The Longer I'm Prime Minister

by Paul Wells

  Of course, he adds, this may be a reason to object to incremental politics. But it “also suggests that a skilled reformer may learn paths of indirection and surprise, thus reaching objectives that would be successfully resisted were his program more fully revealed.”

  Nobody I have quizzed in Harper’s circle has read Lindblom’s papers, though they are classics of public administration literature. But that’s fine. He did not write them as guidebooks. He wrote them to explain how public administrators often work even if they do not know they are following a model. And his explanation rings true for many of our most successful prime ministers, whether it’s Mackenzie King or Chrétien or Harper. If you pick a fight, you might lose it. If you avoid fights, you can get more done than a half-alert observer would notice, you can fix errors before they become crises, and you live to do it all again tomorrow. This is not a much different lesson than the one Edmund Burke offered in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, when he wrote that it is risky to let each man depend on “his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small.” Better for men to “avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.” That’s one book Harper did read.

  There is one other lens through which we might regard Harper as we return to our chronological narrative. This one comes from his own staff.

  In rough moments, whether it was in the overhaul of Harper’s office before the 2006 election or during the perilous dip in the polls during the 2008 campaign, the Conservatives depended heavily on Doug Finley as a stabilizing influence. The wiley Scot came up in business, moving through cars, aeronautics and commercial horticulture—“real business,” one of his associates said, “not politically connected fields such as law and consulting.” There Finley learned that teamwork is more important than individual talent; that’s the lesson he passed on repeatedly to the rest of Harper’s entourage. “He would speak at length about the Spanish way of playing soccer and tell us how we could benefit from watching more games from La Liga.”

  I’m no soccer buff, so when I visited Finley, I asked him about Spanish soccer. He didn’t chuckle when I asked him, and I reminded myself that real fans don’t think their interests are cute. (I am the same way when you ask me about Haydn.)

  “It’s always goal-oriented,” Finley said of the Spanish style that has emerged over decades. “It’s very tight possession. Never give the ball away, because if you have the ball, they can’t score a goal. And have the very best material that you can put on the field. The very best resources.”

  I read further about what the Spaniards sometimes call tiqui-taca, an onomatopoeia for the short-pass possession game. The parallels to Harper’s game are obvious. Formal positions matter little; every player can attack or defend depending on circumstances. The goal is not to send the ball way down the field; it’s to keep it close and deny others. There is a raging debate about whether tiqui-taca is an unlovely, unromantic way to play the game, but any criticism is muted by the amazing success Spanish teams have had in recent seasons. “If you watch the Spanish team, they can keep hold of the ball for twenty-five, thirty minutes,” Finley told me. During that time, whatever the other team is doing, it is not scoring. “It might be boring to watch sometimes. But it sure works.”

  NINE

  RISE UP, SEA OF TROUBLES

  The last speech Michael Ignatieff would ever deliver in the House of Commons lasted about fifteen minutes. The House met at ten a.m. on Friday, March 25, 2011. Peter Milliken, the long-suffering Liberal Speaker, read the assembled MPs his decision on a minor question of privilege and announced that the governor general had sent word of his royal assent to two bills. The morning’s routine business thus disposed of, Milliken read the supply motion from Ignatieff that would be the subject of the day’s debate:

  “That the House agree with the finding of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs that the government is in contempt of Parliament, which is unprecedented in Canadian parliamentary history, and consequently, the House has lost confidence in the government.”

  Then Ignatieff rose to speak. He began with kind words for Milliken, who would at the end of the day finish his extraordinary tenure as the longest-serving Speaker in the history of the Canadian House of Commons. Then it was on to the business that would end Milliken’s career, and those of not a few others. “I have to inform the House,” Ignatieff said, “that the Official Opposition has lost confidence in the government.”

