Just when Stephen Harper appeared to have come up with a sales pitch that resonates–that the Conservatives are proving to be good economic stewards in times of economic crisis–the real economists went and spit in his Timmy’s double double. According to them, the recent Canadian recession is a thing of the past.
This is a disaster for Stephen Harper, who has recently been selling the idea, and somewhat successfully, that a change in government would spell disaster for the prospects of a Canadian economic recovery. With that recovery officially underway his sales pitch is already past its best before date and just when he thought it would always be fresh. Harper is now faced with the very real problem of finding a new political message to make him seem relevant to the polity during an election.
His reaction to news of the recovery is one we’ve seen before. Stephen Harper is downplaying the actual state of the Canadian economy, this time the economic recovery, and pretending it to be something altogether fictional. You read correctly. Harper’s tactic of choice is to deny the economic recovery that is now following on the heels of the economic recession that he denied was looming just a year ago (during our last election).
In a statement to reporters Harper said, “We’ve got (Federal Reserve) Chairman (Ben) Bernanke and others saying the recession is over but I think that’s only in a technical sense…I don’t think we can truly say the recession is over.”
His strategy should come as no shock. The recession was his political baby, albeit one he tried vigorously to abort prior to seizing it as a great photo-op and kissing it all over. It was an easy challenge for him to meet head on, despite his having met it reluctantly. The only real decision his government made (reluctantly) was to follow the lead of every other G20 government and throw barrels of colourful money to the people from the back of an F150. If you bribe them they will come. And they did, though only in the form of single digit gains in the polls.
But those days appear to be over.
The proof of this has come in a form all to familiar to Harper. The ground has shifted under his government’s feet and, once again, Harper finds himself confronted by an issue that looms large in one of his perpetual political blindspots: Climate Change.
This week Michael Ignatieff criticized Harper for not participating it the UN meeting on climate change. Harper’s response? He feels it is more important to focus on the economy.
Of course he does. Like the wholehearted recession denial that came before it, a good recovery denial undoubtedly requires a convincing act to sell it to Canadians. Attending the climate change meeting would have boon foolish for two reasons. First, it would have suggested that Harper was admitting that the Canadian economic crisis didn’t need his constant and personal attention (which it doesn’t, actually). Second, and perhaps more damaging, it would have suggested that Stephen Harper has something interesting to say about climate change which, as he has demonstrated to the global community in spades, he does not.
I think Canadians can expect some fascinating recovery denial in the near future. It might take several forms. Perhaps in the coming days Harper will sit down on national television and tell Canadians to sell stocks in Canadian companies just to be on the safe side. Perhaps he’ll have Jim Flaherty take us to Price Chopper and demonstrate how to shop on a shoestring budget to get through these enduring tough times.
What seems clear is that with an election somewhere near the bottom of the cup and the economy on the mend Harper’s tactics are once again placing him somewhere in the nosebleed section watching the game unfold. Yes, I see him. There he is, stubbornly sipping his double double with hopes that it will keep him warm a while longer.
Silly Harper. Everyone knows your coffee is tepid at best, and most likely cold by now.
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admin | 
09 25th, 2009| 
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