Does anyone recall Stephen Harper’s pledge in the first line of the Conservative election platform Stand up for Canada back in 2006? “The time for accountability has arrived.” That became the Tory mantra in the dying days of the discredited Liberal government.

Harper used the words “accountable” and “accountability” no fewer than 10 times on the first page of the manifesto.

But 6 ½ years into Conservative rule even Harper fans have reason to feel queasy, looking back. The gap between promise and delivery grows by the day, along with secrecy and manipulation.

The Tories are still taking a beating for keeping Parliament in the dark on the F-35 fighter’s cost, which is closer to $25 billion than the $16 billion advertised. Meanwhile on Friday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay was again under fire for lowballing costs. He told CBC News last year that the nearly completed Libya mission had cost “under $50 million” by Oct. 13, but didn’t say the final tab would be $100 million.

This slipperiness with numbers is bad enough. But the Tories are also under fire, justly, for abusing the parliamentary process to push forward their agenda.

As the Star’s Tim Harper reports, Parliament Hill is in a lather as opposition MPs decry Tory efforts to push through a vast bill to implement the budget. The “omnibus bill” runs to 425 pages and touches on everything from environmental regulations to border security, employment insurance, immigration law and fisheries. It is so complex that MPs haven’t had time to scrutinize the Tory agenda to make sure it makes sense and is a prudent use of tax dollars. Still, the Tories refuse to break it up into smaller, manageable bills.

At the same time the Star’s Tonda MacCharles points out that trouble is brewing over the government’s tactic of letting individual Tory MPs put forward bills — known as private member’s bills — on hot-button issues. One controversially targets masked protesters, threatening heavy jail terms and fines. Such bills get less scrutiny, analysis and debate than government-sponsored bills. It’s another manipulative trick to spare the government grief.

This is political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can’t absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government. It is not what Harper promised to deliver.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/1177328–stephen-harper-promised-accountable-government-but-hasn-t-delivered >

The Canadian government has just closed the visa section at its embassy in Iran’s capital, Tehran. Visas for Iranians – and there are many Iranians with relatives in Canada and others who want to emigrate – will be processed at the Canadian embassy in Turkey’s capital, Ankara.

Ankara is one country and 2,500 kilometres removed from Tehran. And yet according to a Harper government spokesperson, the processing of visas for Iranians in Turkey rather than Tehran will make things work “more effectively and efficiently.”

Of course, this statement is patently absurd. But these days in post-budget Ottawa, all manner of absurd things are being said without much public comment.

It’s as if the media is so beaten down by mantras that are not true, and the public so distant from what goes on in Ottawa, that a government can say almost anything without anybody caring.

The latest absurdities flow from the March 29 budget, and how the Harper government chooses to explain the cuts therein. The government developed a story line – or narrative, if you like. It sticks to that line under all circumstances, save a few.

The line is that budget cuts of $4-billion will not affect service to Canadians, but rather can be absorbed by (the following words are in the budget): rationalizing, consolidating, integrating, streamlining, refocusing, reconfiguring, modernizing, realigning and everywhere seeking efficiencies.

Who can be against such laudable management objectives? Moreover, polls consistently show that the public, when asked about any government’s fiscal dilemma, thinks it can be solved by eliminating waste and duplication and making the government more efficient.

So the government line aligns perfectly with the polling data, which in turn reflects the naive belief that all spending dilemmas in the public sector can be solved by the elixir of efficiency.

Doubtless, efficiencies can be found and should be pursued. But there are not $4-billion of them to be found. Only if governments stop doing things can such sums be saved, which is what is happening, and will happen. But just what it will stop doing the government has refused to say.

What will necessarily occur are cuts to programs beyond efficiency improvements. It is honest, for example, for the government to say it will close Kingston Penitentiary to save money. It is not believable to say that almost $300-million can be struck from the budget of the Correctional Service of Canada, as the budget did, through finding efficiencies. Double-bunking will happen, unless additional facilities are built – facilities the government insists it will not build.

The same applies across the government. Programs will go, but the government is not willing to say where or when and instead sticks to the line that all the withdrawn money can be compensated for by the gobbledygook of efficiencies and refocusing and streamlining.

Statistics Canada will stop doing many surveys, and those who rely on reliable data will suffer, just as the loss of the long-form census was an assault on accurate information.

Fisheries inspections will be fewer. Fewer Canadians will be given skills training. Embassies will close (at a time when the government declares that “Canada is Back!” in the world). Visa-processing will get transferred thousands of kilometres away.

Foreign aid to certain countries will be curtailed. Fewer Canadian-made programs will appear on the CBC. Certain military purchases will not be made. The RCMP will have fewer officers in absolute terms and in relation to a growing population.

Regional development agencies will give out less money. Fewer documents will be collected for the archives. The national parks will be somewhat less available or more expensive, or both. And so on across government departments.

Governments tend to grow in size, and they need periodic pruning. Cuts are not necessarily unwarranted, because some programs outlive their usefulness and some can be managed better. New priorities emerge, and these might be financed by shifting money from other departments.

What’s wrong, however, is to pretend that a smaller government will bring no dilution of services and programs, that somehow the constant repetition of the government’s line about streamlining and efficiency gains can hide the reality of what is really happening, and will happen.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/you-can-talk-about-efficiency-but-you-cant-hide-the-axe/article2429017/ >

Linda McQuaig makes an important point in her column that high tuition fees for university students are a question of dogma, and not a necessity imposed by the global economy. She cites the example of Norway where tuition is free and students receive a stipend to cover living expenses. She mentions the good fortune of Norway to have “ample oil reserves — almost as blessed as Canada.”

