Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

With Stephen Harper now Canada’s prime minister, this book is rather
frightening. Canadians have a leader who opposed official bilingualism,
dismissed Canadian culture as an eccentricity of a Southern Ontario
elite, criticized Canada’s social programs as disincentives to finding
real jobs, and would render Canada ungovernable. The Triple-E Senate
would, like its U.S. counterpart, be dominated by the wealthy and their
supporters—the only people who could afford most province-wide
races—and would kill legislation from the House of Commons. Harper
complained about the transfer of revenue from Alberta to the rest of
Canada, but failed to mention that other Canadians assisted Albertans
during the Depression and paid inflated prices for Alberta oil from the
Diefenbaker era until 1973.

William Johnson’s admiration for Harper is rather surprising given
that Johnson has been a strong advocate for Anglo rights in Quebec.
Harper wanted to “Let Quebec be Quebec. Let the West be the West”:
in other words, let Quebec be exclusively French-speaking, the West
exclusively English-speaking. He also criticized Sir John A. Macdonald
and Pierre Trudeau for attempts to make Canada economically
self-sufficient. The Prime Minister lacks any sense of Canadian
identity.

Harper broke with Mulroney because Mulroney failed to avoid deficits
and was too friendly with such Quebec nationalists as Lucien Bouchard
and René Lévesque. “The Reform Party doesn’t support separatists,
unlike Tories,” he said. Will his opposition to deficits survive the
cut to the GST and the transfer of revenue to the provinces? Will his
opposition to separatists survive his need for Bloc support in the House
of Commons? On daycare, he has been consistent: “There is no place for
bureaucrats in the raising of our children,” he says. What are his
thoughts on public education?

Harper wanted to send Canadian soldiers to Iraq. He opposes the Kyoto
Protocol. His party favoured a referendum on capital punishment. Yet the
cover boasts that Harper “was ... usually on ... the correct side of
the big issues.” What does this say about Johnson?