FORT SMITH, N.W.T. — He is not ready, quite, to be put out to pasture.
Indeed, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is using this year’s Arctic summer tour – his ninth consecutive such trip – to do something novel, given how these northern sojourns have evolved into extended photo opportunities; he’s test-driving next year’s federal campaign, and the stump speech in particular. And there is change afoot.
For one thing, the PM has made some additions and subtractions to his message that, taken together, are quite telling. For another, he’s delivering the lines with more zip and gravitas than he has since before the Senate spending scandal turned Ottawa on its head, as I hear it. Preparing for retirement, or a sinecure as head of a conservative think tank, he is not.
It was speculated that next year’s Conservative campaign will revolve around the economy, justice, and foreign policy – three areas where the Tories believe their record is strong. In this speech, articulated in Langley, B.C., on Wednesday, then more or less repeated Thursday and Friday in White Horse and Fort Smith, Harper effectively confirms that speculation. He names all three areas, then dwells on each in detail.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks with Canadian Rangers as he prepares to leave Whitehorse on Friday August 22, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Among the many fascinating aspects of these forays to the North is the obvious pleasure the PM appears to take in rolling out programs for innovation and development. Friday the featured topic was agriculture, and a federal program boost to local initiatives intended to create a fresh fruit and vegetable industry here, using technology being developed at the University of Guelph and the Canadian Space Agency.
It is the kind of program all Canadian governments adore announcing: innovative, commerce-oriented, pragmatically helpful. In the North this week it’s as though the Tories are channeling John Manley, circa 1997. It’s activist government, narrowly targeted. Indeed, the economics piece is classic Jean Chretien liberalism; balancing the books, thereby freeing up resources for investment in economy-boosting programs. In Whitehorse, Harper actually criticized the Liberals for slashing social spending in the 1990s.
The meat and bone is the extended section on prudence, trade and taxes. Here Harper trumpets pending or existing free trade agreements that now encompass half the world’s people; a balanced budget in 2015; more than $3,000 worth of tax cuts annually per family, since 2006; and government spending in the recession that, he says, avoided the allure of permanent new entitlement programs, but plowed capital into vital infrastructure. It’s a persuasive mix, which he then contrasts with the Liberals’ continuing lack of specific policy.
The justice portion of the speech is straight-up, true-blue conservatism. Here Harper waxes on at length about the Conservatives’ tough-on-crime agenda, mandatory minimum sentences for violent criminals, and laws protecting young people from cyberbullying. What we had under the Liberals, he tells his audience, was a justice system more concerned with criminals than victims; whereas now, we have the opposite.
In this Friday, Aug. 23, 2013 photo, Li Xue Jiang, of the People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper, is hauled to the back of the room by Royal Canadian Mounted Police as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper answers questions while visiting Xstrata Nickel’s Raglan Mine in the northern Nunavik region of Quebec. When staff did not recognize Li’s request to answer a question he tried to take the microphone and a tussle erupted. Canada said Friday, Aug. 22, 2014, “past incidents and behaviors” are to blame for China’s official news agency and the Communist Party newspaper being banned from an Arctic trip with Harper. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick)
As a kicker, with a nod to current events overseas, Harper speaks in proud and defiant tones about Canada’s new assertiveness on the world stage, his government’s willingness to stand up for democracies and denounce tyrants and terrorists, in particular Hamas and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s potent stuff, given the unfolding headlines. All of it, together, will be persuasive to the very same Canadians who have voted Conservative in 2011, and 2008.
Are there the usual digs at the opposition, in particular Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau? Certainly. But they begin well down in the speech, occupy less space in it than they did a year ago, and are delivered in an almost jokey tone. Harper clearly is aware of the blowback from the attack ads on the Liberal leader, and is experimenting with ways of driving home the blade that do not make him look too negative. At times he strays almost into standup, mocking the Liberals for their lack of specifics, and what he suggests is their eagerness to please everyone with government largesse.
The most interesting aspect of the speeches this week, perhaps, is the prime minister’s delivery.
A year ago, in the Arctic tour’s opening address in Whitehorse, Harper was perfunctory and flat. At the Conservative convention in Calgary last November, according to numerous reports, the same was true.
Whereas in this new speech, which he delivers without a teleprompter, glancing occasionally at notes, he is sharp and forceful. He improvises frequently, tossing in occasional jokes, but always moving back to the text – a sign that he’s memorized much of it. He allows his tone to stray at times into irony, using it to ease the sting of a jibe. He appears relaxed, at ease, and utterly confident that he has a good story to tell. “That’s our record,” he says frequently, punctuating his assertions.
In other words: Far from seeming disheartened by the past 18 months of unrelenting calamities, his prolonged slump in the polls relative to the Liberals, and the enduring popularity of Trudeau, Harper appears newly energized. The polls, and the historical pattern of a decade and out, suggest the odds in 2015 are against him. He seems OK with that. He’s girding for war.
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Russia’s growing military presence in the Arctic a concern to Harper
FORT SMITH, N.W.T. — Russia’s growing military presence in the Arctic is a concern and Canada should not get complacent about it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday during the second leg of his annual northern tour.
Harper, who was in the Northwest Territories town of Fort Smith to announce initiatives to promote fresh food production in the region, said Russia has not made the same sort of aggressive military incursions in the Arctic as it has in Eastern Europe.
But the prime minister gave a “cautious yes” when asked if he was concerned about the militarization of the Arctic.
“Cautious in the following sense: that we haven’t seen, obviously, the kind of aggressive moves in the Arctic that we have seen in eastern Europe by the Russians,” Harper said.
“In fact, we have actually seen the Russian government … actually operating within international rules.
“However, I don’t think — because of what’s happening elsewhere and because of what’s happened for many years now — we should be complacent about this.”
Russia is busy rebuilding former Soviet-era military bases in its North, and has a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers patrolling its waters. Russian planes have also tested the boundaries of Canadian airspace, Harper said.
“I just think we should not be complacent, because we have seen over the period that President Putin has been in power just a gradual growing in aggressiveness of his government toward neighbours and the gradual military assertiveness of that country, and I just think it’s something we should never be too at ease about,” he said.
In the coming days, the prime minister will take part in a series of military manoeuvres in the Northwest Passage meant to assert Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.
Harper also called on Russia to withdraw a convoy of trucks that crossed across its border into Ukraine in what Moscow said was part of a humanitarian mission but which the Ukrainians called a “direct invasion.”
“Look, it’s disgraceful,” the prime minister said.
“It’s not surprising, but it is disgraceful that this latest military incursion would be under the guise of humanitarian assistance.”
The incursion drew condemnation from the United States and NATO, which said Friday is has a growing body of evidence to suggest that Russian soldiers are operating within Ukraine and launching artillery attacks from within the country.
— Steve Rennie, The Canadian Press
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