The paradox is that Norway does not use the benefits of its oil reserves to fund the costs of government and of social programs, including education. Norway, like Alberta, has created a Heritage Fund to benefit future generations when the oil dries up, but the comparison ends there.

Norway’s fund, created in 1990 with a contribution of $400 million, is now valued at $573 billion. Alberta’s, created in 1976 with an initial contribution of $1.5 billion, has a puny $15.4 billion. Norway, unlike Alberta, invests its oil profits off shore to avoid the “Dutch disease”: short-term boom, high wage pressure and over-valued currency. Thanks to Alberta, it has become a Canadian disease.

The Norwegian government, with citizen support, has decided to fund its social programs with high levels of taxation. At the same time, as McQuaig indicates, Norway manages “to compete effectively in the global economy.”

Norway, using proportional representation and electing large numbers of women, has good forward-looking government. Canada does not. Norwegian students and citizens benefit, Canadians do not.

Larry French, Toronto

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/1175845–norway-using-oil-money-wisely >

The plight of residents living on the Attawapiskat reserve began long before news broke last year that some band members were living in conditions resembling a war zone.

Between the Chief, her Council (the band has received over $90 million since 2006) and the federal government, which handled the crisis poorly from the beginning, there’s plenty of blame to go around for this unacceptable situation.

But the root of the problem, an all too familiar one on reserves across Canada, begins and ends with the Indian Act.

It’s a paternalistic document and an abject failure that denies natives basic property rights, thereby keeping them in a cycle of poverty.

In 1969, an infamous “White Paper”, written by then Indian affairs minister Jean Chretien for the Trudeau government, recommended abolishing the Indian Act.

This suggestion was met with a resounding “no” from the native leadership of the time.

Arguably, one of the most vocal opponents was Harold Cardinal, who wrote in his book, The Unjust Society, a response to the paper: “In spite of all government attempts to convince Indians to accept the white paper, their efforts will fail, because Indians understand that the path outlined by the Department of Indian Affairs through its mouthpiece, the Honourable Mr. Chretien, leads directly to cultural genocide. We will not walk this path.”

In 2012, Cardinal’s words would be out of step with many present-day native leaders, some of whom have made impassioned pleas for the abolition of the Act.

Unfortunately, the Conservative government, like the Liberal government before it, hasn’t shown a willingness to do this.

Instead, it has chosen to introduce Bill C-27, “An act to enhance the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations.” Although this bill on its own won’t undo the damage of the Indian Act, it helps to address one of the fundamental problems on many native reserves today — a lack of accountability for taxpayers’ dollars spent.

It’s worth noting this bill could also apply to every government department.

Brought forward by Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, the stated purpose of the legislation, which is quietly making its way through Parliament, is to “enhance the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations by requiring the preparation and public disclosure of their audited consolidated financial statements and of the schedules of remuneration paid by a First Nation or by any entity that it controls, as the case may be, to its chief and each of its councillors, acting in their capacity as such and in any other capacity, including their personal capacity.” The average on-reserve population is almost 1,200 residents.

Over $7 billion is spent annually on “transfers” to reserves across the country.

While it comes as no surprise to those living on reserves, there is little or no disclosure of where this money has been spent.

Among the most egregious controversies, one chief received a salary of over $970,000 ­tax-free on a reserve in Atlantic Canada where there were 304 residents.

Other reserve politicians were paid more than provincial premiers and the prime minister.

To be sure, many reserves have done extremely well with economic development initiatives, while ensuring a decent standard of living for their residents.

This legislation is meant to deal with the worst of the worst, so individual band members can ask their leaders where the money went when the water isn’t running, the heat isn’t turned on, or the school isn’t being built.

It’s a direct way of empowering natives to question their leaders, without fear of reprisal.

It’s shocking to learn when South Africa was establishing its system of apartheid, it based it on the model Canada had established with our reserve system — nothing of which to be proud.

Although the Harper government won’t dismantle this system entirely, it deserves credit for taking steps to making it more accountable to those who live within it.

< http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/04/an-accountable-act >

One year on, we can say that Stephen Harper has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. If there was room to doubt what was achieved by five years of minority government, after a year of majority Conservative rule it is now clear: total national confusion.

Just two months ago, economists and policy wonks were cheering the news that Statistics Canada, the much lauded government statistics office, had eliminated fees for its online databanks, making millions of figures available for free.

Now the quantity of that data is under threat from the biggest budget cuts in recent memory.

Experts fear the quality will fall as well, hurting StatsCan’s global reputation and compromising data that shapes government financial and social policy, as well as business investment.

Nearly half of the agency’s 5,700 staff have received the layoff notices that are being issued in many federal departments as the government seeks to eliminate the budget deficit by 2016.

The final job cuts will be far smaller than that, but there is bound to be pain.

“Government departments will see the volume and detail of information available sharply reduced,” Chief Statistician Wayne Smith said last month in a sombre private message that spoke of 2012 as “a year of sacrifice.”

In a video of his address obtained by Reuters, Smith said spending cuts at StatsCan would be much deeper than the $33.9 million — or about seven per cent — outlined in the federal budget due to an “unprecedented” loss of an additional $20 million in income from other government departments.

Three-quarters of the savings would come from cutting programs, meaning fewer surveys, less data and less analysis.

Right now, StatsCan employs an army of experts to conduct 350 surveys that range from the market-movers like employment to curiosities like dried egg stocks and bee-keeping.

StatsCan isn’t saying what it will cut. But the Conservative government says the impact will be minimal at StatsCan and across the entire federal bureaucracy.

