-way exercise: telling, not explaining or persuading or listening. Prime ministerial communication, as this current office-holder describes it, is all about "getting the message out," and rarely about taking any messages in.

Eight months into his tenure as Prime Minister, and now, as the fall political season is grinding into gear after the Labour Day weekend, it is possible to identify some of the defining characteristics of Harper's leadership style — beyond the spare descriptions of "bold" or "decisive" management.

Here are some other techniques from the Harper playbook, which may prove a useful guide to understanding his public strategies in the weeks and months ahead:

# Declare victory, even if the problem isn't solved.

Harper has yet to implement one concrete solution to resolve the so-called "fiscal imbalance" between Ottawa and the provinces. He's not even planning to hold a meeting on the issue before the end of the year. But, somehow, it is now being called the "fiscal balance." Problem solved.

The same is true with the long-running softwood dispute with the United States. As far back as March, when Harper sat down with U.S. President George W. Bush, he was starting to refer to the dispute in the past tense. The deal with the United States was announced before it was complete; the victory was repeatedly being hailed even as Ottawa was still negotiating with the lumber industry over whether the terms would be accepted.

Harper, as a student of history, knows that prime ministers often get caught up in long-running, intractable disputes, national unity being chief among them. He seems to have decided it's better to just declare the problem solved and label the leftover, outstanding issues as mere housekeeping.

It's not clear if this could work with the Quebec separatism drama, but Harper may try the approach.

# Surround yourself with symbols and props.

Harper pays more attention to the staging of his events than any other prime minister in recent memory. He needs flags, podiums, the backdrop of the Commons doors, even cabinet ministers, whom he often forgets to introduce.

In the world of professional speechmaking, these are called "visual aids" and they are used to reinforce his authority. Leesa Barnes, the award-winning president of Toronto's Business Toastmasters club, which helps business leaders with public speaking, says: "I think he uses those props in order to feel comfortable on that stage."

The props, in other words, serve the purpose of distracting from Harper's body language, which is generally neither comfortable nor friendly. Barnes finds Harper actually a very good public speaker, with no "uhs" or "ums" punctuating his message. "He comes across as very honest," and also seems to know what he's talking about, she says.

Slogans are also part of the prop-filled mix. This is not simply the government, but "Canada's New Government," and that phrase is plastered over almost every issuance from Harper's PMO.

# Keep the opposition divided.

By now, Harper's fixation on the Liberals is well established. He wastes no opportunity to present the Liberals as divided and, when he can, drive further wedges into their caucus, as he did with last spring's vote in the Commons on extending the mission in Afghanistan.

This is, in part, a lesson Harper learned from his own time in opposition, when prime minister Jean Chrétien reaped enormous political benefit from an opposition fractured among four parties.

The presence of 10 candidates in the Liberal leadership race also serves Harper's interests, as does any squabbling between the Liberals and New Democrats. If there is any way he can feed those divisions, he will.

# It is not a lie if you tell it to the media.

Believe it or not, a senior Ottawa journalist was told this several years ago by one of Harper's chief advisers and confidants.

He hasn't said outright whether he shares this sentiment, but Harper evidently does not believe reporters can or will hold him accountable for shifting stories and positions.

One of his first blatant mistruths concerned the subject of his plans for a trip to Afghanistan — his first foreign foray. Some reporters in Kandahar had seen prime ministerial advance officials in late February, scouting out the terrain for a Harper trip. Some defence officials as well had inadvertently discussed the prospect in a briefing with Canadian Press journalists around the same time.

But Harper, talking to the media on March 1 after these reports surfaced, actually went out of his way to lead the media astray. Asked a general question about Afghanistan, he began his remarks this way: "Let me just say I do actually occasionally read the papers and, according to those papers, I've been to and from Afghanistan several times in the last couple of weeks. I don't have any plans to go there."

In fact, he did have plans to go there — plans he was making in February, as he subsequently told reporters who travelled with him to Afghanistan less than two weeks after that press conference. (There are times when for national security reasons, the media are indeed kept in the dark.)

