Bushier than Bush

Canada's Stephen Harper has got a little time out to cobble together a slightly less objectionable budget

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Heather Mallick guardian.co.uk,
Friday December 5 2008 10.43 GMT



Canadian PM Stephen Harper in his office on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on December 3, after broadcasting an address to the nation. Photo: Chris Wattie/Reuters

Canada's just re-elected Conservative government was spared death yesterday after a self-inflicted crisis that followed two months of clinging to power with bitten and bleeding fingernails. And here's why you – meaning worried Europeans and Americans and your ever-nervous rulers – should watch and learn. Governments can tumble while you sleep. While they sleep.

The implosion took place last week when the last western government still in love with George Bush angrily watched the world go all "Mmmm baby" over Barack Obama, had some kind of emotional breakdown, and presented an economic statement that can only be described as Bushier than Bush.

Prime minister Stephen Harper, a neoconservative ideologue, ignored, no, snubbed the world economic crisis that he had just described as the worst since 1929. We are the Americans' biggest trading partner, but he announced nothing in tandem with them. He had no plans for R&D, not even a pothole to fill or a bridge to shore up. In fact, he cut back on spending, and did it in a manner that would have had Karl Rove saying, "Whatever floats your boat, George, but I'd do this on the quiet and take it slow."

Harper was on thin ice, having won a second minority government outnumbered by its opponents. But no, he had his list of villains, so he did a Sarah Palin: cut their turkey throats and let them bleed.

But Harper's list didn't remotely resemble the Canadian public's. Right now, we fear for our jobs and the lives of our children. Canada's auto industry is a sandcastle at high tide. House prices are collapsing. We are nakedly, embarrassingly unprepared for climate change. But Harper slashed at his funny little pet hates, like pay equity for women, human rights commissions and federal cash to fund all political parties, things that had been toddling alone fine. Harper's no dragonslayer; he garrottes bunnies.

Voters were mystified by the pettiness, and the Liberals saw their chance.

The middle-ground Liberals (Canada's standard governing party), the left-wing NDP and the Quebec separatist Bloc Quebecois have a total of about 165 seats; the Conservatives have 143. So the first two, with the third promising to be nice and not boot them out, have created a formal coalition to form a new government, given that the Conservatives had lost the confidence of the House of Commons.

Here's where it got interesting. To survive, Harper had to pay a begging visit to the Governor-General, the Queen's representative. She is Michaëlle Jean, a Haitian-born Quebecois woman of great intelligence and style, a former journalist who speaks five languages, a diplomatic star overseas, in other words, an intellectual who personifies everything that enrages Harper.

He was in Government House talking to her Thursday morning, not for the expected 20 minutes, but nearly two hours while Canadians watched. Seriously, the nation watched a door for two hours.

He may well have asked for another election. This would have been Canada's fourth in four and a half years; they're boring, expensive and getting Italian in frequency. Jean would likely have said no.

Instead she gave him a Christmas gift. She allowed him to "prorogue"" or adjourn Parliament so he could desperately cobble together a budget not based on hate by late January, and maybe someone will adore it then.

So Harper is getting a time out. He will spend the next seven weeks campaigning for friends after having panicked in public. On television last night, his hair looking freshly hardened and with a creepy attempt at a friendly grin that looked more like a knife wound, he began insulting, almost demonising, the Bloc Quebecois. That is something smart pols don't do. He will regret this. He also said he'd seek "any means" to sustain his government. This worried people.

He even called it a "coup", another thing Canadians don't say. So Harper may have postponed his hanging, but it was a near thing.

I have two theories about why the government almost melted down, and so quickly too. The first is fanciful but it would explain Harper's economic forecast blunder. He had an Ambien blackout. Ambien is a fine American sleeping tablet that allegedly has the side-effect of making people sleepwalk and raid the fridge, eating turkey carcasses, buckets of ice cream, entire pies. In the morning, they see the detritus but have no memory of a great gulping. Ambien is illegal in Canada; I think Bush slipped him one.

The second is universal. Harper thought being elected as prime minister meant that he ruled a country. That's like confusing votes with love. It was a crazy thing for Harper to do, and he nearly lost what he thinks of as his throne.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... /05/canada