Canada No. 1 despite Harper Derangement Frenzy

Maybe you missed the news last week, which is that Canada under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has just regained its title as the most reputable nation in the world. According to the Reputation Institute’s annual report, Canada remains at the top of a 55-nation list for perceived trust, admiration and respect, based on a survey of 48,000 people around the world.

Easy to miss that story since few media picked it up. Instead, the Canadian media complex is in the grip of Harper Derangement Frenzy (HDF), which is an upgrade to hurricane status from Harper Derangement Syndrome, identified several years ago by Lorne Gunter as “an ideological hatred of Prime Minister Stephen Harper that is so acute its sufferers’ ability to reason logically is impaired.” The upgraded HDF extends the definition to incorporate the media hell-bent on a pre-election campaign to bring down the Harper government regardless of any facts.

HDF has been in evidence for some time, but as the election approaches the media are emerging as the Harper government’s biggest political opponent, bigger than the New Democratic or Liberal parties. The Media Party’s distorted handling of recent dribbles of economic data related to recession and deficits sets new records for overblown news creationism.

At The Grope and Flail, where the anti-Harper machine is running full tilt, the page one headline Thursday claimed “Tory pledge to balance budget takes a hit.” The story was based on a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) forecast that Ottawa could face a $1-billion deficit this fiscal year, thus allegedly breaking Tory commitments. Since the year only just began in April and data are only available for April and May (showing a surplus of $2.1-billion, before special items) it’s a wild forecasting stretch to conclude that Ottawa will show a deficit by the end of next March.

Another headline blasted “The Harper government’s deficit denial” and still another, found on the National Post’s web pages, claimed “Conservatives’ election script clashes with economic reality.” Well, no, it doesn’t, since there is no reality with which to clash or deny.

Forecasts are not reality unless you’re in a whipped-up state of preelection HDF and ready to turn anything into a theme that makes the Harper government look bad.

What we have here are two differing forecasts from two different government bureaucracies — Finance Canada and the PBO — neither of which really has a clue about what the deficit might become over the next 10 months. Even if there were to be a deficit of $1-billion for the year, equal to a minute one-third of one per cent of revenues, it would be a trivial variance easily overcome if any government wanted to. And anyway, who among the electorate would care, outside the HDF crowd?

The earlier wrangle over recession, still rattling through the media, is a hyped manifestation of HDF, an attempt to stick Finance Minister Joe Oliver in a forecasting corner over fragmentary changes in gross domestic product from one month to the next. Some stories now seem to be ready to pin the fall in the Canadian dollar to a 10-year low on the Harper government, even though the Bank of Canada’s rate cut and global commodity prices are the real driving forces behind the plunge. As for Thursday’s news that Canadian retail sales set records in May, early reports failed to blame the Harper government.

Picking HDF samples from the media is like picking apples from a tree in full fall production. One fat pick fell from CBC Radio’s The House last Saturday morning. A full hour of coverage of last week’s premiers’ meeting in St. John’s was filled with anti-Harper declarations from assorted premiers and media guests over Ottawa’s alleged failure to take on climate change and other issues.

Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne and Quebec’s Philippe Couillard painted Ottawa as a villain. Two journalists lamented Ottawa’s failure to act on pensions, climate, health care. And then, for another point of view to bring balance, The House brought in Dale Marshall, national program manager for Environmental Defense, a green activist who attacked Harper for lack of leadership on climate. End of show.

More locally, The Grope and Flail’s HDF team attacked Ottawa Thursday for announcing an $18.4-million infrastructure grant to an aerospace program at Toronto’s Centennial College — without advising the provincial Liberals! What a horror! The grant, coming on the eve on the election call, obviously has a political element. But the Grope and Flail turned the grant into an insulting affront to Ontario’s Liberal government. “Tories grant choice blindsides Ontario,” said the headline on a story in which Ontario’s industry minister, Brad Duguid, said that infrastructure announcement was shocking electioneering. The Ontario government had never been informed, he said.

No mention in the story that in late 2013 Wynne, on the eve of the 2014 provincial election, staged a big event at the same Centennial College aerospace facility to announce her own $26-million grant to the program. But that’s OK, you see, because she’s a Liberal and it’s fine if Liberal governments provide grants as part of their election strategy.

And so it goes and will go from now to election day. The Harper government will be thrashed and hammered day after day — by the media. Nothing Justin Trudeau or Tom Mulcair do will match what appears to be taking shape among editors, columnists, headline writers and reporters. They’re in the HDF zone, and the target is a sitting duck, allegedly alone in his office, a friendless man with no colleagues, no team, no strategy.

Lord knows the government has more than its share of bungles and bad policies to account for. But through the last decade, Canada has fared better than it has under many previous governments. It has certainly outshone the rest of the developed world in economic performance. Its international standing has never been stronger. Even the government’s global carbon strategy, portrayed by many as a national embarrassment, looks good to many other nations. As the table below suggests, Canada remains at the top of the world.