Political Staples

If an agreement on softwood lumber is days away, then I suspect we can thank both the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Given the glacial pace at which this issue has moved in the past, I doubt the CPC has managed to resolve it in less than a week (unless of course, the resolution is “Whatever you say, Mr. Bush”, which I doubt).

Not to deflate your “it’s not so bad, maybe he’ll be elected soon” bubble, but Fortier has already said if someone resigns he won’t run in a by-election. He says he’ll be too busy doing Alphonso’s old job like the good party-organizer he is.

If you had told me a month ago that one of Harper’s first moves would be to appoint a party organizer to PUBLIC WORKS I might have thought you were having a stroke. Or that you were one of those carzy Liberals who claimed that all politicians were the same, and the Tories wouldn’t act any differently. But an unelected party organizer who needed to be appointed to the Senate first? I would have called an ambulance for you.

Harper had better hope Fortier doesn’t pull an Emerson and change his mind. Because a “temporary” Senator is as valid as a unicorn. He’s only “temporary” in the sense that he promises to step down. Nothing will force him to. But Tory promises are unwavering, of course.

Except when they’re not.

There’s a very good reason for the Emerson decision that I haven’t seen written down yet: he can help Harper make sense of the senior bureaucrats. This would be my main reason for having someone like him. Think about it: all those deputy ministers and the Clerk of the Privvy Council, reaching the top of their careers during the past 12 years of Liberal rule. Their bread and butter was helping to implement Liberal policies. While civil servants are ostensibly apolitical, there must be some kind of selective pressure and influence such that the current group of senior bureaucrats are closely aligned with their former masters. That’s a huge risk for Harper: how can he trust what they tell him, and how can he mitigate their attempts to subtly foil the implementation of his policies? Granted, Emerson wasn’t in the Liberal Cabinet for too long, but I’d wager he has a good understanding of the bureaucratic political scene beneath the surface of Cabinet. His experience as a BC Deputy Minister would also help here.

This is something Harper obviously wouldn’t want to stress in public, because senior bureacrats simply aren’t on the public radar screen and plainly stating concerns such as the ones I raised above might antagonize the senior bureaucrats.

So, I admit it doesn’t look like a move we’d expect from Harper, with his knight in shining armour image, but I think it’s still on-side ethically and the practical benefits are huge. It’s possible to maintain one’s integrity but still engage in a bit of political street fighting.