That's one unhappy Harper

"Maybe this is why the Conservatives are stuck in the polls? jcm"

That's one unhappy Harper

Little sense Tories are enjoying their de facto majority

Don Martin, National Post Published: Wednesday, May 14, 2008

OTTAWA -An official high in a Cabinet minister's office has an interesting label for his employer: The Unhappy Government.

Put another way, confided a second Tory, if presidential hopeful Barack Obama stands for hope in U. S. politics, the Conservatives represent mope in government.

After 15 years of wilderness wandering in opposition, as the party changed names and rotated leaders before merging, there's little sense the Conservatives are enjoying their de facto majority government control over an election-dodging Parliament.

Watching Prime Minister Stephen Harper take his seat in the Commons is to see a glum leader who, while cool at the best of times, seems increasingly testy at his fate.As a policy wonk one month shy of becoming leader of the second-longest minority reign in Canadian history, a longevity record beaten only by the country's first minority in 1921, Mr. Harper should be having the time of his political life.

Yet he puts forward grim faces to front his empty-agenda government, fills a Commons time slot reserved for acknowledgments and tributes with a daily smear against the Liberal party and crafts his travel and speaking schedules to avoid Question Period.

The Commons centre aisle, once crossed easily by MPs wandering into rival party sections to exchange pleasantries, is now the sort of barren gap that accompanied the Berlin Wall.It's no better off Parliament Hill.A weekly gathering of all-party MPs at one local watering hole has been designated a do-not-imbibe zone by a PMO nervous about cross-fraternization. Even political staffers have splintered into separate bars, the better to avoid contact with their enemies.

But of special note are the MPs designated by the Prime Minister to juggle opposition questions.If Mr. Harper wanted to project the face of a dour partisan armed with a cheap shot for every occasion, MP Peter Van Loan would be a natural candidate.If he wanted an obedient pit bull to ignore questions with scripted non-answers on election financing irregularities, Mr. Harper would summon an energetic youngster named Pierre Poilievre to the task.That's why this pair of MPs, neither of whom is actually in charge of the areas under attack, have answered about 70 questions just this month, almost equal to all the questions asked of all real Cabinet ministers combined.

Ask, as Liberal MP Bob Rae did recently, if the government had any security concerns with the Foreign Affairs Minister's former girlfriend, who had been partnered with biker gang members a decade earlier, and Mr. Van Loan denounces the Liberals for supporting Omar Khadr's return to Canada for a fair trial.Want to know about Burma relief efforts? Don't quiz the Foreign Affairs Minister. Over to Mr. Van Loan. Ask about layoffs in the auto industry and the Finance Minister stays seated while Mr. Van Loan chides the Liberal leader for his attendance record. Have a concern about the Kamloops airport? Somehow, Ontario MP Van Loan claims jurisdiction to deliver an answer.

When questions were asked about the Conservatives in-and-out election financing scheme it was 29-year-old Mr. Poilievre who retorted with Liberal financing antics in a chant so annoying, the Speaker warned Mr. Poilievre he'd be out of the Commons if he persisted.

By deflecting legitimate questions about current government behaviour with references to past Liberal misdeeds, the subtext is clear -- the Conservatives performance is just as bad as the previous Liberal government.

Of course, the Liberals are no parliamentary angels and rarely play nice with government ministers.Their lust to regain lost power has usurped the role of Official Opposition and the joys of government needling it allows.

But this Parliament is now dominated by a Prime Minister so preoccupied with winning the next election, he's overlooked the possibilities of using the considerable power he now commands.

He's put his government on idle, sidelined his ministers, silenced his political staff and rewarded backbench MPs who take the lowest shots with a high profile and a rare prime ministerial smile.

As Parliament runs out of things to do and key committees remain paralyzed by procedural antics, the only people with a legitimate right to be unhappy are the voters.