No Bush, please -- we're Canadian

Canada just elected a right-wing prime minister, Stephen Harper. But he had to distance himself as far as possible from George W. Bush to win.

By David Beers

Read more: George W. Bush, Elections, Liberals, Canada, Family Values, Opinion

Jan. 25, 2006 | So maybe you've heard, Canada just got less cool. For some reason (which I'll try to explain) we've gone and elected a guy who's been studying the Reagan playbook all his political life, a Western-bred neocon who'd fit right into the Bush Cabinet (except for the turtleneck, which I'll also try to explain).

Most of the time, Canada is ruled by a party that Canadians are unashamed to call the Liberals. But now the new prime minister is Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party. Dubya's gang has every reason to claim him as one of their own. Many of Harper's closest advisors adhere to the same Straussian philosophy that inspires the fevered manipulations of Karl Rove and company. Harper is against gay marriage, pro missile shield, is eager to scuttle Kyoto, and would have sent Canadian troops to Iraq. In fact, in 2003 when then Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to join Bush's "coalition of the willing," Harper, then the opposition leader in Parliament, published a letter in the Wall Street Journal calling that a "serious mistake" and apologizing. (Some here called that treason, but never mind. And I'll get to the turtleneck shortly.)

By that point Harper had made a kind of toastmaster's skit out of slagging his country while embracing the American way. Sample: "Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status."

And by that point he was well along in his avowed effort to build a new Canadian right-wing base upon (this may sound familiar) gun rights lobbies, anti-choice crusaders, fundamentalist churches and other social conservative groups. In this election, for example, Harper's Conservatives drew a couple of candidates from Canada's wing of Focus on the Family, Dr. James Dobson's hard-right evangelical organization.

Where you tend to find such folks thickest on the ground is Harper's home province of Alberta, it being Canada's oil-rich version of Texas. Alberta's values are so different from those of most Canadians, yet so appealing to Harper, that he once urged his fellow Albertans to build "a firewall" around the province to repel the secular humanist forces stalking the wilds of Canada beyond.

In his new job, of course, Harper is now in charge of the whole of Canada, which means, as someone suggested, that Toronto had better get ready to build its own firewall.

So yeah, U.S. conservatives have plenty of reason to happily assume that Canadians have finally gone all red state up here.

Except they haven't. Not much at all, really. The funny thing about Harper is that the only way he could win was by talking, and looking, like he wasn't so very conservative after all.

Never mind all of Harper's previous talk of privatizing portions of Canada's government-paid, universal healthcare system. This election Harper was Canadian Medicare's staunch ally.

Given that the U.S.-led war in Iraq remains profoundly unpopular among Canadians, what about it? Still time to join in, you know? Naaah. Changed his mind on that, too. In a letter he sent to the Washington Times in December, he said, "On Iraq, while I support the removal of Saddam Hussein and applaud the efforts to establish democracy and freedom in Iraq, I would not commit Canadian troops to that country. I must admit great disappointment at the failure to substantiate pre-war intelligence information regarding Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction."

Some of Harper's top people do happen to believe in creationism. Well, so what? Harper himself took pains to declare that he, personally, had "evolved."

As the election wore on, it got pretty comical. Like when the notoriously stiff Harper suddenly traded his crisp white shirts, dark suits and blue ties for a mouse-gray turtleneck. Cool Canada indeed  circa 1978 at the ski lodge.

Meanwhile, the word went out to all Conservative candidates with ardently right-wing views about gays, guns, God, you name it: Stifle yourselves. The pronouncement even extended below the 49th parallel. In the later days of the election, e-mails started landing in the in boxes of American conservative pundits telling them to self-censor their public enthusiasm for Stephen Harper and what he was trying to pull off up here.

Next page: For Harper, any linkage with Bush was the kiss of death