  The committee report with which Ignatieff wanted members to agree was “historic,” he said. The previous October, the combined opposition majority on the Finance committee had requested estimates for a bunch of government programs—F-35 jets, corporate tax cuts, crime bills and the cost of hosting the G-20 summit. The government stalled, then offered only partial answers. The committee found the government in contempt. The committee’s Conservative members dissented, calling the majority report “simply a piece of partisan gamesmanship.” But it was the first time that a parliamentary committee has found the government in contempt. By endorsing that finding and voting the Harper government down, said Ignatieff, members would get “an opportunity … to confirm our commitment to parliamentary democracy and its fundamental principles.”

  Chief among those principles was the government’s “obligation to provide members of this House with the information they need in order to hold the government accountable to the people of Canada.” For four months, the opposition had asked Harper’s government the cost of its budget plans. It had asked the true cost of “fighter jets, prisons and corporate tax breaks.” To no avail. Well, it was time for democracy to put its foot down. “We have had enough. If this vote results in an election, the Canadian people will have the opportunity to replace an arrogant government with one that respects democracy.”

  After Ignatieff’s statement, members of other parties had a chance to ask him questions. Harold Albrecht, the government member for Kitchener-Conestoga, asked whether this whole thing wasn’t just a put-up job by an “opposition coalition” that had cooked the committee report from the outset in a bid to have the government’s hide. No, Ignatieff said, this was the very thundering voice of democracy roaring for justice. The next question, from the B.C. New Democrat Nathan Cullen, revealed an analysis more closely approximating Ignatieff’s own.

  “A government is being found in contempt, which has never happened before,” Cullen marvelled. “There have been bad governments, lying governments, and contemptuous governments in this country before, but the present government has achieved this low bar of ethics and morality. How is it we find ourselves in this position and what must we all do collectively to never allow this to happen again?”

  “What has to be done,” Ignatieff said in reply, “to put things right and have democracy respected? The motion moved by the Liberal Party of Canada, the Official Opposition, has to be supported and adopted. That is what.”

  The next question came from one of Ignatieff’s own caucus colleagues, the Vancouver Liberal Joyce Murray. She wanted to make sure this business about democracy would not become too abstract for people to understand. “Would the Leader of the Official Opposition tell us how the government’s abuses of power and contempt of Parliament affect the very character of Canada? How do they affect the daily lives of people in their homes and communities in Canada?”

  Ignatieff was ready to answer. “Many Canadians enjoy the very special privilege of rich and lucky countries, of not having to think and worry about their democracy,” he said. “They do not look up from the more important things they have to do in their lives, such as getting the kids to hockey practice and to school, doing their jobs, being with their neighbours and friends.”

  Here, Ignatieff was engaged in fairly advanced mimicry. He had seen the strange creatures across the centre aisle of the Commons spend much of their time in the root cellar of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, going on and on about security of employment and family and p
roperty. Ignatieff had written seventeen books from a cubbyhole in Maslow’s penthouse, tracing the heady contours of morality and spontaneity, charity, conflict and problem solving. But he had to admit this business about hockey and neighbours had well served his opponents. He was not loath to try to learn from them. Yes, yes, he allowed, it’s important to get the kids to hockey practice.

  “However, in the deep background of their lives, there must always be a confidence that their democracy works and that it works for them,” he said. “That is the crux of our democratic system: that on behalf of the woman taking her son or daughter to hockey practice, on behalf of the man going to work in the mill, they can count on us in the House of Commons to ask the questions that those citizens need to know in order to hold our government accountable. When that government fails in this most elementary task of democratic freedom, it is the duty of the members of the House to bring the government down.”

  Stephen Harper dismissed his beleaguered but hopeful Liberal colleagues as plotters and vandals, then spent the day claiming to be the only shield Canadians could trust as they hurried from the mill to hockey practice. Finally Ignatieff’s motion came to a vote and the Conservatives proved, for once, unable to scare the tide out of rolling in. By 165 votes to 145, the motion passed. Harper announced he’d be off to visit the governor general soon. Ignatieff left the rapidly emptying Commons with a handful of his MPs for a microphone in the lobby and awaited the reporters’ questions.