# Retreat, but never admit retreat.

This was a classic Chrétien strategy, which Harper has obviously borrowed. Its corollary is: "Learn from your mistakes but don't publicly acknowledge them."

His decision to ban media coverage of fallen soldiers returning to Canada sparked huge controversy, for example, so Harper subsequently declared that the ban was instituted at the request of families. When some of the families said they hadn't been consulted, Harper then said the ban didn't exist. At no point did he acknowledge that he'd reversed his position.

The disappearance of the medical wait-times guarantee from Harper's five-priorities list is another reversal that hasn't been spun that way. Now Health Minister Tony Clement is calling the guarantee a "process," not an end in itself.

# Speak French first.

It was only a matter of weeks into Harper's prime ministership when everyone started to notice he always begins his public statements in French.

Harper has subsequently been asked about his French-first policy. He told La Presse and an Alberta radio interviewer that there are a number of reasons: French is Canada's first national language, he says, but the discipline of speaking it first helps him collect his thoughts.

"I have to think much more carefully, in a much more structured sense about what I'm going to say and how I'm going to answer questions. It actually helps me in a press conference, to do it that way," he explained to Dave Rutherford.

It doesn't hurt politically either in his continuing bid to woo Quebec.

# If you want to avoid a course of action, challenge your opponents to provoke it.

Harper has only a minority government. On average, minorities don't last much longer than a year and a half in Canada. Earlier this year, Harper declared that he wouldn't call an election until October of 2009 — a full three years from now; basically, a majority-length term in office.

In declaring this, Harper was laying the groundwork to shame the Liberals and other opposition parties into postponing defeat of his government. He is banking on the Liberals wanting to avoid any negative media they might receive for provoking an election earlier than anticipated.

Former prime minister Paul Martin recently believed the same thing, however — that Canadians would punish any political parties who provoked a snap, winter election late in 2005. Martin is not prime minister any more.

# Don't look to be liked, seek respect.

Harper is one of the most unsocial prime ministers since Pierre Trudeau. He doesn't try to radiate warmth or charm or likeability. At a recent 60th birthday party for his former communications director, the well-liked Tory consultant Geoff Norquay, video tributes were sent by former prime ministers Martin, Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark, as well as Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Harper refused repeated offers to send any message at all to the large Tory gathering.

As the once-Liberal, now-Conservative cabinet minister David Emerson observed to an ex-staffer earlier this year, Harper's interpersonal style is best described as "hard ass." His approach is disciplined and disciplinary, as is evident from the extreme fear that he's generated among potentially talkative cabinet ministers.

Short-term, this strategy has worked.

All of his signature traits, in fact, have had some significant short-term effectiveness. The question is whether they can work over the long term and help him secure the majority government he's bent on obtaining.

Toronto Star

Will RCMP escape punishment?
Sep. 23, 2006
JAMES TRAVERS

Is stealing taxpayers' money more evil than robbing an innocent man of his freedom? Hanging on Stephen Harper's answer is his election promise to make the federal government accountable.

It's this capital's habit that those in high places are rarely punished for sins spanning the spectrum from negligence and incompetence to greed and malfeasance. If in doubt, consider that gun registry costs spiralled into the stratosphere without much career damage, and multiple Quebec sponsorship investigations only netted bottom- feeders.

Harper's campaign commitment was to replace a culture of entitlement with the discipline of accountability. Voters listened and a Conservative minority government now faces turning easily mouthed words into tough-to-take actions.

In his unusually unambiguous report this week, Justice Dennis O'Connor found one of the country's foundation institutions sadly wanting. Precipitously pressed back into the anti-terrorism business, the RCMP recklessly slipped the U.S. fanciful information about Maher Arar leading to his illegal deportation and then imprisonment in Syria, an authoritarian state notorious for torture.

Along with wrongly connecting Arar and his wife to Al Qaeda, the fabled horsemen sapped efforts to secure his release, smeared his reputation, and then obscured a hapless investigation from their political masters.