“Seventy per cent of our staff reductions have been in back office and administrative positions. They do not affect front line at all,” said Tony Clement, the minister who oversaw the process for deciding where and how much to cut spending.

“We’ve made it clear in all of these cases that for the services that Canadians depend upon, they have been red-circled.”

That’s a promise that rings hollow with many of StatsCan’s present and former staff, among them Ivan Fellegi, who aspired to be a poet in his native Hungary before fleeing to Canada and joining StatsCan in 1957. He was the agency’s chief statistician from 1985 to 2008 and is now retired.

“Everything that is going to be cut is going to hurt a lot,” said Fellegi, who still has an office in StatsCan that he visits twice a week. “A lot of the bureau’s budget is basically not touchable.”

The latest cuts are seen as a huge setback for an institution viewed as a global benchmark for unbiased, accurate social and economic data and research since it was created almost a century ago.

Canada spends an average $530 million, or about $16 per capita on government statistics, a tiny fraction of its $276 billion annual budget. In Australia, where the main statistics office shares StatsCan’s top international billing, the cost is some $17 a head, but that excludes farm and commodities data which, unlike in Canada, is gathered by a separate agency.

Experts say it’s very difficult to compare countries’ spending on official statistics because many have decentralized their data-gathering activities.

StatsCan, which boasts the second lowest revision rate to GDP numbers of the G7 countries, is one of the most compliant with standards from the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), along with Australia and the United States.

But StatsCan faced howls of protest last year for eliminating — at government behest — the compulsory long-form census that supplemented the basic census form with questions on ethnicity, income and housing. It was replaced with a shorter, voluntary survey.

Critics say the new methodology breaks the historical statistics chain, making comparisons harder. They warn the less than complete numbers will have a ripple effect on other data, including employment, that may not be apparent for years.

Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh quit in protest, and chief economic analyst Philip Cross later followed suit.

StatsCan was already reeling from a 2010 budget freeze. And the decision to stop charging fees robbed it of at least $2 million in outside revenue. Unions estimate some 700 jobs will vanish, ending a 25-year no layoffs policy instituted by Fellegi.

Former staffers said the new cuts could not only affect the quality of data and damage its reputation, but risk financial market volatility. The sources asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak, or due to the sensitivity of the matter.

StatsCan likely won’t tinker with the three top-tier indicators — the labour force survey, consumer price index and the dozens of “national accounts” surveys that produce gross domestic product estimates. But beyond that little is clear.

“Fiscal and monetary programs will not be affected,” StatsCan said when asked if economic indicators would be cut.

Getting rid of the composite leading indicator is seen as a no-brainer as it needs an update to remain relevant. The agency will stop publishing seasonally-adjusted data for new motor vehicle sales.

Other items for the axe could include social surveys, data processing and analytical work, former staffers said.

StatsCan said its quality controls would remain in place. “We maintain analytical capacity to verify the accuracy and relevance of the statistics it produces, assist users in interpreting the data, and develop relevant concepts for the production of statistics,” the agency said.

It’s true that StatsCan’s plight appears mild compared to that of Britain’s Office for National Statistics, which will be cut by 17.4 per cent in real terms over four years.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics also faced cost pressures in 2008. It reduced the sample size of its employment survey after cuts, only to have its funding restored because of the negative impact on markets.

Kimberly Zieschang, head of the IMF statistics department’s real sector division, said belt-tightening governments should note that economic indicators offer a big bang for their buck, as they are essential for sound fiscal and monetary policy. And Paul Schreyer, deputy director of the OECD’s statistics directorate said statistics agencies need to analyse data as well as collect it in order to spot errors.

The thought of cuts to the relatively small team of analysts at StatsCan pains Fellegi, who built up a team of experts to popularize the numbers and shed light on key issues of the day. “I spent decades building up those areas because they were weaknesses before,” he said.

The reliability of data was on the minds of economists at National Bank recently after jobs data showed a precipitous drop in fourth-quarter employment in the province of Quebec. Taken at face value, the figures would have signalled a severe recession. The bank asked StatsCan to review its methodology.

StatsCan defended its methods and said all such surveys are subject to sampling variability, advising users to watch for trends rather than monthly changes.

Markets have put a premium on quality data since the global financial crisis. For now Canada is on one end of the credibility spectrum while countries like Greece and Argentina, who have fudged their data, are on the other extreme.

Some 200 academics who gathered in Ottawa last month to celebrate StatsCan’s newly free data want to make sure things stay that way. Their cheerleading was a polite way of telling the government to lay off statistics.

“This conference represents a broad-based effort on the part of the Canadian academic community and others who see high quality official statistics as an important pillar of a modern market economy and democracy,” said Joseph Doucet, dean of the Alberta School of Business and an adviser to the provincial government on energy and regulatory policies.