  His first problem was that none of the reporters he faced was asking about the quality of the democracy he was protecting. They wouldn’t stop questioning him about coalitions. They wanted to know whether he would conspire with the other opposition parties to take power from Stephen Harper after an election, just as Stéphane Dion had tried to do in 2008. Ignatieff was trying to explain that if he had his wish, there wouldn’t even be any other opposition parties. All he wanted was a fair fight between his Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. His attempts to make this argument were not going well.

  “Let me make it more clear: if you vote for the NDP, if you vote for the Greens, if you vote for the Bloc, you’ll get more of this,” he said, tilting his head back toward the Commons chamber with its implied stink of Harperism. “And Canadians are saying, ‘Enough.’ I can’t be clearer than that.”

  Tonda MacCharles, who writes for the Toronto Star, cut in. “No, you’re not clear at all. You’re not clear at all, sir, actually. Do you believe that a coalition is a legitimate parliamentary option that you will pursue?” Go talk to the governor general if you want to debate “abstract constitutional principles,” Ignatieff said.

  Ignatieff was intent on avoiding abstract principles. At one point earlier in the week he had delivered a scrum almost as miserable as this one. “Folks,” he had said then, in response to the same question—because it really wasn’t hard to predict that the question would come up, was it?—“in the election that’s coming up, there’s a blue door.” He held out his right hand, palm forward, miming a door. “You go through that door, you get jets, you get jails, you get corporate tax cuts. You go through the red door”—left hand, palm forward—“you get compassion, you get fiscal responsibility, and you get a government relentlessly focused on the real priorities of Canadian families.”

  Between then and now he must have decided red-door blue-door was not an image that helped his case. What he hadn’t done was find an answer that did help. Terry Milewski from the CBC phrased the question more bluntly than anyone. “Surely this coalition monkey is going to stay on your back every day of the campaign,” the veteran broadcaster scolded him. “Because people will assume that if you don’t rule it out, that’s because you’ve got something to hide.”

  Ignatieff’s forehead went shiny as he started to perspire. “You’re buying the Conservative line here. There’s nothing to hide. I am saying as clearly as I can to the Canadian people, looking them straight in the eye”—here he focused his gaze into the TV camera directly in front of him—“if you want to replace the Harper government, you’ve got to vote Liberal. It can’t be clearer than that.”

  With that, Ignatieff wheeled ninety degrees and fled to the safety of a nearby corridor, his MPs marching briskly in his wake. The beginning of the election was still a day away. The Liberal leader was already fighting ghosts. He couldn’t get a clear shot at Harper; the press kept playing game theory with him.

  A week later a senior Liberal campaign strategist sat in a leather chair in a Toronto office tower and looked back on that scrum as the first sign of trouble in the Liberal campaign. “I thought it was a terrible day,” the strategist said. “I thought he didn’t answer the question right on the coalition thing—a total Ottawa issue which I hadn’t heard a single person outside of Ottawa talk about. But anyway, I understand why it is what it is. But I thought he looked bad; he looked evasive answering the question. He was sweaty. I don’t think he was dressed properly.

  “Other than that, I thought it was a terrific day.” The Liberal paused to consider whether he had laid on the sarcasm so thickly that his meaning might be obscured. He decided clarity would be best: “I thought it was just a shitty day.”

  Still, a bad start needn’t count for much. Five weeks of campaigning lay ahead. By voting day on May 2, almost nobody would be thinking about Ignatieff’s post-confidence-vote scrum. And everything else about this campaign was breaking the way Ignatieff wanted. The moment, hard on the heels of a lacklustre Conservative budget, was the one the Liberals had identified for months as their preferred election kickoff date. Ignatieff had the best staff, the best equipment, the most up-to-date software, the most motivated troops any Liberal leader had brought to a fight in at least a decade. He had spent the previous summer rehearsing for this ordeal with weeks of touring. He couldn’t be readier. In the end none of it would help him.

