THE ICEMAN COMETH
Observations on Canada's New Prime Minister, Stephan Harper

John Chuckman

Stephan Harper's first budget, while making little economic and social sense, makes a lot of political sense. Tidbits of spending are distributed to enough disparate groups to aim at luring a majority-making coalition of diverse interests. Should he succeed in this effort, there is reason to be genuinely concerned.

Why do I say the budget makes little economic sense? Every trained economist, including Harper, knows that skewing taxes back to favor consumption - his lowering of the GST (Goods and Services Tax) - is in principle not sound policy.

But if you were determined to re-tilt taxes to favor consumption, a tiny change is not the way to do it, because it is costly and inefficient to re-set the system for a consumer gain of one percent. A huge effort is now needed to re-program or replace countless cash registers and calculators, not to mention the reprinting of forms, receipts, and reports of many kinds.

In economics, often events that mean one thing to individuals mean something else to the community. Thus, Harper's small change in the GST, which will be almost imperceptible to consumers in their individual purchases, still manages to deprive the federal treasury of a substantial annual sum.

The measure does keep a campaign promise, but it was never a very sensible promise, tailored, as it was, to appeal to people's prejudice towards a tax that features in most purchases, a promise offered without explaining the necessary consequences for federal finances.

It is dishonest to speak of Harper's daycare policy because he doesn't have one. His hundred-dollars-a-month give-away is simply a new baby bonus, as economically and socially useless as the old one. Harper's crowd likes to talk of choice - that word that has become a mantra with America's Right Wing in everything but wars - but there's no choice purchased for a hundred dollars a month in the daycare market. If you were thoroughly honest in your principles, you would forget the new baby bonus and just tell everyone they have their own choices.

But that wouldn't do politically, would it? Harper's new baby bonus will flatter with recognition and pocket change the stay-at-home type of mothers, including importantly the Christian Right ones who see what they do almost as a sacrament, while offering a small resource for grannies raising their second generation. Poor women will get no daycare out of the monthly cheque. Still, who doesn't like receiving a cheque every month with your name on it?

I don't like being cynical, but, since this policy of Harper's is itself almost pure cynicism, additional cynicism is not out of place. The Liberal candidate who said before the election that the cheque would mean cigarette-and-beer money for many was being quite honest before he was silenced.

Harper's deliberate slights to Dalton McGuinty, premier of Ontario, offer an important insight into the Prime Minister's character, not that I am any defender of McGuinty's odd and inconsistent manner, but the premier of so important a province does deserve at least diplomatically-correct treatment from the national government.

At first look, the slights seem merely petty, but on closer examination, they are much more. An effort to isolate and ignore opponents was a classic tactic of Mao Tse-Tung and is revealing of a rather tyrannical temperament. We previously heard reports of how stiff and cold Harper can be in private meetings with people he doesn't like talking to. We've also seen only recently how he can suppress comment in his own caucus and with the press. Now, we've seen Harper break a longstanding tradition of not attending fundraisers for provincial politicians and doing it immediately after a brief and much-delayed meeting with McGuinty.

This is not promising for Canada's politics avoiding the bitter, empty partisanship of those in America.

Harper's promises of openness do appear to be being heavily compromised.

Polls indicating Harper's increased popularity in Quebec represent a special confluence of events. The first of these is the growing tiredness of the separatist movement. Try as he will, Duceppe cannot seem to increase his support in Quebec. In part, Quebeckers may be growing tired of his party, in part, they may themselves increasingly recognize that separatism is a slowly-fading dream, and, in part, their tiredness with Duceppe's own often odd manner.

Quebeckers for some years have used this odd party to register protest votes. At some point though, it must seem pointless to register votes with a party that has almost no interest in national policies and can offer few initiatives for practical problems. To address this, Duceppe must increasingly act out of pragmatism, as he did in supporting a budget he ordinarily would certainly otherwise reject on principle. But to the degree that Duceppe behaves this way, he alienates his base constituency of separatists. Also, his opportunity in the present government to act pragmatically is limited to supporting conservative measures, again something that will alienate his base constituency which tends to be very liberal.

The second factor is, of course, Quebec's anger with the national Liberals, something that will not pass quickly because there is a stinging sense of embarrassment behind it.