A rchive Date
[ 25-03-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/brodbeck.html
Stephen my lad, you'll never be PM
By TOM BRODBECK -- Winnipeg Sun
March 25, 2002
Let's make one thing clear. Newly-minted Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper will never be the prime minister of Canada.
He is bright, articulate and far more controlled and appealing than his predecessor, the curious and mercurial Stockwell Day.
You won't catch Harper mounting a jet-ski, sporting a wet-suit and taking part in the kind of freakish, promotion-from-hell stunts crafted by Day and his revolving-door of advisors.
I'm pretty sure Harper knows which way the Niagara Falls flows.
Harper is more formal than Day. He exhibits a statesmen-like quality that Day intrinsically doesn't have.
I just can't see Harper holding up a dorky, marker-scrawled sign that reads "No two-tier health care" during a leaders' debate.
But Harper is a Reformer. He is a member of a Western Canadian political movement that seems incapable of breaking through the Manitoba-Ontario border.
And he will never make it as PM.
He's basically a younger Preston Manning, without the big glasses and preacher-like voice.
Manning did great things for this country, forcing centre and centre-left politicians in Canada to embrace balanced budgets, debt reduction and tax cuts.
But that's as far as he could go. He could never fashion himself as a national leader in the eyes of Canadians coast-to-coast.
And nor will Harper.
Harper, an economist, has strong principles and is the author of many of the Reform Party's economic policies. But he will not sell well in Ontario. He will not sell at all in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.
The bigger problem, of course, is that even if I'm wrong in my assessment of Harper, the Alliance will still split votes with the federal Tories. And the saga of the one-party state that is Canada will march merrily along for years to come.
Headlines last week about Harper and Tory Leader Joe Clark willing to "talk" about some nebulous form of "unity" are pointless and nauseating.
Neither man truly wants to blend the two organizations. Both want to be king of the hill. Their objectives will always conflict. And as long as both parties have leaders whose determination to further the cause of their own party exceeds their will to join forces with the other, that will not change.
Alliance MP's such as Manitoba's Brian Pallister (Portage-Lisgar) can jump up and down all they want, demanding the two parties get together. But it will never happen as long as we have leaders such as Harper and Clark who really have no interest in merging the two entities.
I have said it before and I will say it again: Amalgamation won't happen until the leaders of both parties agree to step down simultaneously, call a convention to merge the two parties and agree not to run for the leadership of a new party.
That would allow someone like, oh, I don't know, a Mike Harris to step up to the plate and take the helm of a new party that could actually beat the reigning Liberals.
It would turn Canadian politics on its head and we would be back to something resembling democracy in this country.
Anything less than that is a commitment to the status quo.
Tom Brodbeck is the Sun's city columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at tbrodbeck@wpgsun.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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