Reuters

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/StatsCan+StatsCan/6555599/story.html >

Hennessy’s Index is a monthly listing of numbers, written by the CCPA’s Trish Hennessy, about Canada and its place in the world. For other months, visit:http://policyalternatives.ca/index

• 31%

  That’s how much of Canada’s economy is made up of income, sales, corporate, property and other taxes we pay to all levels of government. (Source)

• $38 billion

  That’s how much less Canadians now pay in individual income tax compared to 2000. (Source)

• $19 billion

  That’s how much less Canadians pay now in sales taxes compared to 2000. Since the Harper government cut the GST by two points in 2007, the average annual revenue loss to the treasury is about $12 billion. (Source 1, 2)

• $18 billion

  That’s how much less corporations pay now in Canadian taxes compared to 2000. (Source)

• $11,747

  Total income tax a person with an annual income of $50,000 will pay in Quebec for 2011, the highest regional amount in Canada.  (Source)

• $8,349

  Total income tax that same person would pay in Nunavut, the lowest regional amount in Canada. (Source)

• $41,000

  Average amount middle-income Canadian families enjoy in public services that their taxes fund. It’s worth about 63% of their income.  (Source)

• 64%

  That’s how many Canadians are willing to pay slightly higher taxes to protect our social programs. (Source)

• 60%

  That’s how many Canadians say they’d be more likely to support a political party willing to raise taxes on the rich. (Source)

• 2%

  Tax hike for Canadians making between $170,000 and $640,000 that a new organization, Doctors for Fair Taxation, recommend federal and provincial governments adopt.  (Source)

• 2%

  Extra taxes Ontarians earning $500,000 or more will pay due to a temporary surtax. It affects about 23,000 people who will pay, on average, about $19,000 more in taxes. (Source)

• 49.5%

  Ontario’s marginal tax rate once the new tax hike on the highest income earners kicks in. In the 1950s, the ’60s and early ’70s the marginal tax rate (including federal and provincial) for this income range was 80 per cent. (Source 1, 2)

• 75%

  Percent of taxes France’s Socialist Party candidate François Hollande proposes to levy on millionaires in that country. (Source)

  < http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/taxing-times >

You know, this is the sort of thing people used to make quite a bit of a fuss over.

Bill C-38, introduced in the House last week, calls itself, innocuously, “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures.” The bill does implement certain budget provisions, it is true: for example, the controversial changes to Old Age Security. But “and other measures” rather understates matters — to understate the matter.

The bill runs to more than 420 pages. It amends some 60 different acts, repeals half a dozen, and adds three more, including a completely rewritten Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It ranges far beyond the traditional budget concerns of taxing and spending, making changes in policy across a number of fields from immigration (among other changes, it erases at a stroke the entire backlog of applications under the skilled worker program), to telecommunications (opening the door, slightly, to foreign ownership), to land codes on native reservations.

The environmental chapters are the most extraordinary. Along with the new Act, they give cabinet broader power to override decisions of the National Energy Board, shorten the list of protected species, and abolish the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act — among “other measures.” For much of this the first public notice was its inclusion in the bill.

So this is not remotely a budget bill, despite its name. It is what is known as an omnibus bill. If you want to know how far Parliament has fallen, how little real oversight it now exercises over government, this should give you a clue.

Omnibus bills are not unknown: indeed, every budget is a kind of omnibus bill, bundling a range of different measures under the general rubric of “supply,” the ancient prerogative of Parliament to approve or withhold funds to the Crown to carry out its program of government. The omnibus crime bill, likewise, collected a number of different pieces of the Conservatives’ law and order agenda under one heading.

But lately the practice has been to throw together all manner of bills involving wholly different responsibilities of government in one all-purpose “budget implementation” bill, and force MPs to vote up or down on the lot. While the 2012 budget implementation bill is hardly the first in this tradition, the scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated.

Not only does this make a mockery of the confidence convention, shielding bills that would otherwise be defeatable within a money bill, which is not: It makes it impossible to know what Parliament really intended by any of it. We’ve no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch, only that they voted for the legislation that contained them. There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet.

To be sure, a government with a majority would likely have little difficulty passing them separately, so obediently do MPs now submit to the party whip. But there is something quite alarming about Parliament being obliged to rubber-stamp the government’s whole legislative agenda at one go.

Moreover, it utterly eviscerates the committee process, until now regarded as one of the last useful roles left to MPs. How can one committee, in this case Finance, properly examine all of these diverse measures, with all of the many areas of expertise they require, especially in the time allotted to them?

My point is not that any of the bill’s provisions are good or bad in themselves (that’s the kind of thing committee hearings and debate often help to clarify). Nor is there anything unlawful in any of this, so far as I’m aware. According to House of Commons Procedure and Practice, “it appears to be entirely proper, in procedural terms” for a bill to amend more than one act; Speakers have generally refused appeals to divide them.

But there’s a limit. What is lawful may nevertheless be illegitimate, especially where fundamental issues of Parliamentary government are in play. For, in combination with so many recent abuses, from prorogation to the F-35s, that is what is at stake here.

That Parliament has lost control of the public purse is now a commonplace. Governments routinely spend billions more than they were budgeted. Estimates are voted through without serious scrutiny. Funds that were approved for the construction of, say, border infrastructure end up being spent on, say, gazebos hundreds of miles away.

But the increasing use of these omnibills extends Parliament’s powerlessness in all directions: it has become, if you will, omnimpotent — a ceremonial body, little more. What is worse, it cannot even seem to rouse itself to its own defence.

Once upon a time such insults could be relied upon to produce unruly scenes in the House, obstruction of government business and whatnot. The packaging of several pieces of legislation into one omnibus energy bill in 1982 provoked the opposition to refuse to enter the House to vote. The division bells rang for nearly three weeks until the government agreed to split the bill. The insertion of a single change to environmental legislation in the 2005 budget bill, a note from the Green Party reminds us, so enraged the then leader of the Opposition, Stephen Harper, that he threatened to bring down the government.

But today’s Parliament is so accustomed to these indignities that it barely registers. It has lost not only the power to resist, it seems, but the will.

< http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/30/andrew-coyne-bill-c-38-shows-us-how-far-parliament-has-fallen/ >

At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, this month, Latin American leaders pushed hard for a resolution supporting Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands. Stephen Harper pushed back.

