Harper's real 'hidden agenda'

His tactics have alienated not only socons, but
also other conservatives who are upset, too

Analysis Paul Tuns

For the past half-decade, Stephen Harper's political opponents have claimed the Conservative leader has harboured a hidden agenda. The charge is usually a barely disguised code that posits Harper secretly holds "extreme" socially conservative views. His partisan opponents and most political pundits think the charge works, pointing to fact that in 2004, Paul Martin held on to a minority government and in 2006, the Conservatives were denied a majority government. More recently, the hidden agenda charge has expanded beyond social issues to what Liberal leader Stephane Dion has called Harper's unenunciated and untruthful fiscal policies.

Some conservatives, however, say they wish Harper, who has tacked to the political centre during his first 32 months in office, did have a hidden agenda. They are impatient over the fact there is very little policy change on a number of fronts and hope that he suddenly moves rightward on issues as varied as the environment and foreign policy. As head of the National Citizens Coalition, Harper led a Supreme Court battle against gag laws that restrict third-party speech during election campaigns, but as prime minister, he hasn't done a thing about them, while at the same time, he has further restricted political donations. As opposition leader, Harper railed against Jean Chretien's support of the Kyoto Protocol, but in government, Conservatives have conceded the need to do something about allleged man-made global warming. Before becoming prime minister, Harper was a critic of the gun registry, but after nearly three years in office, it is still in place. For most of his time as prime minister, Harper has attacked his partisan critics for being wishy-washy on Afghanistan, because they want a deadline to leave the war-torn country, only to then provide his own 2011 deadline in September.

On a range of issues, Harper has flip-flopped from the right to the left.

Perhaps Harper's opponents were correct - perhaps the Conservative leader does harbour a hidden agenda. But rather than being an extreme right-wing conservative, Harper has cleverly hidden that he is a liberal, or, at best, a pragmatist who is willing to buck any principle for short-term political advantage.

Time after time, Harper has shown that he is willing to deke one way and go another.

No more is this so than in social policy.

To be clear, Harper has never been pro-life, but he once couched his position in populism and indicated a tolerance for pro-life views. Those days are gone.

On abortion, Stephen Harper has been consistent about his disinterest in the issue. When he first ran for office as a Reform Party MP in 1993, he answered a Campaign Life Coalition questionnaire by saying he would vote to reflect the wishes of his constituents. He said he already polled his riding and found the majority of respondents supported abortion, but opposed taxpayer funding of abortion. This was consistent with his view that politicians reflect the views of their constituents. One might wonder how the views of constituents are determined by an MP, but that doesn't change the fact that Harper seemed to be following his populist principles.

Over the course of his career as MP, he rarely addressed moral issues. When he returned to politics (after a short absence to head the National Citizens Coalition) to run for the Canadian Alliance leadership, he showed a willingness to work with pro-life members of caucus and reach out to pro-life voters. He spoke out against euthanasia and said he favoured supporting more promising adult stem cell research, rather than embryonic stem cell research.

In 2004, he was elected leader of the newly united Conservative Party of Canada - the marriage of the mostly socially conservative Reform Party/Canadian Alliance and the old Tories. Since then, there has been a consistent move to the left on life issues. During the 2004 English leaders' debate, Harper said if the Tories were elected, "My Conservative government will not be tabling any legislation impacting in any way a woman’s right to choose."

He lost the 2004 election and the Conservatives' supposed social conservatism - barely perceptible to actual social conservatives - was often blamed for a late campaign dip in the polls that prevented the Harper-led Tories from defeating a weakened Liberal party in the aftermath of the sponsorship scandal. Over the next 18 months, Harper and his brain-trust would bend over backwards to reassure the public he would not touch the abortion issue, but in ways they no doubt hoped would keep pro-life voters on board.

During the March, 2005 policy convention, the party leadership backed a resolution instituting an official policy of not taking any position on abortion. It passed, but some pro-lifers hoped that having no official position indicated a neutrality that would let the sizeable pro-life contingent of the Conservative party caucus move pro-life legislation forward without it being formal government policy. There was nothing in Harper's convention speech - in which he said "as prime minister, I will not bring forth legislation on the issue of abortion" - that prevented pro-life MPs from acting on their consciences. The government would not bring forth legislation, but private members' bills could still be initiated.