O'Connor's damning report was released Monday and by now heads would be rolling in any normal organization. But the federal government and the RCMP are, well, different.

Accepting responsibility is alien to both. Their reflex response is to sniff the political winds and wait until the storm inevitably gives way to the calm of public indifference.

So, Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli hasn't resigned or been fired and Harper's young administration is sounding old, paying the usual lip service to reform.

Why more isn't happening is part of the queasy banana republic relationship between politicians and federal police. Few talk about it openly, but here in the capital, the nation's trusting affection for a picture-postcard RCMP is tinged with nervousness, even fear.

Elected and appointed officials are equally reluctant to challenge an RCMP that, despite a mottled record, enjoys more credibility than politicians, bureaucrats or, for that matter, journalists. As official Ottawa — and particularly Liberals — were reminded in December, even a slightly raised RCMP eyebrow can be disastrous.

It's the last election's strongest consensus that the turning point was a curious letter to the NDP confirming that the RCMP would investigate suspected leaks of then-finance minister Ralph Goodale's income trust decision. That the letter would become public and torpedo the Liberal campaign should have been as obvious to the force as the implications of telling traumatized U.S. agents that Arar was an Islamic extremist.

So far, one RCMP investigation is as substantial as the other. O'Connor found no evidence that Arar is anything other than he claims and no charges have been laid in the trust case.

Errors are inevitable but, for an icon, the RCMP is notably prone to pratfalls that involve politicians and the media. It fell back in disarray after a stumbling, quixotic run at Ontario cabinet minister Greg Sorbara, while a bonehead raid on reporter Juliet O'Neill finally tipped Paul Martin into ordering an Arar inquiry the Liberals tried so hard to avoid.

All of that, plus deadly operational failures, glaring structural weaknesses and poor morale, should have painted a bull's-eye on Zaccardelli's forehead. Instead, Harper and Stockwell Day, his security minister, are tiptoeing around the past while trying to get a grip on the future.

Later this year O'Connor will issue a second report recommending ways to impose oversight on the RCMP. That won't be easy, may not be compatible with its primary law-enforcement responsibility, and will certainly fuel more debate about the RCMP's anti-terrorism and intelligence roles.

While it would be difficult for a government that has lavished praise and money on the RCMP to again restrict it to hounding criminals, the O'Connor inquiry only reinforces the '80s wisdom that spying is best left to tightly controlled civilian organizations. As repeating history demonstrates, the RCMP runs rogue when given free rein.

More immediately anticipated is Harper's signal about accountability. If the RCMP senior command escapes sanction for its egregious Arar abuses, for its wilful deception of its political masters, a civil service that communicates with winks and nudges will relax, knowing it's business as usual.

It will also know public servants are more likely to be punished for dipping into the public purse than selling out a citizen or stealing their rights and freedom.

Source: Toronto Star

How else to explain the Clean Air Act?
Oct. 21, 2006
JAMES TRAVERS

Conservatives aren't fools: They know the Earth only looks flat.

It's even more certain they are aware other things are not as they appear. Week by week, evidence mounts that Stephen Harper is creating, packaging and marketing an alternative universe.

How else to explain a Clean Air Act that experts all but unanimously agree will only make this country a dirtier part of a dirtier world? Let's be perfectly clear: Talk of meaningful progress by 2050 is pure delusional fantasy for politicians with four-years-or-less lifecycles and gnat-like attention spans.

On the strength of this week's pronouncement, the only environmental change between now and never-never will be political. Armed with legislation that sounds socks-and-sandals green, a blue-suit party can now stump cross-country in an expected spring election accusing their opponents of being against clean air.

As a tactic, it owes plenty to U.S. presidential contests. Candidates there scavenge voting records to savage each other for not supporting legislation with feel-good titles hiding hideous flaws.

It's also not new for a government that relentlessly labels itself "new." Ideology and populism emerged as the prevailing currents early in this minority and are only gaining strength as the Conservative grip on power weakens.

