A Gift For The PM

How did Stephen Harper do as Prime Minister in 2006?

Better than expected		3761 votes	(56 %)
About average		1271 votes	(19 %)
Worse than expected		1631 votes	(24 %)
Total Votes: 6663 Even now, he's largely unknowable Contributed by: jensonj Even now, he's largely unknowable Stephen Harper has been in office for nearly a year, but for many Canadians, it is still difficult to get a fix on what makes the 22nd prime minister tick and to understand his vision for the country James Travers Toronto Star Left to Hollywood, this ambiguous year in national life would surely be titled: There's Something About Steve. Love or loathe him, there is something about the Prime Minister that's still elusive, hard to grasp. Is he the solid guy-next-door, the good neighbour to whom George W. Bush so casually gave such an ill-fitting name? Or is he a coldly calculating conservative ideologue bent on turning a traditionally centre-left country hard right? The compelling answer is the one that makes him so easy to underestimate: Stephen Harper is the politician any given moment demands. How else to explain a leader who won an election on ethics and accountability only to immediately make nonsense of both by making Liberal David Emerson trade minister and naming party bagman Michael Fortier a senator and minister responsible for public works, traditionally the most corrupt of the capital's big-spending departments? How else to explain a prime minister who for months refused to let "nation" cross his lips only to embrace overnight a fuzzy iteration of the distinct society notion that provoked serial constitutional crises? That situational flexibility is at the centre of Harper's political persona. It helps explain why his successes come with asterisks. Consider this incomplete list. His signature Accountability Act is a splinter of the platform plank, much improved U.S. relations didn't secure Canada a better softwood lumber deal, and in slicing $1 billion from the budget, Conservatives cut deep into programs as respected as the Law Reform Commission that annoy the party in power but make governments better. Still, transformational or merely transactional, the Prime Minister is almost everybody's newsmaker of the year. Simply put, he was ground zero for political events that changed 2006 and will shape 2007. For many, the most memorable was the winter election. But the significance of its timing is, at best, misleading. While the record shows otherwise, Conservatives didn't win this year, Liberals lost last year. They lost when Paul Martin couldn't impose the discipline needed to deliver even a little of his promise. All hope of a reprieve evaporated in late December when now-defrocked RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli revealed a probe into alleged Liberal leaks on income trusts that confirmed honesty as the ballot question. Harper, once seemingly destined to be an historical footnote, did what successful Tory leaders have done before: He encouraged angry voters to use Conservatives as a stick to punish Liberals, Canada's default party. http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/164569