A few ideas for the throne speech

Aspeech from the throne at mid-mandate is a government’s best opportunity to push the reset button and set an agenda going into the next election.

One week away from the opening of a new session of Parliament, the Harper government has selectively leaked two themes for the throne speech — consumers and families.

A sense of country, and where it’s going, would be a good theme as well. Not where the country will be at the next election in 2015, but beyond, on the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017.

Stephen Harper generally doesn’t do the vision thing. He’s more a transactional politician than a transformational figure. But he made an unusual connection with voters in his speech on Parliament Hill on Canada Day, when he spoke of love of country, and the solidarity of all Canadians with Albertans in response to the June floods. It’s a powerful theme, which also resonated in the response to the Lac-Mégantic disaster in July. The rebuilding of those communities in Alberta and Quebec will be costly to the feds, so it makes all the more sense to mention them in the throne speech.

Of course, Harper won’t be delivering the throne speech, David Johnston will, in the usual governor-generalities.

Throne speeches are not rousing occasions, like a state of the union speech in the U.S., where since the time of Ronald Reagan the president has introduced American heroes in the gallery.

Even so, Harper himself will be signing off on the throne speech, if he hasn’t already. The Prime Minister’s Office holds the pen on the throne speech, with the Privy Council Office, the prime minister’s own department, engaging the bureaucracy for ideas.

But the PM is generally the editor, if not the writer, of the speech. Harper has been known to rewrite speeches on his laptop on long plane rides, as he did with a major economic address to the World Economic Forum at Davos. It wouldn’t be surprising if he’d worked on the throne on the plane to Asia last week.

There’s a second sign-off required for the throne speech, and that’s from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Every commitment in the throne speech is costed and carried forward to the budget.

Flaherty has staked his reputation, and the government’s, on balancing the budget by 2015.

There are several challenges in getting there, including $4 billion in foregone revenues from the discount on selling oil to the U.S., not to mention the recent flight from the greenback to the loonie because of the government shutdown in Washington, which has a negative impact on exports. Then there’s the cost of relief dollars to Alberta.

So there isn’t a lot of money for new initiatives, and departments need to be creative in buying their way into the throne speech.

Back in the fall of 1986, when I was holding the pen on a throne speech, I got a call from a friend who was then an assistant deputy minister in what is now the Heritage ministry.

He explained that 1987 was International Literacy Year, and that his department was creating the Literacy Secretariat to promote it.

“I want literacy in the throne speech,” he said. “What have you got?” “I’ve got $25 million,” he replied. “You’re in.” And it was. The themes of consumers and families are not new, as Susan Delacourt points out in her new book, Shopping For Votes, a remarkable study on the marketing of politics in Canada over the last half century.

The leading consumer issue for the Conservatives is the cost of wireless telecom service.

In the run-up to the next auction on wireless spectrum, the government is calling for more competition to the big three incumbents, Bell, Rogers and Telus.

It was an inconvenient moment for the government when U.S. telecom giant Verizon said it wasn’t interested in coming to Canada. But the new industry minister, James Moore, has made it clear that new competitors will be favoured over the incumbents. And besides, there’s no cost to a call for competition.

There’s any number of family issues where low-cost initiatives would be welcomed by stakeholders. For example, there’s already funding for training of persons with disabilities.

And then there are Canada’s First Nations, who this week marked their treaty status in the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation of 1763.

Harper’s best moment ever in the House of Commons was his 2008 apology on residential schools. Harper’s office put out a statement on the occasion Monday, saying he looked forward to making more progress on aboriginal files. And he has struck up a relationship with Shawn Atleo, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, in which they are invested in each other’s success.

The throne speech would be a good starting point for a First Nations agenda.