If the U.S. financial crisis has, for the moment, trumped the presidential elections as the issue of the day, it is reducing the Canadian election to something of a sideshow. Yet, if political paralysis in the U.S. allows financial crisis to turn into a general economic crisis, Canadians may regret not paying closer attention to matters closer to home.
In this situation, Stephen Harper has tried to offer reassurances. "The Canadian economy is fundamentally sound," and "Canada is not the United States," he has told us. He reminds us that he's an economist (one hears that he regards himself as the government's chief economist, God help us) but the assurance offered is, word-for-word, the one John McCain -- no economist, he -- has been uttering for months. The coincidence may reflect political affinities but McCain, it may be noted, stopped making that claim last week when overcome by a sudden dose of reality.
The more interesting statement from Harper was his assurance that Canada is not the United States. At one level, of course, that is something that everybody knows. We just didn't know that he knew it. He's had that problem for a long time. While talking about creating firewalls between provinces and loosening the bonds of the Canadian federal system, he has always stood for more intimate links with the U.S. He has Americanized the Conservative party through use of Republican consultants and sending Conservatives to Republican seminars, thereby rendering them more skilful in things for which the Republicans have become known: negative advertising; the use of "wedge" issues to divide the public, and the politicization of anything and everything that will solidify their political base.
This week, Harper's history of deference to the U.S. reared up and bit him in the unmentionable. The occasion was the Case of the Plagiarized Speech. For those who have not been paying attention -- and God knows there must be many who simply wish the election would go away -- Liberal candidate Bob Rae revealed this week that Harper's 2003 speech urging Canadian participation in George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq was substantially copied from a speech given a few days earlier by John Howard, then prime minister of Australia, and a staunch Bush supporter.
The "author" of Harper's speech is Owen Lippert, then on Harper's staff. Now, ironically, he is an expert in intellectual-property matters, including things like copyright. In this election, he got leave of absence from another Conservative minister to work on the central campaign, from which he has now resigned. There is no indication that he will resign his position in the government, but Harper associates who land in trouble don't actually seem to quit or get fired: like Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz -- he of the listeria jokes -- who didn't resign but simply went into hiding.
Much attention in this episode has focused on the plagiarism. There is some point to this. When the leader of the opposition is about to say "ready, aye, ready" in support of George W. Bush and in opposition to the government of Canada, it is unquestionably an important speech. However, though it can be argued that Harper should have taken greater care as to who had input into the final version, I can believe that Harper may have been unaware that his words were Howard's first. Having, myself, worked for and written speeches for the leader of the opposition in the Manitoba legislature, I realize (and largely regret) that, in our time, most politicians rely heavily and increasingly on the writing skills of other people -- Barack Obama being, perhaps, something of rather remarkable exception. Working politicians are most likely to be concerned with a speech's content and message, and would assume that a speechwriter would do nothing -- like unacknowledged borrowing of someone else's speech -- to cause embarrassment the day after, or five years after. On the printed page, however, Howard's Australian accent would have provided no hints of its authorship.
Nonetheless, the publicity attached to the plagiarism is a reminder of just how much Harper was in lock-step with Bush. Had Harper been prime minister in 2003, Canadian Forces would have fought and died -- and might still be fighting and dying -- in an Iraq war that the overwhelming majority of Canadians opposed and continue to oppose. To be sure, the Liberals' Michael Ignatieff also supported the war but he has since recanted. What the plagiarized speech serves to do is to offer a reminder that five years later, Harper has recanted nothing. Since 2003, American public opinion has come to see Bush's folly and its cost in lives and treasure; opposition consistently encompasses the overwhelming majority of Americans; and by cutting taxes and effectively putting the costs of the war on a credit card, Bush wreaked havoc on the American economy.
Yet we still don't know whether Harper still thinks the war was a good idea. Harper, of course, never acknowledges mistakes of any kind. In another irony, Lippert's mistake provides us with this reminder that Harper, nonetheless, makes them -- big time.
PREVIOUS
