Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks during a news conference following the end of the G8 Summit in Brisbane, Australia Sunday Nov.16, 2014. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld BRISBANE, Australia — Abba Eban, the hugely accomplished Israeli diplomat and wordsmith once quipped that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Strange to say, perhaps, but that remark could also be used to describe Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
A classic example of the prime minister never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity occurred about a week and a half ago in Beijing. Harper and the Toronto Maple Leafs’ chief commercial officer, Dave Hopkinson, went on one of China’s state television networks to promote Canada’s favourite game.
For reasons known only to themselves, the prime minister’s office decided that the media travelling with their boss should not be allowed to witness what was by far his biggest public event during his five days in China. I got permission to witness the interview at the very last minute, but only after hounding his staff for a couple of days.
With a federal election looming and every hockey story attracting far more uncritical media interest than anything touching on politics, it was counter-intuitive to pass on such political gravy by keeping the rest of the media far away from a story that was to be watched by millions of Chinese and that revealed a softer, more genial side to the prime minister. But there it is.
What Canadians missed seeing, or hearing, was a conversation between Harper and a rather serious Chinese anchorwoman in which he enthusiastically explained how he came to love hockey and the Leafs in his youth and how much he hoped his hosts would embrace the game. The prime minister even managed to sneak in a bit of politics by extolling voluntarism at the Calgary and Vancouver Winter Olympics and suggesting that China would do well to encourage its citizens to do the same if Beijing wins its bid to host the 2022 Winter Games.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper with Jimbelung the Koala before the start of the first G20 meeting Saturday November 15, 2014 in Brisbane, Australia. THE CANADIAN PRESS/G20 Australia, Andrew Taylor
Harper chose to try to take much political advantage of his verbal spat with Vladimir Putin last weekend at the G20 leaders summit in Brisbane. It was 28 hours after that unexpected exchange before Harper finally spoke about it.
Although he wore a grin like the Cheshire Cat who got all the cream when he was eventually asked about what Australian media referred to as his “slamdown” of Putin for not withdrawing his troops from Ukraine, Harper missed an opportunity to further burnish his image by not elaborating at all about what actually took place between him and the Russian leader.
What the prime minister had to say was a pro forma regurgitation of previous statements he had made about how Canada deplored Russia’s behaviour and would never accept the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea or its actions in eastern Ukraine.
As a Canadian journalist who works overseas, I seldom follow Harper. When I do it is usually within the straitjacket of leaders’ summits and official visits.
Although freed from the intense partisan rhetoric of Ottawa when he is abroad, the prime minister remains as distant and inscrutable then as he is on Parliament Hill.
Love him or hate him, Harper has presided over Canada during a period when it has done better than many of its closest allies who have been whacked and then whacked again by economic crises. Although the news was generally upbeat from China, New Zealand and Australia, with no hint of scandal or controversy, and the response in the foreign media about Harper’s war of words with Putin was positive, the Canadian prime minister was as much of a phantom as ever to the journalists sent to cover him.
Over the course of 10 days — including three days when most of the media shared the same aircraft with the prime minister — those sent to report on him had him within their gaze for a total of perhaps 90 minutes and had, at best, 30 or 40 minutes in which to speak with him during the always carefully orchestrated question and answer sessions.
In other words, it was a usual trip overseas with Prime Minister Harper.
This strategy has always astonished journalists travelling with other leaders. Although relations between them and those they cover are often strained, too, they get almost daily access as well as a stream of detailed backgrounders by aides and bureaucrats to provide situational awareness.
The Tories have long boasted that one of the main reasons their guy has remained in power for so long is because of how tightly they control media access to him.
Yet it could be as logically argued that it was precisely because of such media control that the Harperites only won minorities during the first two elections that they contested.
The Times of London reported Sunday that there was actually more to the Harper/Putin story than had been previously disclosed. It claimed that Harper got in the last word, accusing Putin of lying when he denied that Russian troops were present in Ukraine. If true, not making that “tough guy” riposte known during the Brisbane summit was another example of “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
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