Wilfully blind to bureaucratic policy options and isolated from all but a few cabinet ministers and advisers, Harper's guidance comes from his own unshakeable certainty. Causes are disconnected from effects and facts are no match for beliefs.

Sure, there's a certain appeal to simple Conservative solutions after watching Paul Martin's Liberals make every decision labyrinth difficult. But the sad result is a federal government now asking history's most educated and informed citizens to park their brains at the door and go with their gut.

There's every reason to suspect Harper won't get the environment answer he wants. Canadians in general — and young urbanites in particular — are light-years ahead of politicians on this century's existential issue and long ago decided universal survival warrants a few personal sacrifices.

Harper and his minister of pollution, Rona Ambrose, now risk being seen as national health hazards. While the oil and auto industries breathe easily, the majority of voters who live in five big cities will not and that's no way for Conservatives to cling to power let alone morph from minority to majority.

Harper isn't giving up on that project and is using fear on issues more immediate than the environment to sculpt public opinion in more pleasing ways. From community crime to the threat of terrorism, the Prime Minister is positioning Conservatives as the party with the tough-as-boots, common-sense responses to scary problems that hurt our heads.

Except his government's solutions wither under scrutiny. A quick glance south is all that's needed to learn that three-strikes laws are better at filling prisons with the systemically poor as well as the mentally ill than making streets safe. A slightly longer look east to Iraq and Afghanistan is all that's required to understand foreign boots on Islamic soil only metastasizes terrorism.

Conservatives don't let those doubts intrude into their make-believe. Adult punishment is a faster, more satisfying crime fix than long-haul early childhood education, fighting poverty or stabilizing families. Questioning the wisdom of the Kandahar mission — let alone its changing purpose or dwindling chances of success — is unpatriotic and a low blow to troop morale.

Those arguments are bogus. They crank the clock back to a father-knows-best time when paternal decisions were self-evidently sound and safely beyond question.

Unfortunately for Harper and the Conservatives, the Canadian political family left home years ago and is now doing its own thinking. Hardened by the smorgasbord of retail choice, it methodically segregates truth from fiction, ads from consumer satisfaction, and, over time, reaches a comfortingly solid, if democratically imperfect, consensus.

Conservatives had an unusual opportunity this week to use the country's collective environmental wisdom to change the cold image of a Prime Minister who is dangerously synonymous with his government and party. Rather than coddle interests ready and able to stand on their own economic feet, he could have taken the first halting steps toward a future that is already wreaking havoc with status quo and urgently demanding creative change. He could have made a measurable difference, not an empty statement.

That's not what happened. Missing the moment to put some progressive back into Conservative, Harper defaulted to the core characteristics of a political base that knows the world is round but still wishes it were flat.

Source: Toronto Star

-----

What will it take to drive a stake through the heart of this Conservative government?

Canadian PM declares support for Israel

Aluf Benn

Ha'aretz - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared his support for Israel in an address to B'nai Brith Canada last Wednesday, saying that, "When it comes to dealing with a war between Israel and a terrorist organization, this country and this government cannot and will never be neutral."

Harper was justifying his government's support for Israel during the recent Lebanon War and in its aftermath.

"Our approach to the Middle East, as elsewhere, has been guided by our values," he said.

[snip]

The Conservative Party Harper heads came to power earlier this year, following many years of Liberal rule in Canada. Since his rise to power, Canada's foreign policy has moved closer to the U.S. and Israel.

Canada does not depend on Middle Eastern petroleum and its foreign policy is mainly guided by domestic political considerations.

[Comment: Boy, do they have this guy's number. ~ JPD]

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

to Canadians who are of the Jewish religion, but Harper will be remembered by more Canadians for, "measured response," and his sycophantic copycatting of George W. Bush’s policies. Not to mention the 5 billion softwood dollars that are south of the border.