  The very fact of the election was a decision in which Ignatieff was a bit player. The election happened because the Conservatives and New Democrats didn’t understand each other.

  A few hours before his budget speech on March 23, Jim Flaherty told a news conference he had made specific concessions to obtain NDP support. It should have been easy to calculate what that support would cost, since Layton had given Harper a list. At Harper’s invitation, Layton had met with the prime minister in the Langevin Block five weeks before budget day. Layton named the measures he wanted to see in a budget. These included restoring the EcoEnergy home retrofit program, increasing the Guaranteed Income Supplement, bolstering the Canada Pension Plan and hiring more doctors and nurses. Both leaders’ offices said later it was a cordial chat.

  Harper decided Layton would settle for a little less than half a loaf. The budget included $400 million for energy retrofits but only for a limited time. It enriched the Guaranteed Income Supplement, but less than Layton had hoped. There was nothing on the other demands.

  Harper’s calculation was that Layton would be looking for an excuse to avoid an election. He was recovering from hip surgery and cancer treatment. He walked with a cane. He was notably cagey about the details of his medical condition. All the polls showed weak support for the NDP. Surely Layton would take what Harper offered as cover for a tactical retreat.

  “The PM didn’t want an election,” a Conservative war room operative said later. “That’s not spin, that’s a reality. I know that for a fact because I was in the budget lock-up so I got briefed on the budget before the journalists got briefed on it. And so we all saw the budget, and our reaction was, ‘Wow, maybe this guy really does want to win the confidence vote,’ you know? ‘Not only are there no poison pills. There are genuine attempts to reach out.’ ”

  Sometimes you guess wrong. The finance department had officials in the opposition lock-up, held so members of non-government parties can familiarize themselves with the details of the budget in the hours before it becomes public. What they reported via cell phone to Harper’s political staffers was surprising. As he read the budget, Layto
n became visibly agitated. He sighed theatrically, held his head in his hands, grimaced. Word quickly spread among the Conservatives that they appeared to have miscalculated.

  Minutes after Flaherty’s budget speech, Layton confirmed that hunch in his remarks to reporters. “Mr. Harper had an opportunity to address the needs of hard-working middle-class Canadians and families, and he missed that opportunity,” he said. “He just doesn’t get it. New Democrats will not support the budget as presented.” From that moment, the outcome of Friday’s confidence vote was a foregone conclusion.

  The Conservatives would spend the entire campaign saying it was their budget that had triggered the election. “Our messaging was always: we were defeated on the budget,” the Conservative war room staffer said. “You know, we kind of elide that distinction as to the specific vote on which we were defeated.”

  “Elide” was one way to put it. Ignatieff was right: Harper’s government had been found in contempt of Parliament, not only the first Canadian government to meet that fate, but the first in the Commonwealth. But Harper didn’t want this campaign to be a debate about his democratic bona fides. He wanted to go to the voters as a man who had simply been taking care of the nation’s economic business and wanted nothing better than to be sent back to his task. The only obstacle to that happy conclusion, he would argue, was the scheming opposition parties.

  It would be handy if Ignatieff had spent the campaign’s first day talking about coalitions instead of government ethics. Fortunately for Harper, Ignatieff’s need to recover from his flop-sweat scrum had ensured he would oblige.

  On Saturday morning, shortly before Ignatieff appeared for his campaign launch news conference, reporters received an e-mailed copy of a statement from the Liberal leader. “Let’s be clear about the rules,” it said. “Whoever leads the party that wins the most seats on election day should be called on to form the government.” That was clear enough, but it was not the end of it. “If that is the Liberal party, then I will be required to rapidly seek the confidence of the newly elected Parliament. If our government cannot win the support of the House, then Mr. Harper will be called on to form a government and face the same challenge.”