T1B

When it comes time for history to bestow a permanent nickname on Prime Minister Stephen Harper — to label his stretch as Canada's leader, the way “Slick Willie” Clinton or “Uncle Louis” St. Laurent sum up theirs — someone should give serious consideration to “Big Daddy” Harper as a contender for the honour.

Big Daddy Harper: It sounds good, no? Big Daddy connotes a big political boss with a big, strategic mind, which describes Mr. Harper to a T. There's even an American undernote, like a name out of Tennessee Williams, that hints at Mr. Harper's sympathy for the methods and ideas of Republicans from Texas and other parts south.

But Big Daddy Harper is even more appropriate for another reason. To judge from his first four months in office, Mr. Harper is running the most hands-on, centrally controlled federal government in living memory, a government so Harper-centric and so micro-managed by the Prime Minister's Office it feels literally patriarchal. If Big Daddy Harper is a control freak — and no one denies it, even if they won't speak for attribution — he is a control freak on purpose, in order to come across as a firm and fatherly leader, one prime ministerial enough to deserve a majority in the next election.

Consider the evidence:

Last month, to avoid bad press on an issue he has tied firmly to the Conservative brand, Mr. Harper banned the media from filming the return of the bodies of four Canadian soldiers who died last month in Afghanistan.

Instead of decentralizing power as promised, Mr. Harper has funnelled more and more control straight into the Prime Minister's Office. The PMO now pre-approves everything Tory ministers and MPs do in their political lives. They've been ordered to speak less to the media, and banned from gassing about the government's plans.

When they do speak (to order lunch, maybe) they have to stick to the government's five priorities — the federal accountability act, GST cuts, child care, crime and medical waiting lists — virtually idiot-proof subjects. Big Daddy's boys aren't just on message; they're all message, all the time.

Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien approved big speeches and major pronouncements. But Mr. Harper and his team vet even MPs' letters to small-town newspapers. “Paul Martin was accused of micro-managing,” a government insider says.

“But this guy micro-manages more. The business of government has ground to a halt on anything that isn't a declared priority.”

Ministers who break these rules are spanked by Mr. Harper, hard — and in public. Peter MacKay, Mr. Harper's Minister of Foreign Affairs, has been hauled onto the carpet to be flogged so many times, it's beginning to look as if he likes the pain.

He was reprimanded most forcefully for suggesting that some aid might still flow to the Palestine Authority from Canada, despite the election of Hamas.

When Mr. MacKay tried to hire Graham Fox, the clever son of Bill Fox, Brian Mulroney's old pal, as his chief of staff, Mr. Harper vetoed the move — on the grounds that Mr. Fox once wrote an in-house critique of Mr. Harper's performance in opposition.

Some say the real reason is that Mr. Harper considers Mr. Fox too crafty to be working for Mr. MacKay, a potential contender for Mr. Harper's job.
No one is allowed to contradict government policy, even in their imagination. Last month, Marc Tushingham, an Environment Canada scientist, published H otter Than Hell, a novel about global warming. He was instantly prohibited from promoting the book because Mr. Harper's government was quietly cutting its Kyoto Accord budget by up to 80 per cent that week.

For years openly scornful of reporters (“he blames the media for the 2004 loss,” one insider explains), the prime minister has now declared war on the parliamentary press gallery. The PMO no longer advertises the time and location of cabinet meetings, which means reporters can no longer scrum ministers as they leave the weekly brain mash.

As a result, they've resorted to buttonholing ministers as they climb into their limos. The PMO recently volleyed back by asking cabinet ministers not to park their limos near the members entrance to the House of Commons, so as not to tip reporters that a cabinet meeting is in session. Mr. Harper himself has allegedly resorted to sneaking up to the meeting on a freight elevator. All these antics make the nation's business look like a high-level game of sardines.

The Prime Minister now tries to limit the numbers and kinds of questions reporters ask, and has adopted the Bush White House strategy of favouring friendly questioners.

No surprise, then, that Mr. Harper eats through press secretaries the way some people pop Tums. Bets are now being taken on Parliament Hill that Sandra Buckler, his second director of communications in three months, won't last past June.

The real power in the prime minister's press office is widely acknowledged to be Ms. Buckler's underling, press secretary Carolyn Stewart Olsen, a former Reformer and ER nurse whose loyalty is so fierce that her nickname is “Clifford.”

