The Bruce Report

There have been times (though, not many) when Stephen Harper’s strategic calculations have been unequal to his ambition. Given the growing fury among the electorate over his decision to suspend Parliament until March, this is one of those times.

            When the pathologically unflappable prime minister casually placed a call to Governor-General Michaelle Jean last month to ask for prorogation (and she, just as casually, consented), he underestimated the degree of public rancour he would inspire.

            So, in fact, did many of us who moil for meaning in the pages of daily newspapers, television broadcasts, and Internet forums. After all, he got away with it a year ago with no discernibly ill effect on his political fortunes. What’s different now?

            Call it the “once bitten, twice shy” syndrome, or the tendency of people to revolt whenever something to which they believe they are entitled – even if it, like a sitting legislature, is not something on which they often ponder – vanishes. But Canadians are riled up and, unfortunately for Harper, just in time for the Olympics.

            Not long ago, this autocrat in democratic sweaters enjoyed a 15-point lead in the polls over his closest rival, the estimable Michael Ignatieff.

The latter made all the rookie mistakes: Talking down to people; smirking in public scrums; assuming voters felt essentially the same way as he did about the course of the nation; believing his own ridiculous press points as the second coming of Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

            Meanwhile, Harper made all the right moves: Eviscerating the Liberal leader as a “Harvard elite”, a “Michael-come-lately”, a “fair-weather” Canuck more interested in the future of his political career (after having spent 35 years out of the country) than in the future of Canada, and a pasty-faced goofball convinced of his telegenic superiority.

            But, oh, how the political temper changes.

            Witness now a prime minister on the run from hundreds-of-thousands of Internet-savvy Canadians determined to vent their spleens and take back a government they were, only mere months ago, content to leave in the hands of a man they reckoned wasn’t the best this country ever produced, but who, under different circumstances, could have been  worse. As one protester at a Montreal rally declared the other day: “He [Harper] is just not a fan of the checks and balances we have in this country.”

            More precisely, the prime minister is not a fan of Parliament, which he views as annoying and obstructionist. He would much rather take his agenda – social, economic, political – to the great, if largely imaginary, unwashed majority. The problem is that most Canadians remain underwhelmed by Harper’s pugilistic brand of populism if only because they’re uncertain where it leads.

            Indeed, can a parliamentary democracy exist without its sitting members? And for all the faults in Canada’s version, how can it conduct the nation’s business in the absence of its various congresses – Commons and Senate committees, among others?

Philosophy professor Daniel Weinstock asks these and other questions in a trenchant analysis, published by both La Presse and the Ottawa Citizen last week.

“The Prime Minister is not only making cavalier use of the discretionary powers entrusted to him in our Parliamentary system, but in so doing he is undermining our system of democratic government,” he writes. “Our parliamentary and constitutional institutions are grounded not just in explicit rules but also in the spirit of those rules.

“Think of the idea of a ‘loyal opposition’ so central to our practice of responsible government. The role of the opposition parties is to hold the government to a high standard of justification. The opposition parties can neglect their responsibilities by being servile and pliant. They can also misuse their powers for narrowly partisan purposes.

We expect them to avoid both these pitfalls.

“What is true of opposition parties is true in spades of the office of the Prime Minister, given the very great powers that are concentrated there in our system of responsible government. We expect that the Prime Minister will do his part to ensure that this system works.”

In other words, in our form of government, executive self-control is just as important as legislative reform. To believe otherwise is Harper’s flaw, and his strategic miscalculation.

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