Harper deserves sympathy — but won’t get much
If Prime Minister Stephen Harper had shown an ounce of contrition over his ill-fated plan to make Canada a global energy superpower, voters might be inclined to give him a break.
He couldn’t have known the price of oil would drop by 57 per cent since last June. No one did. He couldn’t have foreseen that hydraulic fracking would become commercially viable in the U.S., undercutting demand for Canadian oil and gas.
He couldn’t have anticipated that nine years after he took power Alberta’s liquid gold would be landlocked. Pipeline building had never been a problem in the past (with the sole exception of the Mackenzie Valley inquiry in the 1970s).
Why, then, is there so little sympathy for Harper outside Alberta? What prevents fair-minded Canadians from seeing him as a victim of circumstances?
The first impediment is his absolute refusal to admit he misjudged Canada’s prospects. Even now, with the bottom dropping out of his budgetary calculations, Harper insists he is a masterful economic manager, the only safe choice for prudent voters. His skewed self-image and his unwillingness to adjust to events stifle any fellow feeling.
The second problem is that the PM is partly responsible for his own predicament. Although events conspired against him, he made matters worse. Discarding diplomacy, he publicly lectured the U.S. government that approving the Keystone XL pipeline designed to move bitumen from Hardisty, Alta., to the Gulf of Mexico should be a “complete nobrainer.” U.S. President Barack Obama didn’t take kindly to Harper’s needling. He still hasn’t given the project a green light. Similarly, Harper and his ministers lashed out at “radical groups” for hijacking the pipeline approval process and undermining the economy. Environmentalists dug in their heels.
The third is Harper’s overt favouritism toward Alberta. His government subsidized the oilsands while dismissing Ontario’s efforts to develop green energy. He treated central Canada’s manufacturing woes as an unfortunate, but unpreventable, byproduct of globalization. His ministers hunted down employment insurance recipients in the job-scarce Maritimes to ensure they were actively looking for work. He changed Canada’s equalization formula when Ontario became a have-not province.
The fourth is his obduracy on climate change. While other nations cleaned up their act, Harper broke Ottawa’s global commitments, ignored its emission-reduction targets and made no effort to put a price on pollution. The payback for sacrificing Canada’s reputation as a responsible member of the global community? A commodity the industry can’t sell in an oil-saturated world.
The fifth is his attempt to smear and silence charities. No prime minister has ever resorted to auditing charities that don’t share the government’s ideology or objectives. Since 2012, the Canada Revenue Agency has targeted more than 50 environmental organizations, anti-poverty groups, foreign aid providers and left-leaning think-tanks. Even people who don’t belong to — or donate to — these charities are disturbed by the lengths to which Harper will go to get his way. The sixth is the prime minister’s contempt for Canada’s democratic institutions. He has shut down the House of Commons repeatedly, jammed dozens of pieces of legislation into a few massive take-it-or-leave-it omnibus bills, fired public watchdogs, refused to allow parliamentarians to scrutinize government spending, withheld public information, gagged federal scientists and replaced Canada’s detailed census with an unreliable household survey. Under Harper, Ottawa has become increasingly opaque, inaccessible and unaccountable.
Finally, there is his chilly, inscrutable persona. If Canadians liked Harper better — even knew him better — they might be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. But after three mandates, he remains a closed book. It is unfortunate the nation can’t separate the prime minister’s policy miscalculations from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But he chose his style of leadership. He picked his tactics. He assumed the goodwill of the people was expendable.