In a private session with leaders, according to people who know, the Prime Minister fiercely supported the right of the islanders to determine their fate, and they had chosen to remain British. For Canada, this was a matter of deep principle, Mr. Harper insisted.

The United States has always been neutral on the Falklands, but when Canada took the lead, President Barack Obama made it clear he backed Mr. Harper. The resolution failed.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was furious. “This is pointless. Why did I even come here?” the Argentinean president was overheard saying as she stormed out of the conference.

Mr. Harper’s willingness to confront an entire hemisphere’s worth of Latin American leaders, was born of the same deep conviction that has driven the law-and-order omnibus bill, that has made cutting sales and corporate taxes a top priority, that has given Canada the reputation of having Israel’s back like no other nation, that imposed spending cuts and job cuts on the public service in the last budget.

One year after winning his first majority government, a milestone he marks on Wednesday, and more than six years after becoming prime minister, Stephen Harper bestrides Canadian politics, a principled economic and social conservative who is reshaping the nation.

And yet, after all this time, his notorious personal reserve incites suspicion and the big questions remain. Is this Prime Minister determined to dismantle the progressive state, built up over decades by previous governments? Or is his truly a moderate, centrist regime that has abandoned its radical roots and betrayed its conservative base?

As a party, the Conservatives are now in a tie with the New Democrats among decided voters, according to a Nanos Research poll released Friday.

Even more worrisome for Mr. Harper are the clouds gathering over his government, clouds that have many Canadians who thought highly of him only two months ago, the poll suggests, questioning his competence, trustworthiness and vision for the country.

But has Canada changed much at all under Mr. Harper? Are shifts in foreign and domestic policy incremental and sensible, or the first steps toward a “night watchman” state that polices the border and the streets, and does little else?

Has the government reined in environmental extremists or put our land and water at risk? Has it given Quebec the political space to pursue a separate destiny within a united Canada, or left French Canada dangerously estranged?

When we look at our country today, what do we see?

As for the man himself, who is this enigma? What lies behind that impassive mask? Do we know him any better now, after a year with a free political hand, than when he appeared on the national scene almost 20 ago?

It may well be that his angriest critics and most passionate advocates are both right. This Prime Minister’s steady shifts in policy are not overly radical on their own but taken together are reshaping the nation’s sense of itself. He has established what could be called a new “Brand Canada” – a land of low taxes, law and order and a strong military, infused with a robust nationalism, rooted in the West and powered by Ontario’s affluent, aspirational suburbs.

This new Canada has eclipsed some once-potent political forces – the Liberal Party, Quebec, even Ottawa itself. There are dangers in their decline, as regions drift apart and factions grow more strident.

And as the Conservatives accelerate their efforts, resistance accelerates, as shown by the polls. The dramatic decline in the PM’s personal cachet occurred as his government was being accused of suppressing the opposition vote during the last election, hiding billions in the cost of new fighter jets and breaking parliamentary ethics rules.

But this will pass, claims John Reynolds, the former B.C. MP and Harper confidant. “He’ll get rid of the tough things in the first year or so, and then he’s going to be in power for a long time.”

How long? “I think one of the achievements he’d like to have is to be the longest-serving Conservative prime minister – if not the longest serving prime minister” of all.

To pass Tory record-holder Sir John A. Macdonald requires staying until 2025 – add another two years to top all-time leader William Lyon Mackenzie King of the Liberals. But however long he serves, by the time Mr. Harper leaves, the country will be a very different place.

It will be divided as never before between left and right, progressive and conservative, east and west, decline and growth. Politics will become – has already become – a clash of irreconcilable values, of stark choices, with the voters forced to choose.

The story so far

In the past 12 months, the Conservatives have:

• enacted an omnibus crime bill that, among a host of other changes, increases sentences for many crimes, especially those involving drugs or sex.
• formally withdrawn Canada from the Kyoto protocol on global warming, claiming the standards set by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien could not be met.
• launched investigations into what it calls “environmental and other radical groups,” some of them foreign-funded, claiming they are determined to sabotage the Conservative plan of exploiting natural resources to grow the economy. Many environmental assessments are being handed to the provinces.

As well, the March 29 budget cut program spending and reduced the size of the public service by almost 20,000 positions. The qualification age for the old age security retirement benefit will gradually rise from 65 to 67. Refugee claimants from developed countries will be given speedy assessments and in most cases sent back. Workers on unemployment insurance who don’t apply for jobs currently being filled by foreign temporary workers could lose their benefits.

In December, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced a multi-year funding formula for health transfers to the provinces that largely removed Ottawa from its role in promoting a national public health-care system.

These and other changes delivered a one-two punch, greatly diminishing the federal footprint in programs Ottawa shares with the provinces, while cutting back spending in areas within its own jurisdiction.

All this has left some worried about what will be left when the Conservatives are through.

Alex Himelfarb was Clerk of the Privy Council – head of the federal bureaucracy – under Mr. Chrétien and his successor, Paul Martin. He caused a stir with a recent blog post lamenting what he calls “the dismantling of the progressive state.”

“The consequences of such a shift are never immediate or obvious; they are subtle and slow burning, inevitably hitting the most vulnerable first and hardest … ” he wrote.

“If we want to imagine the consequences of crushing the progressive state … we might want to have a look at the twenties and thirties, a time of massive inequality and personal vulnerability which presaged the Great Depression.”

In an interview, Mr. Himelfarb said that he believes the cuts are too deep: “We need to raise taxes to the extent necessary to protect and renew key services and meet our economic, social and environmental challenges.”

Canadians “were told that tax cuts are a free good,” he adds. “They are not.”

