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COMMENTARY
June 1, 2011
Impregnable Harper
Canada's longest-serving minority government (two Parliaments, over five years, tipping Pearson's record by a few days) may be followed by Canada's longest-serving majority government (12 Parliaments, over 48 years, assuming Harper lives to 100). I am taking bets now, redeemable in 2059. My guess is, something will go seriously wrong, in the early 2040s, and Stephen Harper will be toast. Alternatively, he makes one too many trips to Afghanistan.But for the visible part of the sea ahead, he has clear sailing. I've been off on annual leave the last five weeks, so was unable to give gentle reader my instant jaded analysis of the election result. Let us begin by catching up with that. As I wrote, during the campaign, Harper was winning a majority by ignoring the opposition, the media, the academics, other "opinion leaders," indeed the whole rancid governing class, and telling people directly they could trust him with their money. This is essentially what Guy Giorno, the Tory campaign chief, repeated to the Economic Club of Canada on Monday. Giorno emphasized, "no grandiose schemes." Harper wisely promised a nervous electorate only to keep the sails in trim. What got me, what got everybody, was the NDP surge. They had no business taking all those Bloc seats in Quebec. No French Canadian has been able to explain to me why this happened. Nor can we plausibly attribute it to a nefarious Harper scheme (though I think Harper was, and will continue to be, the chief beneficiary). After more than a century of voting consistently, and often cleverly, to get the most out of the federal government in return for the least contribution, with whining rights to spare, Quebec suddenly voted to throw in her cards. Note, the NDP surge in the rest of Canada was modest, and only enough to elect a lot of Tories in tight seats, in Atlantic provinces and Ontario, by bleeding away the Grit vote. It wasn't enough to threaten Tory bastions out West. This is the part of the election result that Harper fully intended, by concentrating all fire on poor hapless Michael Ignatieff, and letting the dying Liberal Party of Canada pay for all the scare ads against the creeping socialists. Harper himself granted Jack Layton an entirely unmerited free pass. The plan is: next election Layton gets Ignatieffed. It will be easy. The Tories will wait until the election is in view, then buy off Quebec. (I told you my analysis would be jaded.) Meanwhile, Harper looks forward to a full term with an inexperienced and rather batty opposition, who can be counted on to show themselves unfit to govern a suburban daycare. I voted Tory myself, but Harper scares me. Gentle reader must remember that I am what they call a "social conservative" -possibly the last one alive in the media mainstream, though I share most of my views with millions of Canadians. I'm the sort of person who admires Cheryl Gallant, and thinks well of the constituents of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, who consistently return her by large margins. She who drives my colleagues round the twist. Now, Harper made a fairly explicit pact with all the millions of Canadian "social conservatives," including those in his own caucus. It was, "Support me, and I will give you nothing." This compared favourably with what the other parties were offering: more social engineering, on the current "progressive" agenda. We have, most likely, an extended timeout from legal euthanasia and whatever comes next after same-sex marriage. But we would be wrong to think the government in Ottawa is even slightly sympathetic to those old-fashioned Judeo-Christian civilizational values. We are, to them, a lobby like any other. In Harper's world, as I understand it, the Canada that was once dominated by the Christian religion, has been replaced (thanks largely to social engineering) by a Canada with two major religions, which are mutually antagonistic. There are people who believe in God, and there are people who don't think that question is important. Both have their priesthoods. This goes beyond party. But in political terms, the former want less government services and more action to uphold the moral order, both legally and symbolically. The latter want more government services, and to feel good about how they are living. "Gliberalism" has always been an easy political sell. Packaged as "humanism" it has become the default religion - the "opiate of the masses," to coin a phrase. Harper flourishes, politically, by appeasing both camps, while vacating any ground where they are clashing. But he understands all of this coldly and analytically, as opposed to emotionally, creatively, spiritually, and in his gut. He is a very impressive tactician. My worry is that he is like a techie trying to fix a computer, when it is not a computer he is fixing; that he cannot "feel" the consequences of his appeasements. Examples will have to wait to future columns. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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