Another budget bill full of sneakiness and bellicosity. Another auditor general’s report showing that the government needs new batteries for its calculator.
Just as in the movie, our Wizard is playing the bully with the big stick to the very end. In big things and little ones, the movie Wizard was nothing like the superior being that Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Lion expected to see when he was finally exposed. With Stephen Harper there is not much on display other than the lust to control, exercised with that familiar and most un-Canadian mean streak. What? Did someone take his rubber ducky away when he was a kid?
Here are some little things. When Hugo Chavez died, Stephen Harper acted like a crude bumpkin. is official reaction wasn’t quite “good riddance” — but it was close. You don’t have to wear Che Guevara T-shirts to extend sympathies to the family of the deceased. It comes with being a citizen of the world, a leader and a human being. I guess the reaction in Venezuela to Harper’s remarks makes the case. A diplomatic protest is not the usual response to “condolences.”
And speaking of diplomacy, the prime minister didn’t bother extending congratulations to new Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. Before Trudeau even had the confetti from his victory party brushed off his jacket, he was treated to trashy Conservative attack ads. That was followed by the promise of Tory hate-mailers about his alleged inexperience, to be shipped to every Conservative riding in Canada at the taxpayers’ expense. Technically legal — but slithering along the edges of sleaze.
This gauche, classless behaviour registered even with members of the Conservative caucus. Some of them have privately told Trudeau they don’t want any part of these so-called ten-percenters. Other Conservative MPs, like Brent Rathgeber, Mike Allen, Stephen Wordsworth and Kevin Sorenson, have said so publicly. Good on them.
Why do these little things matter? It’s about getting along. Political affiliations are one thing, personal relations quite another. In Stephen Harper’s universe, political affiliation is everything and the state of war is perpetual. Come right down to it, there is only one political allegiance that matters — it’s not to any known notion of conservatism, but to Harper personally. Like the Wizard, Stephen Harper is a cult.
I was talking the other day to one of Canada’s great public servants — a man who, in fact, was recruited by Harper when he came to power. Robert Marleau spoke about the days when the facade of partisanship often vanished, and quite pleasantly so, when members opposite got together out of the glare of the TV lights. In the House of Commons they were rival parties: Behind the scenes they were just men and women with a lot in common. Not now. As Bob Marleau put it, “Political chivalry is dead these days in Ottawa.”
So the little things matter. They confer civility in an abrasive profession, transform screed into dialogue. In Stephen Harper’s Ottawa the little things are just another sheet of sandpaper with which to rub the opposition, the media, or anyone else not with the program.
And that takes me to a few of the big things. I was reading Simon Winchester’s book, The Meaning of Everything, and came across this self-description of a man who had a hand — a mischievous one — in the remarkable creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. His name was Benjamin Jowett and he aimed “to arrange my life in the best possible way, that I may be able to arrange other people’s’.”
The Oxonian and the prime minister would have liked each other. Stephen Harper enjoys arranging and de-constructing the affairs of others, too. The list is long and sad, from the talented Linda Keen and Munir Sheikh to Richard Colvin and Kevin Page. It also includes institutional casualties like the Canadian Wheat Board and the Experimental Lakes Area. Among the PM’s latest targets is the CBC.
It is appalling that this latest assault has become the excuse for some to air petty grievances about the national broadcaster. We’ve all done our share of that in the past. The CBC is everybody’s old girlfriend. This is not the time to be bloviating about whether or not the CBC should exist — as heady and intriguing a debate as that could be.
There is only one thing worth saying loudly at this moment in time: As long as the CBC as we know it exists, the Harper government should keep its weasly hands off. They’ve already bled the place dry with budget cuts. They’ve already stacked the CBC’s board with eight of their own. And they don’t need to be interfering with the collective bargaining rights of some of the country’s best journalists. Heritage Minister James Moore may say he wants a warm and fuzzy relationship with the CBC. The only relationship this government seeks is the one that unites a dog and its owner on a walk. It’s called a leash.
Here is another big thing that has been Harperized: the need for everyone to be accountable with public funds — Indian Bands, unions, the provinces, et. al. A lot of people have wondered why Tony Clement, the Sultan of Slush, was ever put in charge at Treasury Board — except maybe to slowly suffocate the CBC. This is the guy and the government that couldn’t be bothered to properly appropriate the funds for the G-8, G-20 and simply lifted the money from the budget of the Canada Border Service Agency. The auditor-general’s report bristles with irony.
Now that Michael Ferguson has confirmed that $3.1 billion has gone missing-in-action from the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative, when can we expect the Attawapiskat Doctrine to kick in? That’s when you set the sharp-pencil boys on a tiny First Nations Band to make sure there’s been no hanky-panky with taxpayers money — and then publish their incompetence.
But Deloitte won’t be doing Tony, either before or after he becomes finance minister. It’s all about making sure that enemies come transparent and with a leash, and the regime remains behind the curtain — as no one knows better than the Wizard.
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