Mr. Himelfarb stresses that he does not believe the Conservatives are implementing some hidden agenda. “They said they were going to do this, and they did it. There is nothing hidden about it.”

He is right. It has been almost a decade since Mr. Harper laid out a strategy that has truly begun to take shape only in the past 12 months.

A plan long in the making

The Prime Minister chose this year’s Davos economic conference to unveil the surprise plan to raise the retirement age.

Many observers consider that speech a virtual mandate for the conservative transformation, but it was in a much earlier address that he actually revealed his game plan.

In 2003, speaking in Toronto to Civitas, a private conservative club, the then-leader of the Canadian Alliance laid out his core beliefs and priorities as an economic and social conservative.

The victories of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had already realized much of the economic-conservative agenda, Mr. Harper said, although “we do need deeper and broader tax cuts, further reductions in debt, further deregulation and privatization.”

But the real challenge, he maintained, lay in confronting “the social agenda of the modern left.” Conservatives must fight for “issues involving the family … such as banning child pornography, raising the age of sexual consent, providing choice in education and strengthening the institution of marriage.”

But he cautioned that “rebalancing the conservative agenda will require careful political judgment … issues must be chosen carefully … real gains are inevitably incremental … any other approach will certainly fail.”

Just as he predicted, Mr. Harper was able to move more quickly on the economic than on the social front during the minority-government years.

But the government has raised the age of sexual consent, and this year introduced a bill that would expand police powers to monitor the web in search of child pornographers. As well, couples with children will be allowed to split their income for tax purposes, making it easier for one parent to stay home.

Yet part of the Prime Minister’s learning curve was realizing that, on issues such as capital punishment, abortion and gay rights, the national debate was settled and Conservatives would reopen it at their political peril. If his has one key asset, it’s his ability to learn from his mistakes.

Two-sided personality

Few are more ruthless in analyzing, even eviscerating, his performance than Stephen Harper himself. No one did a better job of explaining how the Tories lost the 2004 election – in part because he fed fears that the new Conservative Party was too radically right-wing – or realized how much trouble he was in when the opposition parties nearly combined to oust him from power in December, 2008.

No one recognized better that, if the Conservatives focused exclusively on the economy in the last election, he could win a majority government.

The flip side of his personality is Mr. Harper’s apparent inability to empathize. Some who know him say he is unable, or unwilling, to understand the values and beliefs of those he disagrees with. And when he believes his opponents are weak, overconfidence can lead him to overreach.

A hint of this hubris surfaced last summer during a barbecue at the home of Toronto Mayor and staunch conservative Rob Ford. Mr. Harper was caught urging provincial Tory leader Tim Hudak, then heading into a fall election, to “complete the hat trick” that would see conservatives in power at Queen’s Park as well as City Hall and Ottawa.

The remark drew some flak and, of course, Mr. Hudak came up short – a clear indication, along with this week’s result in Alberta, that Mr. Harper’s message isn’t exactly driving progressive government from the landscape. And now, with the sweeping justice, immigration and fiscal changes made in the past year, the question is whether he is overreaching yet again.

Intimates such as John Weissenberger dispute the notion that Mr. Harper can’t see the other side of an argument. The geologist and oil-company manager says detractors underestimate Mr. Harper’s ability to appreciate an opponent, citing his respect for late NDP leader Jack Layton.

He also speaks of his old friend’s “very strong strategic sense” – a talent that allowed Mr. Harper to see before almost anyone else that a new conservative community of interest could reshape the political map.

Hockey-loving new Canadians

In the depths of the 2009 recession, the hockey-obsessed Prime Minister was talking with the owner of a Canadian franchise in the National Hockey League and asked how ticket sales were holding up in the tough times.

The best news, the owner replied, was that immigrant fans were staying loyal. For them, he said, a ticket was for more than a hockey game – it was a ticket to becoming Canadian.

Immigrant Canadians with money enough and will enough to buy hockey seats in the middle of a recession have become an integral part of a new Conservative coalition.

Mr. Harper realized that in the Civitas speech, predicting that an economic and socially conservative party, with the right leadership and approach, “can draw in new people. Many traditional Liberal voters, especially those from key ethnic and immigrant communities, will be attracted to a party with strong traditional views of values and family.”

Patrick Muttart, the political and marketing consultant who was Mr. Harper’s deputy chief of staff from 2006 to 2009, is credited with identifying and targeting key voter segments. He sees the 2011 result as not just an election, but a culmination.

“In charting out a new course, a new national narrative, [the Conservative Party] is starting to move the country along with it,” he says.

The Conservatives always commanded the loyalty of voters in the Prairies and rural Ontario attracted to their core message: low taxes, sound finances, an overriding emphasis on growth leavened with law-and-order values.

Mr. Harper’s genius was his ability to sell the same values to what Mr. Muttart calls “the suburbanization of affluence and influence.”

In marketing terms, middle-class suburbanites are “strivers,” upwardly mobile people seeking to own a home in a safe community while they pursue their dreams. They contrast with “creatives,” who place a stronger emphasis on community supports, the environment and international engagement.

More likely to vote Liberal or New Democrat, creatives also tend to live downtown, which is where those parties remain strong, at least in English Canada. But in each election since 2004, suburban strivers have increasingly identified with the Conservatives – and immigrants are more likely to be strivers than creatives.

Mr. Muttart says that Mr. Harper’s ability to appeal “to their aspirational sensibilities with the focus on jobs and growth and balanced budgets” produced the Conservative victory last May.

That victory marked a sea-change in Canadian politics. The political, cultural, business and media elites who live principally in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal have long dominated the national agenda.