Mr. Harper bypasses the national media more and more — taking last minute trips, covering up visits by foreign statesmen such as the president of Haiti, waiting three days to reveal that Canada has renewed its commitment to NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command — and instead travels the country to talk to local TV stations.

“His hair,” one Ottawa matron insists. “Just look at his hair. Is that not the hair of a control freak?”The Prime Minister's iron grip extends to his private life. His wife, previously known as Laureen Teskey or Laureen Teskey Harper, now prefers Laureen Harper — almost 30 years after Maureen McTeer kept her maiden name.

In the PMO, Mr. Harper consults a small circle of advisers that includes Ian Brodie, his young and smart chief of staff, another Reform loyalist (who reportedly tried to make staffers stand up whenever Mr. Harper walked into the room for his morning briefing, to no avail); the aforementioned Ms. Olsen; and Patrick Muttart, an image doctor in his 30s who reportedly does for Mr. Harper whatever it is Karl Rove does for George Bush.

Mr. Muttart was the brain behind the recent rebranding of the official government of Canada website — the huge and traditionally non-partisan source of government information that now looks like a Tory party recruiting ad, “true Tory blue, with a real maple leaf, instead of that fake one on the flag,” as one PMO intimate describes it.

The government's new accountability act, its cure for Liberal corruption, is one of the programs the Harper team has singled out to publicize before the next election.
“There's definitely been a big change as a result,” one well-connected Ottawa socialite notes. “There's a little bit of a chill in terms of going out to lunch and expensing it.” Two of Ottawa's best restaurants closed after the Tories' righteousness about the sponsorship scandal made civil servants shy about spending money on meals.

After it was revealed last week that Tory MPs had attended a Senators playoff game as guests of a corporation, the PMO instantly issued a statement declaring that the Prime Minister and his son had also attended a game — but paid for their own tickets. Big Daddy is always cleaner than clean.

The controller-in-chief has affected Ottawa's personal style as well. Sober is the new black. Navy blue suits are in, especially worn American style, waist-high with cuffs slightly short above glistening shoes (Mr. Harper's most notable sartorial habit). The mantra you hear most often in Harperville these days is “get it done.”

But Mr. Harper is also reaching beyond his comfort zone. He's increasingly close to Senator Marjorie LeBreton, a long-time friend of Brian Mulroney whose roots are in the Progressive Conservative rather than Reform branch of Torydom.

In recent days, rumours have begun to circulate that Mr. Harper has even limited his ministers' opportunities to speak in cabinet meetings. Instead, he has begun to meet them privately beforehand, hear their proposals and then make their presentations himself. That's Big Daddy, for sure.Naturally in partisan Ottawa, a lot of people claim Mr. Harper's love of command and control makes them nervous.

Greg Weston, Ottawa columnist for Sun Media, has been covering Parliament Hill for 30 years. “I don't need the PMO to do my job,” he says. “But the control concerns me. This is the way they're going to be running the country. It's not just early game jitters. This is part of a deep-rooted belief set. It's almost a culture.”

To thwart the Harper team, Mr. Weston has urged reporters to ferret out the home numbers of cabinet ministers, and to hound them in restaurants and in public. But in Harperville, it isn't where you talk that's a problem: it's talking, period. Talking invites debate; debate implies uncertainty; uncertainty is not prime ministerial. The name of this show is Big Daddy Knows Best.

“But what does that say about how Harper sees the Canadian public?” Mr. Weston counters. “They can't be trusted with information? It has to be a fait accompli, and then I'll tell you about it.”

Mr. Harper and his crew claim (without citing evidence) that only the media care about how much access the media get. A more accurate and potentially more damaging charge is that Mr. Harper treats the media — and therefore Canadians — like children. Mr. Harper and his team are betting a majority of Canadian voters prefer it that way.

Hapday wrote:He knows best so far. In a mere three months of running a minority government, he has done more to benefit Canadians and Canada than the gLiberals did in 13 years.

Sucks to be gLiberal right now.

Hap Wrote:
He knows best so far. In a mere three months of running a minority government, he has done more to benefit Canadians and Canada than the gLiberals did in 13 years.

Sucks to be gLiberal right now.