But Harper's lack of interest in Africa is embarrassing
Mar 31, 2007 04:30 AM
James Travers

One physically small woman is too easily overlooked in a capital dominated by what in the Third World would be known as a Big Man. In only grudgingly sparing about a dozen minutes for Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf this week, Stephen Harper missed two opportunities: one to seize the political advantage that means so much to him and another to at least feign interest in an Africa that not long ago was Canada's priority.

Of the two, the first is the most surprising. With an election perhaps only weeks away, this Prime Minister is running out of time to convince women, ethnic and cosmopolitan voters to trust these not-so progressive Conservatives.

So, why would Harper more readily find time for Vladislav Tretiak, the Russian goalie who gave this country fits in the '72 hockey summit, than for the president of a ruined west African state now proving that hope is more than an illusion? Well, almost everyone in the doughnut shops that double-double as Conservative focus groups knows Tretiak and not enough have heard of Johnson-Sirleaf or care that she is lifting Liberia up from chaos.

Whatever the reason, the brief encounter between Prime Minister and President was both unnecessarily icy and sadly revealing. Behind closed doors, Harper made it undiplomatically obvious that he didn't appreciate being embarrassed into meeting her by Opposition questions and that he doesn't know much about her country beyond what's in the news.

It's Canadians who should be embarrassed. While it's far too early to fit Johnson-Sirleaf for Nelson Mandela's mantle, her extraordinary personal courage and determined transformation of a shockingly poor and violent country warrant a more gracious welcome.

True, it wasn't an official visit, some of her time was spent at a non-partisan conference focusing on public policy solutions Conservatives resist, and Liberal Belinda Stronach was instrumental in donating badly needed malaria nets. But that doesn't fully explain why so many obstacles were tossed between Harper and a 68-year-old grandmother, Harvard-trained economist and symbol of everything rich countries demand from destitute Africa.

It's certainly not that Liberia doesn't matter to those who matter most to Harper. Washington is heavily invested in Johnson-Sirleaf's survival and success, a reality made obvious by a glowing Time magazine tribute by First Lady Laura Bush and by U.S. warships standing off the Liberian capital during last year's inauguration of the first woman elected to lead an African state.

What the U.S. is celebrating – and Canada minimizing – is a remarkable achievement. In little more than a year, Johnson-Sirleaf has put behind her own imprisonment and Liberia's 14 years of civil war to embrace reconciliation, balance an impossibly precarious budget and begin the protracted cultural shift from the pessimism of corruption to the optimism of ethical governance.

Moving from dictatorship to democracy, bankruptcy to solvency and kleptocracy to honesty is the international prescription enlightened African leaders volunteered to swallow. It's also the one former prime minister Jean Chrétien helped write and committed Canada to do its part delivering.

Of course, that was when this country cared enough about Africa to keep it high on the agenda. But that was before a change of government and a change in priorities.

Africa is still somewhere on this country's development, emergency relief and foreign policy radar. But it's eclipsed by Afghanistan and will soon be pushed farther out of sight by growing interest in the local neighbourhood that begins in the Caribbean and stretches into South America.

That new focus is in keeping with the increased Conservative emphasis on interests as opposed to values. It's also every government's prerogative to set a unique offshore course, and there is obvious merit in one that recognizes the trade, drugs and security importance of a region that is North America's soft underbelly.

It will be much less admirable if this country loses its concern for a large part of the rest of the world. Even if empathy is abandoned as carelessly as Harper set aside civility this week, Canada has abiding self-interest in ensuring Africa isn't a breeding ground for pandemics, terror and economic volatility.

Johnson-Sirleaf personifies the struggle against the poverty and political instability that contributes to disease, violence and financial instability. A prime minister who makes a point of standing shoulder to shoulder with powerful allies missed the moment to stand behind a single diminutive woman fighting the gigantic forces that habitually make victims of the world's most vulnerable.

Source

-----

I wouldn’t say that Harper lacks interest, but his priorities are very narrow and have been focused on getting a majority government since the day he was elected. It’s Harper’s ideology that is shameful and his ongoing attempt to control the press and the ministers he picked to sit in his cabinet. I deeply resent his style of leadership.