Do You Know Stephen Harper?

Oh, so that's who this guy is! This week while I'm in Florida for Christmas vacation, I've been reading a book entitled "Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada." (Here's a review from the London Free Press.)

I've only become interested in Canadian federal politics in the past few years thanks to Abe and Joel's challenging views. I voted for the Liberals in my first two federal elections but I switched to a Conservative vote in the last election. Early on, my knowledge of the leadership of the Conversatives was based on Preston Manning caricatures and Stockwell Day stunts. Stephen Harper came along and assumed leadership in recent years and he has generally been characterized as being reticent with the media and public with "hidden agendas" assigned by Liberal opponents.

This book gives me a very different picture of Harper. It's obvious enough that the author likes Harper but it provides me with a context for Harper's career in politics. I'll highlight a couple of things that I learned.

1) He's not a new-comer to politics. He's been involved since he was a university student in the early 1980s and he's been an MP several times since then. (See this timeline.)

2) Echoing some of our recent blog discussions, he was also very unsatisifed with the choice of political parties in Canada while he was in university. Rather than complain about it or refuse to vote, he opted to create a political party of his own. He drew up his ideal platform for a conservative political party and eventually founded the Reform party in western Canada as the Chief Policy Officer under Preston Manning. Lofty goals indeed.
3) Harper is a "policy wonk." He prefers to stay behind the scenes and deal with the issues, rather than the Ottawa-bred political fighting. The conservative party was falling apart under Stockwell Day and he was forced to step in as the leader to save the party from itself. So yes, he is reluctant to give the media what they want and he isn't prone to photo-ops and revealing personal interviews.

4) Harper believes that "moral issues" like abortion and homosexuality should not be in the policy platform of his party. Rather, he has stated since early in his career that such issues should be handled with a free vote according to the conscience of each MP and their constituencies' preferences. (And yes, that means that poverty is not lumped in with "moral issues" and should be handled as part of the party policies.)

5) Back in the day, the Meech Lake accord was promoted to help relations with Quebec and stuff. Each MP was supposed to have 20 minutes to debate the issue. Harper was assisting the lone, first Reform MP at the time (Deborah Grey) and in the end, the three leading parties pulled a fast one. The leaders of each party gave one speech and then they closed off the debate.

Last year, the Liberals pulled a similar stunt by pushing through the redefinition of marriage, and one Liberal MP actually resigned because of these poor tactics. Harper stated at the beginning of the current election campaign that he wants a new vote taken with everyone free to vote as they see fit. So no, he's not a fan of quickie political maneuvers.

6) Harper has always been the toughest opponent on the issue of Quebec's secession form Canada. He was the one that has continually insisted that Quebec cannot secede legally from Canada back in the early 1990's and he proposed Bill C-341, which established how secession could happen legally and what Canada should do in the case of illegal secession. This was the clearest response to Quebec's referendum back during Jean Chretien's regime but it was never passed. Instead, Chretien opted for a vague response in parliament with a last-minute rah-rah rally in the last two weeks, and we escaped a major quandary by the skin of our teeth.

All in all, I found this book to be quite fascinating. I'm sure that doesn't do much for my reputation as a nerdy geek but I certainly know more about Harper (and the Conservatives) than I did before. And yes, I am voting conservative in the upcoming election.