Harper, however, was practising the sort of word games that would make Bill Clinton proud - the casual follower of politics would see that Prime Minister Harper wouldn't legislate on abortion, but more politically active pro-lifers knew that his words did not shut the door on all abortion-related legislation. They could hope.

In the final days of the 2006 election campaign, during a stop in Quebec, Harper more brazenly answered reporters' questions about abortion: "The Conservative government won't be initiating or supporting abortion legislation and I'll use whatever influence I have in Parliament to be sure that such a matter doesn't come to a vote."

Many social conservatives felt betrayed. Not only would the government not support pro-life legislation, but as prime minister, Harper would actively try to prevent a vote on any bill related to the abortion issue. This was a significant move away from his supposedly neutral position to one openly hostile to the pro-life cause. It didn't help that on Jan. 18, he told the CBC that a Conservative government "doesn’t intend to re-open that issue ... I don’t have time to re-open that issue."

Those weasel words - "doesn't intend" and "I don't have time to re-open" - indicated that there might be a time, somewhere in the future, that the Harper-led Conservatives might, under the right circumstances, consider the abortion issue. That is a lot of hedging, but it was designed to keep pro-life social conservatives on board. To close the deal with socons, Harper earlier promised to revisit the same-sex "marriage" issue.

Eleven months after forming the government, the Harper government introduced a motion that, if it had passed, would have forced a new debate and vote on the legalization of same-sex "marriage." It failed.

Beyond abortion, Harper's record is mixed on social issues. He ended the Court Challenges Program. He has appointed pro-life judges and raised the age of consent to 16 (from 14). He staved off a massive institutionalized daycare scheme by providing tax credits to parents with young children. All of this is good, but he has also flip-flopped on a number of socially conservative issues.

As leader of the NCC, he was a critic of human rights commissions, but in the spring of this year, his government's Justice Department filed a report defending the HRCs. He cut the amount of taxpayer money the Secretariat of Women received, but later restored full funding. This year's budget included a provision to deny federal tax credits to films that violated Canada’s obscenity laws or other parts of the Criminal Code, but then, during the election campaign, Harper announced he would drop this provision in the wake of cries of censorship by well-heeled artists. Despite the hoopla that the Tories were gutting cultural spending by cutting $45 million from specific programs (such as sending artists overseas to promote Canada), arts funding under the Conservatives is 20 per cent higher today than it was under Liberal Paul Martin.

All of this is part of a pattern: promote common sense policies, but cave into special interests when the going gets tough.

In the most spectacular example of this cynicism, the Conservative government deep-sixed the Unborn Victims of Crime bill, a private member's bill from Ken Epp, just days before the election, after the Canadian Medical Association criticized it as a potential threat to doctors who commit abortions. It wouldn't have, but the move was politically unnecessary, too, because with the election call, the bill would have died in committee. But the Harperites felt the need to put an end, once and for all, to the idea that a Conservative government would re-open the abortion debate.

During the election campaign, Harper was still hounded about his plans with regard to abortion by reporters (although none of his political opponents, other than Gilles Duceppe, raised the issue). Harper said: "This government will not open, will not permit anyone to open the abortion debate."

Harper's position could not be clearer. Neither pro-lifers who cling to the notion that the Conservative leader is a closet pro-lifer, nor his opponents who claim he has a hidden agenda to re-open the abortion issue when he gets the chance, should believe Harper holds secret pro-life views.

People should not assume that Harper is a liberal. It is debatable what his core principles are, but taking him at face value, he is a conservative - he always has been and he continues to be.

Rather, something much more nefarious has happened.

His hidden agenda is not really hidden, nor is it ideological.

Like most politicians, Harper simply wants to be elected. If he thought being conservative would win him more votes, he'd move to the right. If polls consistently showed that 90 per cent of the public were solidly pro-life, Harper would be the first one to introduce a ban on abortion.

Harper isn't a liberal, he's an opportunist.

Pro-lifers are disappointed by Harper's obstruction of their agenda, but they are hardly the only conservatives to be let down by this career politician.

If Harper has already let down his allies on the right on the "easy issues" - fiscal and social policies that don't touch moral questions - there is little reason to believe that once the Harper Conservatives win a majority, things will be better for pro-lifers.

The lesson in all this is simple, and is articulated by pro-life leaders repeatedly: do not put all of your hopes in a particular party or politician. The cause is so much bigger than this party or that personality.