Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen attend the Calgary Stampede parade on July 9, 2010.TODD KOROL/Reuters
By his own admission, Stephen Harper is not a man given to having fun.
Those who have worked for him describe the Prime Minister as a workaholic, someone obsessed with the job of running the country and uncomfortable with delegation.
And yet, as the howls of criticism over his decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census grow louder - on Friday, the country's Roman Catholic bishops joined the many groups that have condemned the move - Mr. Harper has resisted the urge to respond.
He is on vacation - at least what counts as a vacation for a prime minister - at an undisclosed place in the Ottawa region. Presumably, he and his family are at the prime ministerial summer home at Harrington Lake in Quebec.
Mr. Harper's aides say: "He's still working, being briefed and making decisions." But he has not made a public appearance since attending the World Junior Championships in Athletics on July 19 in Moncton, a week after his previous public outing at the Calgary Stampede. And he is not expected to emerge from seclusion until the Conservative caucus meets next week in Ottawa.
While the opposition paints a picture of a Prime Minister in hiding, it could be that Mr. Harper has merely grown comfortable in his own skin and no longer frets about taking some needed private time from the daily pressures of the government's top office.
"You always work when you are the prime minister, and I don't think any Conservatives or any Canadians are going to get too upset by the Liberal Party, led by the Provence-holidaying Opposition Leader, criticizing the current Prime Minister, who in nearly 10 years on the job continues to work hard all the time," said Conservative pundit Tim Powers.
"While he may not be in the public's eye every night during July, you can be damn sure that he's working."
But the Liberals, who are still smarting from Conservative attacks last year on Michael Ignatieff for spending two weeks of the summer outside of the country, have made much of Mr. Harper's decision to take an extended stay out of the public eye.
"We always knew [Mr. Harper]had a hidden agenda. Now it seems he has also gone into hiding," Liberal finance critic John McCallum quipped on Friday.
Mr. Ignatieff, on the other hand, has been riding the party bus - with a few scheduled periods of down time - since July 13. His tour will take him to every province over the course of the summer with back-to-back barbecues, rallies, speeches, town-hall-style meetings and media interviews. He is meeting the public in a spontaneous and unscripted fashion, carving away at the caricature of the aloof professor.
But Mr. Harper is getting a rest. Mr. Ignatieff, whose stamina has been questioned even by members of his own party, has not.
And there is a long month of August and part of September to go before both leaders must return to the House of Commons. It won't be until the fall that either party will be able say which strategy worked best.
Mr. Powers does not believe the choice to take a few weeks of private time will hurt Mr. Harper.
"I think like anybody you get wiser if you work at something for a long period of time," he said. "I think he also has kids that are of an age that they still enjoy spending time with their parents. So he paces himself a little bit better and spends time with his family just like every Canadian does."