DURING his first six weeks in office, prime minister Stephen Harper has shown himself to be an extremely disciplined, focused leader, a strategic rather than a tactical thinker.
Unlike his unfocused scattergun predecessor, Harper has set limited priorities and then has set out to accomplish them.
He has stared down his critics, ignored much of the unsolicited political advice from outsiders and the partisan sniping from opposition MPs and acted as if he is operating from an instructional manual written some time ago – a plan designed to deal with immediate priorities written when only he and a close brotherhood of believers imagined he would be in charge.
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In other words, there is more focused Trudeau and Chrétien in this prime minister than expansive Mulroney and Martin.
All of which makes the new government’s performance on the trade file curious.
Harper, an economist, comes from a region and an ideological tribe that sees trade, free markets, the reduction of government subsidies and market interference to be articles of faith.
Yet on the crucial World Trade Organization file, the government has been slow, indecisive, almost invisible.
It is true that any new government has many files to deal with quickly but WTO talks do not offer much time for dithering.
Harper, his advisers and government players (including free trade advocate and parliamentary secretary Ted Menzies, who was at WTO talks in Hong Kong in December) will know that the talks are in a make-or-break phase. Hong Kong negotiators agreed they would complete the talks by the end of 2006 or likely see them go into hiatus for years.
They agreed that to meet the deadline, the outline of a settlement would have to be agreed by the end of April. Even skeptics of the April deadline agree that the end of July is the drop-dead date if there is to be a WTO deal anytime soon.
But instead of seizing the file and sending Canadian negotiators to Geneva with a strong new mandate to defend Canada’s various offensive and defensive interests, the government has been all but silent.
This week’s meeting between trade minister David Emerson, agriculture minister Chuck Strahl and various agricultural industry leaders is a small start but given that close to 70 percent of the time allotted to get a WTO agreement has already passed since the Hong Kong deal, the government has taken Canada out of the play.
Assuming that this was not inadvertent, there are several possible explanations for the Conservative lack of focus on trade.
Emerson has been immersed in political controversy since his post-election decision to abandon the Liberals for the Conservatives and perhaps has not put his mind to it. Given Harper’s disciplined approach, he doesn’t appear to be a leader who would cut his lieutenants that much slack.
More plausibly, it may be that Harper and his advisers see this WTO round as unachievable.
In that case, with the divisions that exist in Canada over appropriate WTO outcomes, it might not seem worth it to expend political capital on a lost cause.
Government signals in the buildup to a WTO outcome, negative or positive, will indicate if the slow trade response was the result of political inertia or a strategic calculation.
Put your money on the latter.