Harper does soft-shoe shuffle

PM quietly rejigs cabinet with eye on election

Stephen Harper has had a fine old week. Which is curious, considering he’s newly short one experienced and skilled foreign minister, one Toronto suburban MP and one formerly devoted retainer, with rumours of further departures swirling. How can things be so good for this prime minister, when they’re so bad?

Answer, in a nutshell: Opposition weakness. In last Friday’s Supreme Court decision legalizing assisted suicide, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were blessed with the equivalent of a breakaway on an open net. They fired the puck high and catapulted themselves headlong into the boards with the Eve Adams floor-crossing. Mr. Harper, meantime, carefully moved his players, in a way that shores up his defence in key areas. It does not bode well for the Grits as the government-in-waiting.

Consider that, the same morning Mr. Trudeau sat smiling beside turncoat Tory MP Ms. Adams, blithely unaware of the incredulous skepticism that was about to engulf them both, Mr. Harper without fanfare shifted Rob Nicholson to Foreign, Jason Kenney to Defence, and put James Moore atop his cabinet committee on the economy. All this was calculated to strengthen the Tories’ position ahead of the coming election. And it will likely have that effect.

Parsing Mr. Nicholson’s move to Foreign is a nobrainer: It keeps the most prominent future leadership aspirants — including Mr. Kenney, Mr. Moore, Lisa Raitt, Tony Clement and Chris Alexander — away from that prize, ensuring domestic peace, while installing someone who will do as he’s told. This appointment bolsters the theory that outgoing minister John Baird, for all his strengths, was too independent for the PM’s liking — particularly at a time when Mr. Harper personally is directing foreign policy, looking ahead to the coming campaign.

The Kenney move is intriguing. He is known to have dearly wanted Finance last year, only to see it go to Joe Oliver. And, as reported by my colleague John Ivison, Mr. Kenney was equally keen on Foreign, this time. But Defence is nothing to sneeze at, particularly now, with Canadian warplanes and special forces in Iraq. Of greater con- sequence, though, particularly from the PMO’s point of view, may be that Mr. Kenney won’t be easily bamboozled by his new department.

Within Conservative circles there is a view that the F-35 fighter meltdown was bequeathed to the government by DND, and that it might have been avoided had the minister at the time, Peter MacKay, been less deferential to the military brass. Since then Defence has been shorn of much of its authority over procurement — but that hasn’t turned out to be any kind of fix.

More than two years after the F-35 purchase went supernova, and even as Canada’s old warplanes are coming in handy in Iraq and Eastern Europe, there is still no progress on a new fighter. Meantime, with Arctic sovereignty on the boil, the first of five or six new Canadian Arctic patrol ships is not due to float until 2018, at the earliest. The Navy last year retired two destroyers and two supply ships. Its Halifax-class frigates are undergoing a refit.

Amid these straits, the Canadian Forces need an influential minister who will pound the table for more resources, and have the PM’s ear. Mr. Kenney qualifies. His appointment further signals that Defence will loom large both in the coming budget, and the Tory election platform.

Why did Mr. Harper not move Mr. Oliver out of Finance, while he was at it? It has become painfully clear, since the collapse in the price of oil side-swiped the government’s fiscal plans, that Mr. Oliver struggles to communicate. In House of Commons exchanges he barely holds his own. But he has other attributes, namely reliability. A change in such a key position so soon would have unsettled markets and sent a message of panic. Therefore Mr. Moore is elevated to a position from which he can speak with greater authority about the government’s economic measures. The Industry Minister is easily the cabinet’s most fluid speaker on kitchen-table issues.

Beyond all that, looming in the middle distance, is this question: What surprises will the April budget hold? The Tories know they’re vulnerable on procurement, and the botched veterans’ file. Further, senior Conservatives are aware that Mr. Trudeau’s economic plan, aimed at soft conservative swing voters, is looming. And there’s the environment, where the government has long been three steps behind, and continues to be.

Given all this, and the nature of the threat Mr. Trudeau presents, it will not be surprising if the budget brings more money for veterans, procurement reform, something new on greenhouse gases (in lockstep with the government of Alberta), and a broader-thanexpected middle-class tax cut. The Conservatives believe they have some fiscal room for the latter, I am told, despite plunging oil revenue.

Here’s the bottom line: The great tax-cut wars of 2015 are set to begin. Next to that, defections and departures are small potatoes. The Liberals have unaccountably got themselves sidetracked at a critical moment with internal manoeuvering and controversy; while Mr. Harper quietly takes care of business, his gaze trained raptor-like on his core suburban voter. It’s déjà vu, perhaps, all over again.

The Tories know they’re vulnerable on procurement