Harper From 1997 Speech to Today’s Action

The point of this post is to see how Stephen Harper may have changed since his 1997 speech to the right wing US think tank, Council for National Policy.

Since the remarks get pulled back into the public sphere regularly to haunt him, it’s reasonable to consider his old commentary in relation to what he’s done as Prime Minister and figure out if his thinking has grown or changed much.

A lot of people are probably familiar with the speech I’m referencing (full text available on the CTV Web site¹). In the speech, Harper made a bunch of disparaging remarks about his country and fellow citizens, and presented a perspective that was grossly simplistic. While some of what he said was probably intended for humour value, the observations, jokes, and overall perspective represent his manner of thinking.

I’ll quote Mr. Harper and then match the quote to something relevant in his tenure as PM.

1) “…it’s legendary that if you’re like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians.”

• Change? Yes: This jest makes one think that Harper wasn’t very impressed with Canadians’ knowledge of history, current events, government, etc. Considering his joke presented the problem, he must have been concerned about this lack of knowledge. Usually a lack of knowledge is solved through learning, or education. While Harper used to be concerned with Canadian education, now he prefers to cut programs designed to improve it.

2) “Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours, a massive brain drain of young professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the United States.”

• Change? Not really: It’s possible Harper’s comment was relatively neutral, suggesting simply that there’s a connection between welfare and low economic growth, indeed you’d imagine that if there isn’t much economic growth there might be more unemployed people needing assistance. However taken in context of the rest of his cynical speech it reads more like he’s disparaging the normally high standard of living we have and Canadian attitudes toward helping those who are less fortunate. He begrudgingly succumbed to improving the employment insurance program. In late 2009, the Conservative minority needed a way to survive a non-confidence vote. They traded their normally feeble stance toward EI for the NDP’s timely demands and temporary support. Background from the CBC² (12 September 2009). The Calgary Sun³ (21 December 2009) reported on the surprising $1B in EI this resulted in–badly needed within the context of an economy hurting from the global economic crisis. Harper was dragged into this one so I can’t give him a “yes” for change in this respect. Also I cannot seem to find any articles confirming whether or not he learned that Canada is not on the European continent.

3) “In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don’t feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don’t feel bad about it themselves, as long as they’re receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.”

• Change? No: Canadian news agencies like the CBC⁴ reported in October 2008, when the economy was heading downhill, job losses were mounting, and people were worrying about how bad it might get that Harper suggested buying stocks. One would have to imagine that he believes the unemployed receive extremely “generous social assistance” for that kind of commentary to resonate.

4) “…our executive is the Queen, who doesn’t live here. Her representative is the Governor General, who is an appointed buddy of the Prime Minister.”

• Change? No: Although he didn’t appoint this particular Governor General, Harper phones her up for a little friendly prorogue whenever he’s having a bad day.

5) “…the Senate, our upper house, is appointed, also by the Prime Minister, where he puts buddies, fundraisers and the like. So the Senate also is not very important in our political system.”

• Change? No: He still doesn’t seem to believe that the Senate is important in our political system. The proof is in his actions. He said it wasn’t important because it was an appointed body of buddies. Yet Harper has appointed many senators, in spite of committing to making it an elected body.

6) Referring to the executive, two legislative houses, and supreme court: “. . . if you sort of remove three of the four elements, what you see is a system of checks and balances which quickly becomes a system that’s described as unpaid checks and political imbalances.”

• Change? No: Harper reaffirmed how imbalanced our system is when he twice prorogued parliament (see the little friendly prorogue link above) and went ahead carrying out his Conservative program, unchecked and chock full of deficit. Of course, if he’d just let our system’s watchdogs do their jobs, we might have a little more checking going on.

7) “. . . the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.”

• Change? Yes and No: Although it sounds like Stephen Harper doesn’t like the NDP much (he saw them as interference) he’s grown to see them, like the Liberals and Bloc, as a source for occasional support deals–when it serves his ulterior political motives. I mentioned one example above: the EI versus non-confidence issue. Harper also once upon a time, approached the NDP to help him form a coalition to topple the former Liberal government. If you’re Harper, that’s making a deal with the devil. Of course, they’re too far apart ideologically for that to have worked and when it truly didn’t work he chose to brush his little rejection under the carpet. Later, running from his own imminent loss to a non-confidence vote and Liberal/NDP coalition, he dishonestly framed coalitions as undemocratic⁵. Seems even lost opportunities with the devil can come back to bite. The CBC⁶ article from 1 December 2008 says
  

  “All three opposition leaders accused Harper of reversing his position, pointing to a 2004 letter to the governor general by then Opposition leader Harper that suggested he be allowed to form a coalition government if Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government were to fall. Layton said Harper should remember the meetings in which he proposed the coalition. “I walked out,” the NDP leader said, adding that he wrote about it in his book.”

People change. At least I believe people are capable of changing. Cynics might like to argue that point with me (if you convince me to change my mind–I’ll have proven my point). Often times, in the public sphere, a politician will take a particular stand at one point in time and years later, if he or she changes position, the media will call out the past position as though the politician is being dishonest.

While it may be the case that the politician is indeed being dishonest, sometimes it’s also possible that the person’s experience and thinking simply evolved over time. If politicians would just, publicly state when they’ve changed their minds and what led them to change their minds, I think it would go a long way toward dispelling the aura of dishonesty.

I’d rather vote for people that show me they’re capable of learning and addressing situations the best way possible, rather than sticking to some preconceived notion in spite of contrary evidence or public opinion. I don’t see Stephen Harper doing that but I also don’t see him changing much.