No One Cares About What Harper's Not Doing

Dare you to name one important piece of legislation Stephen Harper's passed. Double dog dare ya, even.

After nearly five years under his prime ministerial rule, the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert tries to think of one memorable piece of legislation Stephen Harper has passed, and for once the esteemed columnist draws a blank. “If the prime minister were to quit tomorrow,” she writes, “the government bills passed on his watch might not take more than a page — and none would be deemed significant enough to grace his political gravestone.” In part, this is Harper’s own fault because he keeps proroguing Parliament and putting his own legislation on a treadmill. But this doesn’t mean he hasn’t left his impact. Walking away from the Kyoto Protocol, the Kelowna Accord, and Liberal childcare plans were all important decisions but required no legislation, says Hébert. She also points out, as other columnists have with increasing alarm, that Harper has centralized the Conservative Party and the government to an unprecedented degree, and the centre is located somewhere between his left and right ears.

However you assess what Harper’s done since 2006, it’s clear that voters aren’t paying attention, writes the Ottawa Citizen’s Susan Riley. Despite a “catalogue of strategic miscues, startling policy reversals, ethical slip-ups, and financial irresponsibility” over the past 12 months, the Tories are still ahead in the polls, and Riley says this is a clear sign of “a bitterly resigned, indifferent, or inattentive electorate.” Her prime evidence of this is the lack of outrage over the government’s deal to buy F-35 fighter planes, which will add $16 billion to the record $50-billion deficit, was never put up for competitive tender, and does not address Canada’s defence needs. Riley’s pretty riled up about this, perhaps justifiably so, but if she expects military procurement contracts to be the issue that rouses voters from apathy, she is sadly mistaken. In truth Harper’s done a pretty good job of identifying issues, like the gun registry and crime, that do motivate portions of the electorate and he’s crafted policies around them. While arguably these voters should be paying attention to some larger issues, you can’t say they don’t care about anything.