If anyone saved Canada from going into the abyss of Mulroney-era deficits, it was the former finance minister in Jean Chretien’s government. As Preston Manning observed, Canada dodged a bullet in the financial meltdown of 2008 precisely because Martin got the deficit under control in the mid-1990s, casualties and all.
Martin also produced successive budget surpluses, reduced the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio from 70 per cent to 50 per cent and got Canada’s AAA credit-rating restored. Despite this solid domestic record, and international successes involving the creation of the G20, the electorate was unkind. The best Paul Martin could do with voters was a minority government, followed promptly by defeat.
The poison in Martin’s chalice of otherwise vintage wine was scandal. The funneling of public money to Liberal-friendly ad agencies in Quebec for little or no work sank Martin’s ship — along with the suspicion that some of that money made its way into Liberal party coffers. Martin’s ship went down in good economic times over a program that was not his responsibility but that of Jean Chretien and his team.
Compared to the string of Martin budget surpluses, Harper’s current $150-billion deficit, and years of even worse performances, looks pretty dismal. Somebody may be doing very well, but it’s not Joe Average. And whatever Jim Flaherty may be, he is decidedly not the best finance minister in the world — except in Harper’s speaking notes.
Not since the 1930s has the distribution of wealth in the country been worse. The wealthiest one per cent takes home 10 times more than the average Canadian. Canada’s top CEOs, the Harper government’s natural constituency, earn in a day and a half what their typical employees make in a year.
Which is just to say that if Paul Martin were vulnerable to scandal in good times, Harper is even more so in bad ones. Outside of the marketing — the usual orgy of self-congratulatory baloney — his economic record is weak compared to Martin’s. No Conservative likes to hear it, but the key to Canada’s economic health depends not on Flaherty’s prudence, but on events in other countries.
More to the point, the Harper government is sliding from individual scandals toward a reputation for corruption. Its rap sheet is getting longer by the day and even the best-paid Conservative trolls should take note:
The co-hosts of the Conservative election victory party in 2011, senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, are both out of caucus and under investigation by the RCMP.
Celebrity Senate appointment Patrick Brazeau is out of the caucus and facing criminal charges for sexual assault.
Former Conservative party worker Michael Sona is headed to court this spring on charges related to the robocall scandal in the 2011 election — though the bigger story may well turn out to be a trumped-up case against him.
The prime minister’s handpicked chief-of-staff, Nigel Wright, also under RCMP investigation, was dismissed for allegedly deceiving his boss about a $90,000 “gift” he made to Senator Duffy. It took Harper several flatly contradictory versions of his story to get to that point.
The prime minister’s former senior policy advisor Bruce Carson has been charged with influence peddling.
The prime minister’s former parliamentary secretary, Dean Del Mastro, is out of caucus and facing charges from Elections Canada.
The prime minister’s personal appointment to oversee Canada’s spy agency, Arthur Porter, is languishing in a Panamanian jail fighting extradition to Canada to face fraud charges.
The prime minister’s fishing buddy and political cohort Rob Ford self-immolated in a drug and booze scandal — while Harper the moralist remained silent. Nor did he back Jason Kenney when he called for Ford’s resignation because he was a disgrace to public life. Like Flaherty, the PM thought the best course was to STFU.
Canadians recently learned that the Communications Security Establishment Canada spies on them, if only “incidentally”. The PM is silent.
Now we find out that the prime minister’s latest CSIS watchdog, Chuck Strahl, is a registered lobbyist for Enbridge and the Northern Gateway pipeline project. Published reports in the Vancouver Observer have linked CSIS to spying on anti-pipeline activists, under the co-ordination of the National Energy Board.
Harper’s answer to the Conservative party’s vanishing reputation for honesty has been arrogance. With just 13 per cent of Canadians believing his version of Duffygate, the PM told party members in Calgary that he “couldn’t care less” what Canadians thought about the scandal. In the House of Commons, the Conservatives described the Senate scandal as an “invention” of the media.
Which brings me to Harper’s strategy for winning in 2015 (assuming that he runs, which is a big assumption): “balancing” the budget and trumpeting free-trade deals.
Even those are marketing shams. For one thing, signing an agreement in principle is no cause for celebration without the details of what is actually in the deal. Canadians don’t have that information about the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe — the risibly described “Wayne Gretzky of free trade agreements”. For now, at least, more is known about the secret formula for Coca-Cola.
As for balancing the budget, it’s being done not by growing the economy but by cutting social services, selling foreign embassies and flogging Canada’s stock of gold coins. It is a shaky plan, premised as it is on the idea that the only thing that matters to Canadians is their pocketbooks.
Harper came to power on the promise that his government would be accountable, honest and efficient. These are the values of his base. Some puzzle over the fact that Harper’s poll numbers are sinking but there’s no real mystery here.
Former Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber, who warns that some Conservative MPs may not re-offer in 2015 because they can’t win under this government’s banner, had it right when he told iPolitics on Dec. 31 that “Conservatives all across the country have a wisdom and common sense that is conspicuously absent from Langevin Block, where people are consumed with their own importance.”
It is the old, sad song of politics.
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