PM turns up heat in Arctic address

Defends party’s record, hammers political opposition

WHITEHORSE Prime Minister Stephen Harper used the occasion of his eighth annual Arctic summer tour to deliver a blistering, highly partisan and combative speech in which he defended his record across the board and hammered the opposition relentlessly.

“What I’m telling you is that with the NDP and the Liberals, what you see is what you get,” Harper told a crowd of party loyalists in this northwestern Canadian capital of 23,000 on Sunday. “Dangerous ideas and vacuous thinking, that would reverse the progress we have made.”

It was a return to Harper’s style of the last federal election — giving no quarter and, clearly, expecting none.

By turns lauding his government’s achievements in all policy areas, and slamming his critics, Harper sounded more like a campaigner than a midterm prime minister on a relaxed visit to one of his favourite regions. “You have trusted us, and we have delivered, despite the Opposition.”

Harper accused Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats of having policies “so far outside the Canadian mainstream, they don’t want to talk about them.” He slammed Mulcair for having travelled to Washington, “where he lobbied against Canadian energy exports and jobs in private.”

Harper launched into the Liberals as well, saying they “don’t talk about their alternatives, because they don’t have any.” In a dig aimed at Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who has promised to legalize pot, Harper cracked that “I guess I don’t count legalizing the marijuana trade as a serious economic policy.”

There was no mention of the Senate spending scandal, which has dogged the Conservatives for months.

Instead, Harper doubled down on the rhetoric of past election fights.

“Their instincts are all bad,” he charged of the Liberals

‘We believe that, as Canadians, our greatest dreams are to be found in our highest latitudes.’

PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER Speaking to his audience in Whitehorse

and New Democrats. “Tax and spend proposals so extreme they would make the worst European budget look solid in comparison.”

It remained unclear, at this writing, to which tax-andspend proposals Harper referred. Harper even found time to lambaste Chretienera Liberal foreign policy, citing “a so-called soft power approach that would again strip down the military and make Canada’s role in the world about nothing more than pleasing foreign governments.”

The prime minister opened the speech with more customary paeans to doughty Yukoners, lauding their hard work and frontier grit. “It’s about miners, pioneers, adventurers … hardy industrious people from all over the world who, digging for gold, ended up digging the foundations of an increasingly powerful northern economy.”

“We believe that, as Canadians, our greatest dreams are to be found in our highest latitudes.”

There were also a few references to the theme that has been billed as the main focus of this excursion — northern economic development.

The body of the speech, however, was a battle cry. Sounding not at all like someone who has any intention of stepping down before the next election, Harper said that “when the next election comes we will be ready to keep this country moving forward.”

He wound down with a soaring exhortation to the party faithful, to work harder and sacrifice more, for cause and country — then wrapped with a religious closer that hearkened back to his earliest days. “God bless you — and God bless Canada.”

The message of the evening was clear as a Yukon summer sky at dusk: Stephen Harper, like Britain’s Margaret Thatcher a generation ago, is not for turning.