Prime Minister Stephen Harper was at it again this week - making announcements. Get used to it. He's going to be making them all summer, just as he has for weeks now.
On Thursday, the Harper announcement show hit Halifax, where, in one of those patented made-for-television setups, he said Pier 21 would become a national museum. Surrounded by Conservative ministers, senators and MPs, who looked on him like angels in a Christ child painting, Mr. Harper rolled out his announcement.
This is his style: matter of fact, flat, direct, the antithesis of the uplifting visionary. He can't move away from it, because the style incarnates him. He's stuck in the polls, but he knows no other way.
The Prime Minister, of course, received appropriate media coverage across the country, which is what happens when prime ministers speak - unlike the opposition party leaders who, when Parliament closes down, traverse the country unheralded and largely unheeded by the media.
Such is an advantage that Mr. Harper, like prime ministers before him, will use throughout the summer. He, as prime minister, is by conventional wisdom "news"; the opposition leaders are not.
Better still for Mr. Harper, he has placed the federal treasury at the service of the Conservative Party.
By now, at least some of you will have seen the colourful newspaper advertisements and TV spots extolling the virtues of the Harper government's stimulus package. These ads aren't the standard ones that give straight-up information about the where, how and when of government programs. Rather, they are blatantly propagandistic, talking up the virtues of the programs as if they'd been crafted by the Conservative Party itself.
The Harper Conservatives are by no means the first government to place the public purse at its own disposal for advertising purposes. Mike Harris's Conservative government in Ontario was particularly flagrant at this, so much so that the provincial Liberals in those days promised legislation to end the practice. Federal Liberals were not altogether free from the taint of using public money for propagandistic ads.
As the summer progresses, the Prime Minister also will be test-marketing several themes that his party will use against the Liberals in the next election, whenever that occurs.
The first is that the Conservatives are "tough on crime," whereas the Liberals (and the other parties) are not. As almost every criminologist in Canada would attest, the Conservatives' crime policies are mostly illusory.
The recently proposed legislation allowing victims of terror to sue is a bit of a joke, since finding terrorists in the caves of Pakistan or the jungles of Sri Lanka is hard enough, let alone trying to bring them before Canadian justice. It's one of those "tough on crime" policies that sounds great but means nothing.
Similarly, the ending of "faint hope" clause appeals for murderers and the like is eyewash, since only a handful of such appeals are made every year, and they are invariably turned down.
The other thematic test-marketing revolves around taxes, with the Conservatives already accusing the Liberals of planning to raise taxes if elected. Of course, any responsible government should raise taxes, at least temporarily, after the recession winds down to bring an end to the deficit as quickly as possible.
But Mr. Harper is peddling the notion that no tax increases will be necessary because his stimulus package will expire and the resumption of economic growth will do the rest.
This is baloney, since many of the stimulus measures will endure (try taking away the new EI benefits or farm subsidies, for example) and economic growth won't be snapping back nearly as quickly as the government's previous forecasts. Big spending cuts and/or higher taxes will be required. A political leader who does not level with Canadians about this reality is just trying to fool the people (again).
Yet, the Liberals are completely spooked by the opening salvoes against them. Privately, sensible Liberals understand the country's economic situation, and the need to raise taxes, but they are completely petrified by the Conservatives' emerging portrait of Liberals as "tax-and-spenders."
Some Liberals talk privately of being brave, of saying to Canadians: "We are the party that worries about the deficit, and wants to bring it under control, so here is how we propose to do it." Most Liberals, however, remain traumatized by having been blown to bits over the brave carbon tax (which people in the oil industry overwhelmingly but privately agree was the right policy compared with the emerging cap-and-trade system). They are unwilling, therefore, to be honest, because of honesty's political cost.
So we shall (again) have a debate about illusions - about "tough on crime" policies that are nothing of the kind, and about future economic policy based on false projections and political fear.
But we shall have prefabricated photo-op announcements and taxpayer-subsidized advertising all summer long. We will be asked to consider these as real substance about the future of our country.