Harper Talk

I watched Stephen Harper on The National’s “Your Turn” last evening. It was nice of him to show up, you know, after canceling the town-hall-like event and then avoiding rescheduling until the last week of the campaign.

The Conservative handlers have been keeping a tight reign (muzzle, actually) on most candidates during this campaign, and the last thing they wanted was to have Stephen Harper doing adlib on national television. It’s understandable, especially considering just how crazy some of these candidates are. Case in point: yesterday, after Stephen Harper showed up to endorse a candidate who once stated his belief that condoms cause AIDS, the handlers ushered the candidate away to avoid any off-the-cuff incidents. With the looming election all but a formality to seal a Conservative minority government, however, I guess the Conservative communications folks saw not too much to lose.

Indeed, Stephen Harper didn’t lose anything last night. He actually had a pretty easy ride if you ask me. Nothing controversial about this controversial man came up at all, nor did any questions about the Conservative party’s social policies. I was at least hoping that someone would chastise him on his proposal to revisit the same-sex marriage question or on his proposed legal wonderland in which he says he can override Charter rights without using the notwithstanding clause. No one really asked Harper any tough questions and he pretty much stuck to the “moderate Harper” image that the Conservatives have ironed on him. I seriously wonder if there were Conservative sentiments in the research firm that selected the questions; it really was too easy for him.

The only interesting tidbit that one viewer prodded him on was why his party chose two very different slogans for its English and French campaigns, and why the word “Canada” appears in the English slogan but not the French slogan. Harper explained this in marketing-speak, saying simply that the slogans are targeted at two different segments of the population. Harper explained that the Conservative platform and policies are the same in both official languages, however, so not to worry. While maybe otherwise insignificant, I think the two different slogans are really a small glimpse into Harper’s brand of federalism. If you thought Martin was an asymmetric federalist, just watch Harper. I wouldn’t have picked the word “separatist” as Buzz Hargrove did, but Harper is most definitely an extreme asymmetric federalist. I have no doubt that Canada under a Harper majority government, while addressing the so-called fiscal imbalance, would quickly erode into a collection of parts. Hargrove certainly had that part right.

Two areas that Harper really avoided getting burned on last night were on his views on the United States and aboriginal affairs. When Peter Mansbridge asked Harper about how experienced he is in foreign affairs, Harper humbly stated that he doesn’t have much experience in that area (he currently leaves that to Stockwell Day). When asked about how much he has traveled outside of Canada, he spoke about how he has traveled extensively within Canada… and… uh… North America, but not much outside of that. You could see him squirming up there trying to think about how to avoid relating himself personally to the United States. And no one poked further. How about this: Harper’s long-time right hand man, Tom Flanagan, is a far right-wing academic from the United States who took up residence in the University of Calgary’s political science department along with the other conservatives of the Calgary School. Flanagan has some pretty controversial views on aboriginal relations in Canada. Surprisingly, no one has ever questioned this during the campaign, and no one questioned him last night while he was on the topic of aboriginal relations. And then there’s that speech that Harper gave back a few years ago to American conservatives, calling America’s conservative movement a “beacon of hope” to Canadian conservatives such as himself. Yeah, the speech is old news, and it may not represent the way he will govern, it is frightening nonetheless.

I really must congratulate Mr. Harper on his performance throughout this campaign, however. His campaign has been executed almost flawlessly. I guess the Conservatives/Canadian Alliance/Reform parties have had a lot of practice in campaigning; they’ve had essentially a decade to prepare for this and correct their mistakes of the past, which have almost always had to do with appearing too right-wing and radical for the average Canadian to stomach.