But for the first time in this country’s history, they are not part of the governing coalition, as suburban Ontario voters in the millions have joined Westerners in a new coalition, leaving the old guard hunkered down in their urban enclaves, enfeebled and impotent.

“It’s been in the making for a long time, but Harper accelerated it,” says Rainer Knopff, a member of the Calgary School – academics whose conservative world view influenced Mr. Harper profoundly when he was a student at the University of Calgary.

With that new conservative coalition at his back, Mr. Harper is finally able to implement at least part of an agenda that he laid out nine years ago, an agenda that has also fundamentally altered Canada’s place in the world.

A man of the world

Nowhere has Mr. Harper’s conservative vision been more fully realized in the past year than in his foreign policy. In the Civitas speech, he proclaimed that “the emerging debates on foreign affairs should be fought on moral grounds.” In defending “democracy, free enterprise and individual freedom” Canada has “the duty … and the responsibility to put ‘hard power’ behind our international commitments.”

In the past year, the Conservatives have implemented that manifesto with a vengeance. In John Baird, the Prime Minister appears finally to have found a foreign minister who fully reflects his own priorities and passions. Mr. Baird has been even more vocal than Mr. Harper in his support for Israel and in Canada’s criticism of its enemies, including Syria and Iran. And Canada played a leading role in NATO’s overthrow of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. A Canadian general led the mission, and Mr. Baird was the first allied foreign minister to tour the former dictator’s compound after Tripoli was liberated.

Mr. Harper’s strongly pro-U.S. stance led his government to embrace a continental security perimeter with the United States, along with a pledge to harmonize standards and regulations in automobiles and other products between to two countries, along with an agreement to remove obstructions at the border.

In his early days, his agenda also meant embracing human rights over commerce, confering honourary citizenship on the Dalai Lama, even at the cost of angering China. But Mr. Harper eventually came to realize that his principled stand was freezing Canadian businesses out of the burgeoning Chinese market, and that the United States and European economies – Canada hopes to sign a free-trade agreement with the European Union this year – may never recover fully from the recession.

And so he pivoted, swallowing a public humiliation during his first Chinese trip – Premier Wen Jiabao chided him for taking so long to visit – to demonstrate to his hosts that he was serious about making a new start. Now, if Mr. Harper meets with the Dalai Lama at all, it is in private – as he did this week.

He also learned that the United States is a neighbour and ally and customer, but not always a friend. Relations with the Obama administration have been strained in the wake of the President’s decision not to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, at least for now, and by the Americans’ apparent unwillingness to sponsor Canada’s entry into the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations unless this country agrees to scrap protections for the dairy and poultry industry.

And so the government has launched a flurry of two-way trade talks with Pacific nations, including Japan and Thailand as well as China. A free-trade agreement with India is expected next year.

These initiatives underscore Mr. Harper’s appreciation that Canada is increasingly a Pacific nation, that the 250,000 immigrants arriving here each year – many of whom now vote Conservative once they become citizens – are affecting economic as well as cultural and political change, that with 46 per cent of Toronto’s current population born overseas, mostly in Asian or Pacific nations, Ontario is becoming a Pacific province, too.

Derek Burney was Brian Mulroney’s chief of staff during the Canada-U.S. free-trade negotiations in the 1980s, and later served as ambassador to the United States. He applauds the increased focus on trade, but there may be too many lines in the water.

“These are all encouraging moves,” he says. “But what the government needs now is a sense of priorities. Mr. Harper needs to take charge and give negotiators the authority to get results. They haven’t put anything in the window yet.”

Rise of the West

However crucial Pacific Ontario may be to the Conservative coalition, this is the most West-centric government ever. Westerners are to Ottawa today what Quebeckers were in the Trudeau years. They chair half of the 26 parliamentary committees, and the governor of the Bank of Canada, the clerk of the Privy Council and the chief justice of the Supreme Court are all Westerners, as is almost half of the governing caucus.

Truly two solitudes

The Tories’ great good fortune is that the West and suburban Ontario, where they are strongest, are also the dynamic growth centres of the country. But Conservative success there leaves Atlantic Canada declining politically as well as economically and in terms of population. And, more dangerously, it isolates Quebec.

In its minority years, the Harper government actively wooed Quebec voters: giving the province a seat at UNESCO; recognizing the Quebec nation within Canada; rebalancing the notorious “fiscal disequilibrium;” promising compensation for a harmonized sales tax and funding for a new Montreal bridge.

But last May, the Conservatives defied conventional wisdom by winning a majority without substantial support from Quebec. And since that victory, their policies and announcements, if not calculated to offend Quebeckers, appear indifferent to such offence. Stripping equalization components out of programs, as the Tories have begun to do, does not favour the province that is the largest recipient of equalization. Putting the “royal” back in navy and air force is like a red flag to a province with little affection for the monarchy. Cutting funding to the CBC is a hostile move in a province where Radio Canada is a valued cultural voice.

Scrapping the gun registry and refusing to let Quebec keep its own records, toughening sentencing even though Quebec emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment, abandoning the Kyoto Accord and pulling back on environmental assessments even though Quebec prides itself on its low-carbon footprint – none of this has gone down well.

Yet the most profound impact may be indifference – a willingness to let Quebec go its own way without asserting the role and importance of the federal government within the province. It is one thing to win without Quebec and another to govern without it.

“For the average Quebecker under 35, the federal government is totally irrelevant,” says André Turcotte, a pollster who teaches political communication at Carleton University. He describes Mr. Harper’s unwillingness to engage the province as “separatism by default … quiet detachment … a marriage with separate bedrooms.”

