Election signals last days of Harper Decade

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/10/2015 (3640 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The perpetual and seemingly endless election campaign is finally winding down. And no matter what happens on election night, one thing is nearly certain — the campaigner-in-chief, Stephen Harper, has likely waged his last political contest.

Since re-entering public life in 2002, Harper has fronted five national election campaigns on behalf of the Conservative party. Prior to that, he ran in two leadership contests — first for the Canadian Alliance, and then for the united Conservative party. Among Canada’s prime ministers, Harper is tied with Pierre Trudeau and John Diefenbaker for the number of campaigns he has led. Only John A. MacDonald, Wilfrid Laurier and William Lyon MacKenzie-King (with seven each) took part in more election contests.

Given that the shelf life of a politician now is far shorter than it was in MacDonald’s, Laurier’s and MacKenzie-King’s day — all three of them tasted defeat at least once within their first three elections — it is a testament to Harper’s skills as a political strategist and campaigner that he has endured as long as he has. The only blemish on his political scorecard came in 2004, when it was expected that his newly united Conservative Party would be clobbered by Paul Martin’s Liberal juggernaut. Instead, Harper led the polls until the last week of the campaign and reduced the once-mighty Liberals to a minority, then defeated them 18 months later.

The Harper Decade, as it has become known, has very much been a permanent political contest. From Day 1, Harper and the Conservatives have battled tooth and nail to stay in power until they captured a majority government in 2011. Along the way, they have achieved two of their key goals — to weaken the Liberal party and to put the Conservatives in a position to dominate the 21st century in the same manner the Liberals did the 20th.

No matter what happens on Oct. 19, we are surely witnessing the last days of the Harper Decade. If the Conservatives lose the election, Harper will almost certainly step down. If the Conservatives win more seats than the other two parties and try to continue governing, Harper’s days may be numbered if either the NDP or Liberals successfully demonstrate they can govern with the confidence of the majority of the House of Commons. If a Liberal-NDP coalition successfully emerges this time, it would be untenable for Harper to carry on as the Conservative Leader.

But let’s say that the Conservatives win another majority (it’s still possible). At this point, Harper will have won four straight elections and two successive majority governments.

He and his party will officially mark 10 years in power on Jan. 23, 2016. One year later, in 2017, he will preside over Canada’s 150th anniversary. The year also marks another personal political milestone of sorts for Harper. At that point, it will have been 30 years since he delivered his first major public address at the Reform party’s founding convention in Winnipeg.

In 2017, Harper will be just 58 years old and will have spent more than half of his life in the political trenches in one form or another. At that stage, it may be time for a politician thinking about his legacy to go out on a high note rather than tempting fate and the electorate again.

In 2009, Gary Doer resigned almost 10 years to the day after he was first elected premier of Manitoba. At that time, he told reporters, “If you ever get a chance in this job to go out on your own timing, you’d better take advantage of it. I’ve watched very good people leave not of their own accord. I’ve watched very good people have a press conference like this at the end of an election night. It is a tough job to leave on your own timing.”

(Two years prior to this, of course, Doer ran for re-election and vehemently denied that he would be stepping down before the end of his term. If asked, Harper would likely say the same thing about his own post-election plans.)

Whatever happens, chances are this election night will be Harper’s last, signalling the dawn of a new era for the Conservatives. A post-Harper future, especially if it comes in a minority Parliament where the Conservatives are either in opposition or in danger of being toppled by the other parties, is extremely murky. The coalition that Harper has successfully managed to bridge for the past 13 years will undoubtedly be strained somewhat, as some party members will want to move the party further to the right — particularly on social issues — while others will want to turn the page on the divisiveness of the Harper years and position the party closer to the political centre.

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No matter what transpires — and no matter how you personally feel about the man — Harper’s political legacy of uniting the Conservative Party, weakening the Liberals and continuously governing through such unstable times ranks right up there alongside those of Trudeau, Diefenbaker and the other giants of Canadian politics who managed to hold power for this long.

Curtis Brown is the vice-president of Probe Research, a Winnipeg-based public opinion firm. His views are his own.

curtis@probe-research.com

Twitter: @curtisatprobe