They’re often subtle and sometimes hard to interpret. But Stephen Harper listens to local opinion, allows questions from the media (which he almost never does in Ottawa) and adjusts his course ever so slightly.
Last week’s West Coast visit was an interesting example. Harper went to Vancouver to attend Senator Gerry St. Germain’s barbecue, a 28-year Conservative tradition, and to re-announce his party’s plan to offer paid leave to parents who take time off work to care for a child with a life-threatening illness.
But British Columbians wanted to talk about the North Gateway project, a 1,172-kilometre pipeline proposed by Enbridge to carry bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to tankers plying the dangerous waters between Kitimat and the Queen Charlotte Islands. And talk they did, giving him an angry earful.
In Ottawa, Harper had been adamant that he wanted the $6-billion pipeline built and clear that he was prepared to use his executive power to dislodge obstacles and prevent delays. On the eve of his departure, he imposed a strict deadline (Dec. 31, 2013) on the National Energy Board, now holding public hearings on the proposed pipeline.
To complement these moves, Enbridge ran full-page newspaper ads across the country defending its safety record and emphasizing its determination to prevent oil spills. But when the prime minister arrived in B.C., he discovered how complicated and politically volatile the situation was.
He softened his hard-line stance, setting tongues wagging. “Decisions on these kinds of projects are made through an independent evaluation conducted by scientists into the economic costs and risks,” he told reporters, showing more respect for the regulatory process than he had ever done in Ottawa.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May hailed this as an about-face. “It was a complete abandonment of all Harper message-machine management over the last year.”
British Columbians greeted the prime minister’s apparent retreat with relief.
Environmentalists warned it might not be a retreat. Harper hadn’t promised to follow the NEB’s recommendations or to heed the will of the people, they pointed out.
Cynics dismissed the prime minister’s latest pronouncement as a semantic ruse.
His words were so ambiguous that any of these readings might have been correct, a tactic he has often used in the past.
But his record suggests he did an on-the-spot cost-benefit analysis:
• If he drove the pipeline through a province that clearly didn’t want it, he would put his party’s 21 B.C. seats at risk. The winner in that scenario would be the ascendant New Democratic Party.
• More immediately, he would help the provincial New Democrats unseat the governing Liberals. That ran counter his interests. From a Tory point of view, Premier Christy Clark is a better bet than her NDP rival Adrian Dix. She at least is willing to negotiate a pipeline deal; he is unalterably opposed to the project.
• If he sided unequivocally with Enbridge, he’d be up against a powerful array of forces: 61 First Nations, dozens of coastal communities fearful of increased tanker traffic, local environmentalists, national oilsands foes and millions of British Columbians. The odds of winning were too low for comfort.
So Harper recalibrated his short-term position, leaving the big decisions for later.
His out-of-town trips don’t always have this salutary effect.
He came to Toronto last month following the city’s worst outbreak of gun violence, met only the mayor, offered no help and didn’t alter his tough-on-crime agenda one iota.
He went to Washington in May for this year’s G8 summit and stuck to his view that austerity — with no help from Canada — is the right prescription for Europe’s moribund economy.
But when he is facing fierce headwinds on a high-stakes issue, Harper bends. That’s what he did in Vancouver.
The more exposure he has to Canadians, the more often it will happen.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Carol Goar
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