And that’s with a Liberal government in Quebec City. No one knows what would happen if the Parti Québécois ever came back to power.

“The situation is very volatile,” adds John Parisella, former chief of staff to premiers Robert Bourassa and Daniel Johnson and, until recently, Quebec’s representative in New York.

“The Harper government has to be aware that Quebeckers are sensitive,” he warns. “There is an emerging discourse coming especially from the PQ that the Harper government is trying to create a Canada without Quebec.”

That said, he remains confident that Quebec and Canada have both evolved away from endless fits and fights. In fact, Mr. Harper’s strongest suit in confronting a separatist Quebec premier may be his record, despite the affronts of the past year, of simply leaving Quebec alone.

Yet another transformation the Harper’s Conservatives have effected is intangible, and yet perhaps more pivotal than any other.

Mr. Muttart argues that Mr. Harper has created nothing less than a new national narrative. “He has carved out a space that is unique, that is authentic.”

This narrative, which Mr. Muttart has long existed but been dormant, features a robust military, a strong defence of the Arctic, the ties to the British monarchy, the celebration of Canadian excellence in sports. It celebrates individual freedom ostensibly liberated by a government retreating from the excesses of the welfare state. It celebrates families with children as the bedrock of a well-ordered society.

This is, emphatically, Stephen Harper’s Canada, instilled in him while growing up in Toronto’s Leaside and Etobicoke, nurtured during his years at the University of Calgary. But though it is his narrative, it resonates with millions of others.

It competes with the long-entrenched Liberal narrative that celebrates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, peacekeeping, multiculturalism and variegated sexualities, a Canada the world should want more of.

Although the Liberal idea of Canada remains robust, in Canada today Mr. Harper’s new Brand Canada seems to be on the rise: aggressively patriotic, conservative in fiscal policy and on the law-and-order front, relatively unconcerned about the environment, at least at the federal level, proud of its military and willing to spend money on it, led by a man who runs his government with a cool head and a committed conservative heart.

This brand is anathema to the downtowns of Ontario’s big cities, as well as Montreal and Vancouver. But neither of their national representatives – the NDP and the Liberals – appears ready to mount a serious challenge.

Without a permanent leader until next spring, the Liberals now seem so enfeebled that some wonder whether the party can survive. The NDP under new leader Thomas Mulcair, a Quebecker, is making tentative gains in public support, but it is too soon to judge whether that support will hold.

That said, when majority governments dominate in Ottawa, the most powerful resistance has traditionally come from the provinces. There may soon be a fresh and powerful new centre of resistance in Mr. Harper’s western back yard.

By next spring, the NDP’s Adrian Dix could be premier of British Columbia – he is consistently ahead of Liberal Premier Christy Clark in the polls (although Monday’s surprise result in Alberta serves as a reminder of how unreliable polls can be).

Mr. Dix stresses that, should he become premier, he hopes to work with the federal government on improving the quality of life for aboriginal Canadians in British Columbia and in promoting Canada overseas. But he quickly rhymes off four areas where he seriously disagrees with Conservative policy: the law-and-order agenda, which could crowd provincial courtrooms and prisons and drain provincial budgets; the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline between Alberta and the Pacific Coast; the reduced increases in federal health transfers; the Canada-EU trade agreement, which could increase drug prices as a result of tougher patent protections.

“These are issues that are unavoidable,” he maintains, “because the consequences for provincial jurisdictions are so severe.”

Ultimately, opposition to a Harper dynasty will coalesce around someone with a set of opposing values voters come to prefer. Ironically, that may be this Prime Minister’s greatest achievement.

Visible changes are few

While many Canadians, including many who watch him very closely, puzzle over the man behind the mask, there may be no mask. “He is exactly what he is,” John Reynolds contends. “What you see is what you get.”

He is greyer – Mr. Harper turns 53 on Monday – but also more relaxed, especially over the past year, with his political future more secure thanks to majority government. Friends describe a more confident leader, but one fundamentally unchanged from the Stephen Harper they first met, whenever it was they first met him.

He is passionate about hockey and loves to play the piano. He is also a man with few close friends. His political ruthlessness is legendary and he so distrusts the media that he tries to control their access to government.

He gives considerable latitude to the few who earn his trust – within the cabinet that includes Mr. Flaherty, Mr. Baird and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney– and very little to those who don’t. His confidence in his own ability to solve problems and to lead is self-evident, as is his discomfort with large crowds and small talk.

And he is an evangelical conservative, so dedicated to converting others to his world view that he has transformed – polarized, really – the political life of the country.

For most of Canada’s history the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives did not differ fundamentally in political philosophy. Each attempted to broker competing regional, linguistic and class interests. A third, values-based party, the NDP, camped out on the left.

But Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party is infused with his own dedication to economic and social conservatism. Rather than being a brokerage party, it is values based. Eventually, a progressive coalition will rise to challenge it, making national politics a two-party, values-based contest. That progressive coalition could form around the NDP or the Liberals – or it could emerge from a merger of the two.

If so, Canada will finally mirror other English-speaking countries: Republicans versus Democrats in the United States; Conservatives versus Labour in Britain; Liberal versus Labour in Australia. Other parties, either regionally based or values-based, may exist, but only on the fringe.

“Clear choices in elections are good for democracy,” Patrick Muttart argues. “It gets people involved. It gets people talking.”

It can also lead to polarization and gridlock. But nothing appears likely to stop the Canadian drift toward politics defined by ideological divides that Stephen Harper himself defined.

For better or worse, that could be his most lasting legacy.

John Ibbitson is The Globe and Mail’s parliamentary bureau chief

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