LARRY ZOLF:
Alliance politics
CBC News Viewpoint | August 22, 2003 | More from Larry Zolf
Stephen Harper has a real trick up his sleeve. This coming fall, on his first opposition day, Harper and the Alliance will move a resolution that marriage is between two heterosexual persons. The trick is that the resolution is identical to one four years ago that was unanimously supported by the Liberal caucus, cabinet and prime minister.
Harper expects to see the Liberals break ranks all over the place, many voting along with the Alliance and most Tories.
But the only free vote the prime minister has promised is on the Supreme Court ruling on a reference made to it. All other votes are not free votes and the party whips may be laid on. If that happens, Harper's strategy to make the Liberals look divided or hypocritical will have failed as the Liberals en masse vote against the Alliance's obvious stunt.
One wonders what will happen then to the cocky smirk Harper wears every time he's talking about Chrétien and the Liberals. That Harper thinks he's sharper than Chrétien is obvious. That Harper thinks he knows the moral nature of politics better than anyone else on Parliament Hill is just as obvious.
Stephen Harper is very reminiscent of another reactionary but brilliant politician, Mackenzie King's nemesis, Arthur Meighen. Meighen was the most brilliant debater in the House. His friends included socialist Eugene Forsey, the country's greatest expert on the right of dissolution. Meighen thought he was brighter and smarter in all ways than Mackenzie King, for whom he had nothing but contempt.
Meighen's obvious talents frightened King. He saw in Meighen the embodiment of all the Tories who had done in his maternal grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie. King feared the acidity of Meighen's tongue, and the forces of Meighen's Toryism. Meighen knew all this and it made his contempt for King both personal and political.
In 1942, when Meighen surfaced again as leader of the Tories and announced he was for conscription, King was beside himself. He felt he couldn't handle the Meighen abuse.
Then Meighen announced he would run in the York South byelection. The CCF-NDP had a good candidate. King made sure his Liberal machine went to the aid of the CCF-NDP. A united Left left Meighen in tatters and a cry for conscription in the land was stalled once again.
Chrétien is no Mackenzie King when it comes to dealing with Alliance trickery. Chrétien had no fears about Stockwell Day and has little fear of Stephen Harper.
Harper has been easy to outmanoeuvre in the war on Iraq. Harper wanted Canada to be part of the coalition of the willing. Chrétien knew that would not play well in Quebec. It didn't, and the polls showed Chrétien miles ahead on Iraq.
Indeed, as the present chaos in Iraq grows day by day, many Canadians are relieved at what Chrétien has done. Only Harper seemed hell-bent to have Canada join the U.S. in every regime-change or war the Americans may see fit to fall into. Chrétien plays the nationalist card, Harper plays the American card – but Chrétien scoops up all the poker pots.
One wonders who Stephen Harper is listening to. Who's giving him the reality checks he badly needs to have? Harper's Unite the Right manoeuvres are as ill-founded as they've ever been. All polls show that the Tories prefer the Liberals to the Alliance as a second choice. Liberals added to by the NDP vote are clearly a majority of Canadians. There is no Right to be united and Harper hasn't been able to expand his western base.
Nor is Bay Street really any more comfortable with Harper than it was with Stockwell Day. Bay Street found Day simply outlandish; it finds Harper cold and cocky, and not really clued in to its kind of economics.
Bay Street is fiscally conservative, but is anything but socially conservative. Bay Street has no fear of same-sex marriage and no quarrel with the gay community, especially those active on Bay Street. Bay Street has no fears of the Pope or of evangelical Christians.
Bay Streeters sees in Paul Martin someone who understands them and will reflect their fiscal values. In short, Bay Street has nothing in common with Stephen Harper and the Canadian Alliance.
Perhaps Harper has misread Bay Street. Bay Street is no fan of Jean Chrétien's populist leftist Liberalism but it sees in the Liberal party and Paul Martin all it wants and needs. Even with Arthur Meighen, one of their own, Bay Street preferred the C.D. Howe Liberalism that Mackenzie King was bringing to it.
Harper does have a vision for the whole country, but it's really Preston Manning's old Reform policies in another form. Only Harper could talk about a firewall being built around Alberta. That kind of western chutzpah didn't play well in the East. Now that Alberta is hurting with mad cow disease, Harper's whole approach to Alberta increasingly looks frivolous.
Harper's problem is he is the real ideologue on Ottawa's Parliament Hill. While everybody else is playing politics, Harper has his ideology to keep him warm. Harper seems content to lose all the rest of Canada as long as he remains constant to his Reform views and beliefs.
These were the ideology traits Meighen had as Tory leader and twice, briefly, prime minister. King the tortoise always outfoxed Meighen the hare.
Neither Chrétien nor Martin needs to outfox Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper is always ready, willing and able to outfox himself.
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LARRY ZOLF
POLITICAL COMMENTATOR
Veteran journalist and Canadian political expert Larry Zolf is a regular contributor to CBC News Online. Larry has been a critic, reporter, producer and consultant for CBC news and current affairs since he joined the CBC in 1962. Born and raised in North End Winnipeg, the hotbed of general strikes and socialism, Larry has covered stories such as integration in Mississippi and the October Crisis in Quebec. He was one of the hosts of the CBC's flagship current affairs television show "This Hour Has 7 Days." He is now retired.
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