Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has his own scandal woes ~ Guardian.co.uk
Harper is facing questions over everything from curious expenses to his link to troubled Toronto mayor Rob Ford
Canadian prime ministers tend to be bland – maniacally so.
<snip> ... hard to decide what parts to snip out...
And then came Rob Ford. Officially, Stephen Harper has nothing to do with Rob Ford, who, as the world now knows, is mayor of Toronto, and reportedly can be seen smoking crack in a video no one can see. Ford is a conservative, yes, but overt party politics are banned from Ontario's municipal governments, by provincial law. The styles of the two men could not be more different – Ford's emotional careering from sulkiness to rage could not look more different, on TV at least, from Harper's gently superior thin-lipped smile.
But again, there is a video – though yet again, few have seen it. It was taken in Rob Ford's mum's backyard two summers ago, during a barbecue party in honour of federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, whose riding is in Toronto's eastern suburbs. The videographer was an unknown conservative stalwart, thrilled to record the surprise appearance of the prime minister himself.
Harper's brief remarks to the delighted backyard crowd contain two somewhat awkward revelations. The first was that he and Rob Ford had become fishing buddies – a condition of some intimacy in Canadian politics.
The second was his appreciation of the political situation:
"We've started cleaning up the left-wing mess federally in this area – Rob's doing it municipally – and now we've got to complete the hat trick, and do it provincially as well."
The "hat trick" line carries the two men's relationship beyond intimacy, into a unity of purpose, a joint political identity. This implication was not lost on the prime minister's office, which within 48 hours had the loyal videographer take it off YouTube – nor on the anti-Harper legions, who put it back up again, where it is beginning to attract renewed media attention.
Getting too close to Rob Ford – or being seen to be – was noxious enough in 2011. Today it's downright poisonous, especially given the prime minister's own current political travails. These take the form of an all-too-typical alleged expenses scandal on the part of Harper-appointed(-for-life) senators – spectacularly compounded by the fact that the most egregious offender, after promising to repay the misappropriated money, was quietly slipped $90,000 by the prime minister's chief of staff in order to do so.
BUT, "boring" is only half of it. Why is Stephen Harper boring in his looks, his wit, his mannerisms and political actions? Answer: because he is, in essence, a representative for Alberta Oil. His proper place is the board room of some boring cartel exploiting Alberta oil, the oilsands. Where it's all cold equations and personal profit. That's where Harper paid his dues.
Taking that into account Harper isn't, in total, boring at all. He's alarming.
These are guys who could raze Canada to the barren ground, flogging the last remnants to death, then happily move to the Bahamas or wherever the rich are congregating this summer.
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Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has his own scandal woes ~ Guardian.co.uk (Original post)
