A Good Five Years, or A Great Five Years for Stephen Harper?

The National Post writers get misty looking back on Harper's first five years in power.

The Post has unveiled a series to mark the fifth anniversary of the Conservatives' rise to power.

John Ivison declares that “by almost every pocketbook metric, Canadian families are better off than they were five years ago,” George Jonas wonders if Harper has missed his big political opportunity (and concludes he hasn’t), Adam MacDowell grades the Conservatives on keeping their campaign promises (they mostly get good marks), and David Frum waxes nostalgic about the days he spent yearning for a Harperesque leader to unite the right. So no real ambiguity as to where the Post writers stand on Stephen Harper (they like him!).

The most interesting of the Post series is this piece by Conrad Black, who lauds Harper’s “patching political fragments together” to form a party “at least as natural a party of government as the Liberals.” Harper’s resurrection of the right after the 1992 election disaster really is impressive, but calling the Conservatives a natural governing party when they have yet to win support broad enough for a majority is surely premature, in The Newsroom’s opinion. Ironically, we may not know if Harper has built such a party until he steps down from its leadership, as it is the prime minister’s perceived arrogance and controlling nature that many voters cite as the reason they don’t support the Tories. Also, not surprisingly, as he awaits a possible return to the hoosegow himself, Black condemns Harper’s tough-on-crime policy.

Harper’s take-no-prisoners governing style is well documented, but if you believe the Toronto Star’s Linda Diebel, in five short years Harper has turned Ottawa into Stalin’s Moscow, a capital staffed by civil servants and politicians terrified of displeasing their overlord. “I’ve never seen a climate of fear like there is now,” she quotes one anonymous consultant as saying. “People are frightened out of their wits . . . To tell you the truth, it’s goddamned scary.” She relates how one Liberal MP “felt the full force of retribution” after displeasing Harper, which amounted to being most vigorously insulted during Question Period. Admittedly some of Harper’s controlling ways are deeply troubling, but until he opens a gulag in the Yukon, can we be spared the alarmist rhetoric and talk about the real issues?