Can Harper make Canadians feel good?
LAWRENCE MARTIN
Globe and Mail Update
July 15, 2007 at 11:21 PM EDT
The governing Conservatives, looking to get untracked after an uninspired spring, think they're onto something. The plan? Turn their leader, Sergeant Grim, into Kaptain Canada.
Party strategists have been peering into history, going back exactly half a century to the rise of John Diefenbaker.
This was a time (in contrast to the later Dief years, when he descended into his own inferno) when a heady patriotism stirred Canadians. It wasn't the type of nationalism, a more defensive nationalism, that Liberals and New Democrats would later feed off. It was a Canadianism of proud heritage, national symbols, new horizons.
The Conservatives now see an opportunity to tap into such a patriotic vein, to play on classic elements of the Canadian identity – The True North Strong and Free – and bolster their support.
Last week, they were pitching northern sovereignty. Plans for a new deepwater port. Outlays of $3-billionthis is notes for new patrol ships. Not the big icebreakers that were originally planned. But a bigger presence nonetheless.
Not shy about an image as a war guy, the Prime Minister has been building up the military to make the country feel stronger, give it more clout on the world stage.
He has been boasting of Canada's great storehouse of resources. We're “an energy superpower.” He plays frequently on national symbols such as hockey. Recently, in a gesture that Mr. Diefenbaker would surely have appreciated, Stephen Harper even brought the old flag, the Red Ensign, out of the dustbin.
“Canadians are feeling good about their country,” our super patriot leader said in British Columbia last week. No need to worry about that “squabbling” between Ottawa and the provinces. There is “a strong air of optimism.” This summer, he will be spending a good deal of time doing Canadian promo gigs on the international stage. He's presently in Latin America and the Caribbean, where, with stops in Colombia, Chile, Barbados and Haiti, he wants to strengthen economic and political ties. To foster relations on the continent, he will host a three amigos summit with the U.S. and Mexican leaders next month in Montebello, Que. Then it's on to Australia for talks with pan-Pacific leaders, among them his close Conservative buddy, Aussie Prime Minister John Howard.
A foray to the Arctic is also planned. The northern vision was a hallmark of the Diefenbaker campaign that helped him to his crushing majority in 1958. He never did put meat on the bones of his rhetoric, but many Conservatives see these times of warming climate as being right for northern dreams.
Their leader has been criticized as a micromanager, a grouchy control freak who is too dour for the times. Getting out of Ottawa, getting on the world stage with big patriotic themes, while leaving the controversies to ministers at home, could work well for him.
Mr. Harper is no Diefenbaker. The Tory tornado saw himself as personifying the national will. No one could sell Canada like him.
The brandishing of a Canada-first policy is also quite a stretch from the Stephen Harper we've known. This is the one-time regionalist who touted building a firewall around Alberta and who, when asked whether he loved Canada, sidestepped the question. He was seen as more inclined toward a course of continental integration, much more in keeping with the legacy of a Brian Mulroney than a Diefenbaker.
But he is a politician who can readily change his spots, who doesn't seem worried how far he veers from past credos.
He can contrast his new-Canada vision to the vague Liberal look. Last week, the Grits scored points on culture – something missing from Mr. Harper's Canadiana themes – with Stéphane Dion's new policy of support. But the party's biggest boasting point over the past few years, one on which they can embarrass the Conservatives, has been its position on Iraq. For reasons unknown, they barely mention it.
Mr. Harper had run out of an agenda this spring and was looking for something. The country is rolling in bucks and stacked with resource riches. There is cause, even with the difficulties of the small war in Afghanistan, for Canadian optimism.
With a change to his grim-guy approach, the Prime Minister might indeed, as his strategists hope, be on to something. A leader who can make the country feel good is a leader who succeeds.
