By Isaac Bickerstaff
Before the train entered the long dark tunnel of the parliamentary summer recess, its engineer, Firewall Stephen Harper, managed an unplanned acceleration of his electoral self-destruction. You will recall that, after the meltdown over the Afghan prisoner fiasco, when Harper and his ministers were at daily if not almost hourly sixes and sevens as to what happened and who knew it, he went off to the G-8 summit in Germany to try to sell his herniated green plan as the solution to other leaders as hapless as he in the face of the fact of global warning. No one gave him the ghost of a chance but, as weird luck would have it, all the other G-8 leaders—Merkel, Sarkozy, Prodi & Co .— turned out to be as hapless as Our Steve, and Steve could claim something almost resembling success. On the downside, he earned the contempt of Bono and Geldoff, who, as international rock-star celebrities, are infinitely more significant than any Prime Minister.
As it turned out, none of this mattered: while Firewall was out of the country, the political boil that had been swelling in the Atlantic provinces, fed by a toxic Danny Williams much annoyed by Harper reneging of a thrice repeated election promise not to include offshore oil revenues in Equalization Payment calculations, burst in a gusher of political acrimony. A Nova Scotia Tory MP, Bill Casey, threatened to vote against the Government’s Budget Implementation Bill if the offending language in
the Budget wasn’t rescinded. The PMO struck back by publishing a letter in the leading Halifax newspaper disparaging Casey, Williams, and Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald (a Tory like Williams). The result was universal public wrath in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and Casey struck out in the House, just as he said he would. He was expelled immediately from the Conservative caucus.
In the leadup to the vote, the PMO, Tory whip, senior ministers,
old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, did all they could by means of who knows what promises, bribes, and threats to avert the defection of other Atlantic MPs. There was a lot of apocalyptic speculation in the media that the Goverment would fall over this fiasco.
The actual vote, however, turned out to be anticlimatic; the Budget Implementation passed with the faithful support of the Bloc.
But Harper’s self-induced crisis did not end there. The offending letter to the Chronicle-Herald was not the work of Stephen Harper who, you will recall, was out of the country, but of his Communications Director, the redoutable Sandra Buckler (who, rumour has it, is referred to affectionately by those who work for her as “that twisted bitch”). The super zealous Buckler, who talks like one of Dr. Who’s Daleks (“exterminate all Liberals… exterminate…), tends to compound Harper’s nastiness, as
she did here. Not to be outdone by a minion, Harper in the House challenged the outraged Premiers (now three in number, joined by Saskatchewan’s Lorne Calvert) to sue him, and then threatened to sue them. It was sheer bullying bravado from a Prime Minister who had run out of ideas, agenda, and temper, and was sinking in the polls.
Harper must be relieved to get everyone out of Ottawa so that he can rethink and regroup. But major damage has been done that will be difficult if not impossible to undo. The PM’s trustworthiness has been called into question among voters; fissures have opened in the Tory caucus and party between left and right, between both left and right and the PMO. All this to be sorted out while the train is in the summer tunnel. God knows what moans and screams we will hear from the dark Tory underground, or what
will emerge at the other end in September. Will Harper pull together a new agenda? Will he prorogue the House and start a new session with a Throne Speech? He seems to have given one indication of the future: When he was in Afghanistan after the prisoner screwup, he implied that Canadian forces would remain in combat beyond the legislated pullout date of February 2009. In a parting shot to the media, he stated that he would
seek to extend the mandate only if he could achieve “consensus” with the Opposition. In other words, ending the mission would be the Opposition’s responsibility, not his. This is a plausible exit strategy for someone as averse to accepting responsibility as old Firewall. He is acknowledging obliquely that the majority of Canadians really do disapprove of
his Afghanistan policy and that it is an electoral liability, especially in Quebec.
Or it may be another off-the-top, for-immediate-effect zinger without consideration of consequences, which is far more typical of Harper than carefully considered remarks that can bear interpretation. In either case, he rachets up the speed of the train. Onward to Gotterdamerung!
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