“No matter where you are in the Conservative Party, whether you’re a Red Tory, or you’re a Reformer or you’re a social conservative, you all sort of see Stephen Harper as a champion,” said Gerry Nicholls, a political consultant who once worked with Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) from 1997 to 2001 when Mr. Harper headed up the National Citizens Coalition. “Once Stephen Harper steps aside, you no longer have that sort of hero, that great general, that Napoleon of politics at the apex of your party, then there could be trouble because I think the party could actually break apart,” said Mr. Nicholls.
Mr. Nicholls’ description of Mr. Harper as “Napoleon” echoes a July 6 column by Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner, who called Prime Minister “the Emperor,” in a column headlined, “Harper likes his ministers weak.”
“In the past, parties in power always had factions, and ministers with their own political clout, and these provided at least a modest check on the power of the Prime Minister.…There’s nothing like this in the Conservative Party because it is new and Stephen Harper built it from the ground up,” wrote Mr. Gardner.
“Harper has never had to deal with ministers who wield their own political clout.…Today, [Defence Minister Peter MacKay] has the political stature of a hobbit.”
Mr. Gardner based his column, in part, on a study published in the Canadian Parliamentary Review by political scientist Bruce Hicks who compared the power of Prime Ministers in Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. In it, Mr. Hicks found that Canada follows party discipline far more loyally than any of the other Westminster models, that in these other Westminster countries there’s an expectation that MPs will sometimes vote and against their government, that Canada has a culture of deference to authority and said it stems from Canada’s “presidentialization” of Canadian politics.
Said Mr. Hicks to The Ottawa Citizen: “It’s a corporation in which one person controls all the mechanisms for fundraising, for distribution, for marketing, for organizing nomination contests in everybody’s riding. It’s all centralized. That’s unique to this party.”
But a senior Conservative source, who did not want to be identified, said Mr. Harper has purposefully built the Conservative Party into a “monolithic” party: “There are not those centres of opinion…the people involved in the caucus now aren’t as prone to taking positions on public policy that diverge from the government’s.”
The Conservative source said down the road the Conservative Party is going to have to assess whether there are “enough Conservatives in the country to sustain and maintain” the party. Today’s Conservative Party, unlike the former Progressive Conservative Party, is not a “big tent” party, and that Mr. Harper has set out and has achieved a monolithic Conservative Party and “a clear choice” on the right, said the source.
Many observers have pointed to the recent example of Conservative MP David Wilks (Kootenay-Columbia, B.C.) who, on May 22, suggested to constituents that the budget bill should be split up, that he didn’t support it, and that 13 government MPs would need to be rounded up to defeat it. Once Mr. Wilks’ exchange was posted on YouTube, the rookie MP issued a statement of complete support for the budget bill.
Created by the merger of the Canadian Alliance, which was formerly the Reform Party, and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, Mr. Harper has been the only leader the new Conservative Party has ever known and his caucus has not gone through the dynamics that arise in a subsequent leadership race.
“[Mr. Harper] doesn’t like that kind of opposition, which is why it’s a very monolithic party, why there’s no youth wing, why they supported a Speaker who’s 30 years of age—he doesn’t want opposition,” said the Conservative source.
While Mr. Nicholls likened Mr. Harper’s management of the Conservative Party to the way an army is commanded, Geoff Norquay, a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and a high-profile Conservative pundit, said Mr. Harper is running the party “like a modern politician in the Canadian context.”
Mr. Norquay said Mr. Harper certainly holds an “unassailable position,” after having played “an absolutely pivotal role” in the creation of the party without having to compete against a large roster of leadership candidates, but said he’s not entirely sure there’s less of a check to Mr. Harper’s power because “old leadership factions really fall away pretty quickly.”
Mr. Nicholls said the Conservatives do have factions, but after carefully toeing the line during their years of minority government, he said MPs are now afraid of Mr. Harper and the muted factions that still exist don’t have any clout.
“The only person who stood up to [Liberal prime minister Jean] Chrétien was [Liberal finance minister] Paul Martin, and he had a very strong power base of his own and he was expected to be the heir apparent, so he wasn’t as afraid of Chrétien as other Liberals might have been, but there is no equivalent in the Conservative Party right now,” said Mr. Nicholls.
Mr. Nicholls said Mr. Harper is the glue keeping the Conservative caucus together, and because of that, said he foresees “some trouble in the Conservative party post-Stephen Harper.”
“You could see this party sort of break apart at the points where there are divisions…because it’s all been about Stephen Harper…there are going to be new generals emerging from the different factions of the party and I think that that could lead to some trouble,” said Mr. Nicholls.
But Tim Powers, vice president of Summa Strategies and another high-profile Conservative pundit, said one of Mr. Harper’s strengths is his ability to learn from competitors in determining what works and what doesn’t.
Mr. Powers said Mr. Harper developed a model for success, just as “each leader has a different model.” When Mr. Harper is gone, Mr. Powers said the next leader will do the same.
Mr. Norquay said every Prime Minister is “accused” of exercising more power and being “more centralizing than his or her predecessor…everything that has been written about Mr. Harper’s government…the exact same words were written about Mr. Mulroney’s government.”
Moreover, Mr. Norquay said the media expect to see discipline and coordination in the government.
“The Canadian media see political dissent in a caucus as a sign of weak leadership, chaos, lack of direction, lack of discipline,” said Mr. Norquay.
Mr. Powers said while he agrees that Mr. Harper has organized the party into a tightly-disciplined machine, “I think it’s insulting and not reflective of reality to dismiss those who make the machine work: the Cabinet, the MPs and the party workers and others.”
Mr. Powers said comments that Cabinet is a “one-man show” are too simplistic, one-sided, and “show a complete lack of understanding about government if you think one man can control an entire government operation.”
The senior Conservative source said Mr. Harper’s Cabinet and PMO: run with a very “top down” approach, but said so did former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s, who was dubbed “The Friendly Dictator.”
Mr. Nicholls said parties have been moving towards heavy centralization and discipline over the decades, and said if New Democrats win government they would likely adopt a similar approach.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Laura Ryckewaert
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