STEPHEN Harper looks like a man who enjoys power, likes being the lead Husky on the Canadian government dogsled and wears the prime ministerial skin well.
Some of his predecessors – Joe Clark and Paul Martin come to mind – always seemed overwhelmed or uneasy wearing the skin that Macdonald, Laurier, Borden, King and Trudeau had worn before them.
Harper, despite his weak position as a two-term minority prime minister, has never shown outward signs of not liking the job or feeling he wasn’t entitled.
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Neighbours in the tiny Ottawa neighbourhood of his official residence say Harper’s official car convoy taking him the mile to Parliament Hill has gradually increased in size over his time at 24 Sussex Drive. These are the trappings of power.
But for all his love of the Big Chair, these must be bittersweet days for Harper. Surely, he cannot be having fun.
In his five years of striving to attain and then retain the top Canadian political job, the conservative Calgary economist with the wolverine eyes has had to swallow himself whole on many issues that sustained him when he was a Reform MP and later president of the National Citizens’ Coalition.
Sometimes, the compromises were necessary to move him into the Canadian political mainstream from the fringe where he lived happily in the belief of absolutes. Sometimes, the compromises have cut to the core of his political/philosophical beliefs.
Let’s start with deficits.
As a Reformer and NCC president, Harper opposed government generally, government spending increases particularly and government deficits toxically.
In his first two years in government, Harper increased government spending at a rate almost unprecedented in Canadian history and cut taxes, eroding government fiscal wiggle room in the face of crisis. In that, he mimicked one of America’s most fiscally irresponsible presidents, Ronald Reagan, (surpassed only by George W. Bush) who ran up the greatest deficits in U.S. history.
This winter Harper is about to preside over the largest deficits since Trudeau and Mulroney. Ouch.
Let’s turn to Quebec. As a Reformer, Harper raged against Mulroney and Liberal pandering to Quebec.
Yet Harper declared the Québécois a “nation,” without definition and seeming to exclude any Quebec resident who does not belong to or buy into the francophone tribe. In opposition, he would have seen this as an invitation for separatists to press for more.
Let’s turn to agriculture. As a private economist and politician, he thought protectionist supply management was a blight on the free trade ideology. Now, his government is the greatest fan.
Let’s turn to the Senate. Harper can make a credible argument that his Senate reform creds still are in place because he has proposed reforms that the Liberals blocked.
Still, it must have been odious for him to appoint 18 Senators on Dec. 22.
His argument that to make the Senate democratic he had to undemocratically appoint senators who will support his agenda against the Liberal entitlement crowd has merit. Still, it must have hurt.
Surely, pre-Conservative leader Harper would not have imagined running huge deficits, booking record spending, appointing unelected senators, defending protectionism and coddling Quebec separatists.
Politics can be bittersweet indeed.
