Filibuster CartoonsTitle: How to be prime minister (click to view)
Date: January 26, 2011
Stephen Harper celebrates the fifth anniversary of his election as prime minister of Canada this week. If the years seem to have flown by, it may be due to the fact that not a whole lot has happened during his reign, contrary to the expectations of both critic and supporter alike, who expected a Harper government to dramatically transform the country in a number of extravagant ways.
Harper's lack of ambition in office has prompted one of his outspoken predecessors to weigh in. Speaking to the
Globe and Mail this weekend, former prime minister Brian Mulroney
urged Harper to do something "big" in his remaining time in office, in order to distinguish his administration as one of historic importance.
Mulroney, of course, did many "big things" of his own during his eight years in power, most of which were enormously unpopular. His push for free trade with the United States badly polarized the country, his new, supposedly more efficient "Goods and Services Tax" remains loathed to this day, and his complicated, muddled efforts to twice sweepingly amend the Canadian constitution brought forth enormous regional divides. Indeed, it was the overreach of Mulroney's own premiership that directly spawned the political career of Stephen Harper, who, back then, saw little to admire in the then-prime minister's ultra-ambitious impulses.
Canada, it has often been famously said, is an enormously difficult country to govern. If Mulroney failed at the task, he is hardly alone; most recent prime ministers have hardly been stunning success stories themselves, which makes it hard for Harper to find any particularly useful role models to emulate.
Ironically, if Harper is following the course of any past Canadian leader at all, it may well be that of his hated Liberal predecessor Jean Chretien, who also stayed in power for a long time without really accomplishing much of substance. Though Chretien was considerably more flamboyant and outgoing than Harper, the two share a moderate, low-key approach to governance, defined more by electoral success and partisan strategizing than any significant acts of statecraft. Both likewise seemed to think of their jobs in primarily administrative terms; men who ran Canada's national economy in a sensible and conservative fashion (Chretien even more conservatively than Harper, many would now argue), but not leaders willing to introduce any new, potentially risky schemes of their own. It's hard enough just managing the ones we already have, they would say.
Of course, Stephen Harper's prime ministership also deserves an asterisk in some respects, since he has been running a minority parliament for the longest tenure of any PM in Canadian history. Should he finally win a majority government for his third term — an outcome that seems increasingly plausible if he calls an election sometime this year — then all bets will be off, and perhaps we'll finally see just how big Harper is willing to go.
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