Self-confessed “Stock-aholic” Ezra Levant is feeling vindicated. That’s because his former boss, Stockwell Day – a man who was ridiculed as a political leader in the early 2000s – is, as of this week, the ministerial jewel in the Harper crown.
This is the same politician who arrived at a news conference on a WaveRunner dressed in a wetsuit; who was pilloried in the 2000 election campaign for not knowing which way the Niagara River flows (north) and was mercilessly mocked for his views on evolution and of how man once walked with the dinosaurs.
But that was so last decade. This week marked the second coming of Stockwell Day.
How did it happen?
As part of a cabinet mini-shuffle, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promoted Mr. Day, 59, to Treasury Board president – not usually a high-profile job, but in this government it is. Mr. Harper needs a fiscal disciplinarian as the purse strings tighten to fight a huge postrecession deficit. In the postshuffle news conference, the Prime Minister lavished praise on the former leader, saying he has “distinguished himself in every portfolio he has held.”
“It feels good for a guy like me,” says Mr. Levant, a lawyer and writer in Alberta. Mr. Levant was part of the dark days in Ottawa when Mr. Day, then leader of the Canadian Alliance, was being vigorously opposed by factions in his own party. He says Mr. Day had “a rough go” but is back to who he really is.
Indeed, Mr. Day was considered a very successful treasurer in Alberta before entering federal politics – something the Ignatieff Liberals quibbled with this week, sending out a press release saying that his term as treasurer from 1997 to 2000 “was marked by massive spending.”
Young, fit and a bit of showoff, he was an attractive successor to the serious Preston Manning. In picking him as leader in 2000, Alliance supporters were looking for a little more style. But the sizzle fizzled. Praxicus pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos, who has polled for the Tories, says it wasn’t all Mr. Day’s fault.
With the Governor-General and Prime Minister looking on, Stockwell Day is sworn in as Treasury Board president at Rideau Hall on Tuesday, January 19, 2010.
“He came to Ottawa with no personal federal experience. Expectations were unattainably high and little was done to calibrate expectations. He had a very tall order to meet stratospheric expectations with little room for error while he was trying to learn on the job.”
Those who were around Parliament Hill for the fallout from the 2000 election will tell you that it was guerrilla warfare among Alliance members; the Chrétien-Martin battles paled in comparison. A group of seven anti-Day Alliance MPs left, forming the Democratic Representative Caucus. Ironically, some of those members, whose opposition led eventually to Mr. Day’s demise, including Chuck Strahl and Jay Hill, now sit with him in cabinet.
“Most people would just get bitter,” says former Harper minister Monte Solberg, who got “tossed from [the Alliance] caucus for being critical of Stock,” as he put it. “I think Stock just decided that he would show everyone that he was above that. Not once has he talked about that.”
He says that he is not close friends with Mr. Day but they get along well now. “The same with Chuck and Jay,” he says.
Mr. Solberg continues: “Anyway, the reason Stock has done well is because he refused to lick his wounds. I suspect his faith sustained him through that.”
That’s one view. There is another view that his faith damaged him.
Former Harper mentor and strategist Tom Flanagan, now a political science professor at the University of Calgary, says Mr. Day “suffered unfairly because of his religious beliefs. Evangelical Christians remain the one group in Canada that is ridiculed with impunity.”
And then there’s Prof. Flanagan’s “curse of the fisc” theory.
“Numerous successful finance ministers, e.g. Paul Martin, have had trouble adjusting to life as leader. A finance minister has to do one very important thing – bring out a budget. A leader has to deal with a constant flow of problems both great and small,” Prof. Flanagan says. “I think he has found his right level as a senior minister entrusted with a crucial assignment.”
Mr. Day would not comment. His spokeswoman, Mélisa Leclerc, says he’s “buried in briefings.”
(Photos: The Canadian Press and Reuters)
