Wherever He Goes

With two recent decisions, Tasha Kheiriddin writes, Stephen Harper may have lost B.C -- and beyond. His first decision -- to approve Northern Gateway and then disappear -- has stoked growing opposition to the project:

The Tories’ sotto voce approval might be a sign not only of Gateway’s mortality but Keystone’s as well. This would put into question their entire western economic and political strategy. Without increased pipeline capacity, Alberta petroleum producers can’t take more oil to market, unless they send it by rail. That’s already causing massive problems for another western constituency — farmers — who are watching their crops pile up as trains full of bitumen chug past.

Without petrodollars, the Tories’ dreams of moving Canada’s economic and political axis from Toronto to Calgary will pass them by. If Keystone is dead, Gateway has to come through. But without another Tory majority government, it won’t. Hence the importance of B.C. and its 42 seats.

His decision to "reform" the Temporary Foreign Workers Program has elicited howls of opposition in both British Columbia and Alberta:

Meanwhile, unions are making noise over Ottawa’s changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers’ Program. B.C. Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair stated this week that “the program is still going to exist — they just found ways to massage public opinion so they can continue with it.” Consequently, he added, “our position is that (foreign workers) should be given citizenship … If they’re good enough to work here, they’re good enough to live here, bring their families and spend their paycheques in Canada.”

All of the Alberta Conservative leaderships candidates have voiced their disapproval. The prime minister is now making enemies of former friends.

He sees enemies everywhere because he creates them everywhere -- wherever he goes.

When Friends Become Enemies

The number of chairs around the table in Stephen Harper's Inner Sanctum hasn't changed. Same number of chairs, same number of people. But, according to Tom Flanagan, the quality of those people has changed:

In an interview, Flanagan, who admits the prime minister doesn't talk to him anymore, said, "He's lost so many people, it's kind of sad. We were good friends. When I would come to Ottawa I would stay at Stornoway."

In earlier years, Harper's staff often included lawyers, professors and business executives. Others had worked for previous prime ministers, and possessed an institutional memory of Parliament and a well-honed sense of what to learn from past political mistakes.

Flanagan listed a series of "very able people" who have passed through Harper's team. "Ken Boessenkool, Ian Brodie, Geoff Norquay, Bruce Carson — whatever his personal problems, are he's a very capable adviser —  Keith Beardsley, Guy Giorno,  Nigel Wright, David Emerson, Michael Fortier."

The people who now serve Harper are loyal but narrow:

Beardsley thinks Harper isn't attracting what Flanagan calls "top drawer" people because of rules in place since 2008 that prohibit lobbying for five years following a job as a designated public office holder.

"People aren't going to come up for one or two years. It's not worth it to them financially and career-wise."

Currently, Beardsley said, many of the PMO staff come out of the parliamentary intern program. "They're all young and basically of one mindset," he said.

That mindset, said Beardsley, is something former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff references about his time in politics.

“We’ve blurred opponent with enemy,” Ignatieff said, in a speech last year to a law school audience. “Belonging matters more than confidence, expertise or trustworthiness.”

In the Harperian universe anyone who holds a contrary opinion is the enemy. And, Stephen Harper believes that many people who used to work for him are now enemies.

A Sore Winner

In his most recent column at ipolitics, Michael Harris recounts observations from people who have had to deal with Stephen Harper:

“You have to appreciate Orwell to get a feel for Harper,” former Liberal interim leader Bob Rae told me. “His government doesn’t like alternate sources of information. It likes to be the sole source of information.”

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair met Harper in 2007, and was struck by the “strange” character of the man who has made his party “smug, smart-ass, and full of half-lies.” His utter dismissiveness of opponents was striking to Mulcair: “He never looks at his adversaries. There is no eye contact. It’s robotic. He pivots when he rises and looks at the Speaker. He never looks at his interlocutors. Questions don’t interest him. He is less and less connected with the question. What you get to see of him in the House is his right shoulder.”

But perhaps the most telling anecdote comes from Bill Phipps, the NDP candidate who Harper ran against in 2002, and who he refused to debate:

“I went over to congratulate him at his headquarters and he wouldn’t shake my hand. He told me he despised me! I couldn’t figure out how he could despise me, since he didn’t know me.”

The prime minister is a man who appears to hate every other human being he encounters:

The list of people Harper hates, not counting the ones on the official enemies list the PMO keeps, is long: judges, journalists, environmentalists, professors, union leaders, scientists, federal bureaucrats, First Nations peoples, Palestinians, all opposition parties, and anyone or anything named Trudeau.

Remember, this is a PM who won’t talk to the premiers, wouldn’t talk to Chief Theresa Spence, doesn’t hold press conferences and won’t speak at the UN — except through his finger puppet, John Baird.

One has to wonder if his supposedly brilliant mind is also a diseased mind. He is, after all, a sore winner.