PM’S ruthless style is eroding his power
MONTREAL— It is not necessary to espouse the opposition mantra that Canadians deserve better than what Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have been delivering to find that many voters did expect better on election night 2011.
That starts with those who bridged the gap to a Conservative governing majority by switching their vote to Harper in that election. At mid-mandate, polls suggest most of them feel they have been let down.
The latest voting intentions sounding — done by Harris/Decima for The Canadian Press earlier this week — shows the Conservatives in second place, seven points behind the Liberals and more than 10 points down from their 2011 level.
A widespread attraction for the latest shiny object in the federal leadership window is boosting the Liberal score. But Justin Trudeau is also reaping what Harper so assiduously sowed over the first half of his majority mandate.
It is not unusual for a government to shed support over the first half of its term. That is when the policy heavy lifting usually gets done. But it is more unusual for a governing party to devote so much energy on making unrelenting nastiness one of its defining features.
Many Canadians used to believe that the take-no-prisoners approach Harper brought to his first two mandates was borne out of the necessity of fighting for survival in a minority Parliament
Over the past two years that assumption has been proven wrong. With a consistency that would have been exemplary if only it had been exerted on the policy front, the majority Conservatives have treated Parliament and the country to more of the same.
At times it has seemed as if, having fought so hard to conquer a majority, they felt compelled to act like an occupying army rather than a government accountable to all. It is not as if Canadian voters were shrinking violets. In his day Jean Chrétien throttled an anti-poverty activist. He shut down the Somalia inquiry. He cut the legs from under Joe Clark, wooing over most of his Quebec MPs on the very day the two-time Tory leader returned to the Commons. His spin doctors mercilessly caricatured Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day. The list could go on. Yet at the tail end of his tenure, the three-term Chrétien was still riding high in the polls. The ingredient of that success was not — as the current prime minister seems to believe — a ruthless style but rather a series of signature policies for which support extended outside the core Liberal base. A return to balanced budgets, the Clarity Act and a refusal to follow the Americans’ lead on Iraq are three examples. By comparison, Harper has so far managed to alienate all but diehard Conservative believers. And yet when he first came to office in 2006, the current prime minister did not lack for consensual goals. He promised to fix the democratic deficit that plagued Parliament. Instead Harper’s contribution to that deficit already surpasses that of his predecessors. The Conservatives were going to end the culture of entitlement that pervaded previous governments. Instead, some of Harper’s senators and ministers have embraced that culture in relative impunity.
The Prime Minister also vouched to restore accountability to government. Instead, he has presided over increasingly opaque budgets and a Kafkaesque regime of communication designed to obscure rather than inform. The auditor general himself has trouble following the money through the federal system these days.
Harper’s brand has deteriorated since the last election. That cannot be put down to the so-called Trudeau effect and it should not be treated lightly by the Conservatives for the prime minister defines the character of the government and character is ultimately what voters base their judgment on.
Former prime minister Paul Martin’s demise reached the point of no return when a magazine affixed the label of Mr. Dithers upon him. At the midpoint of a majority mandate that has featured more partisan negativity than high-road governance, Harper seems intent on going down in history as a political bully. It is not a title to be proud of. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.