Quotes of the Day

On a cold day in Ottawa last week, Stephen Harper sauntered into the fifth-floor cafeteria in Parliament's Centre Block and ordered a cheeseburger, a Coke and a Caesar salad. He loaded the food onto his tray and, as he does most lunchtimes, headed back to his office. As ever, Harper projected the image of a cerebral, shy, slightly standoffish man, a politician who has never seemed quite at home in boisterous Ottawa. Yet there was one thing changed in his routine: next to Harper stood two bulky plainclothes bodyguards. You get them when you're No. 1.

On Feb. 6, Harper will be sworn in as Canada's 22nd Prime Minister, along with a freshly minted Cabinet--which means that his lunch-hour escapes on Parliament Hill will probably become rare events. The onetime political outsider whom Canadian voters brought in from the cold of western politics will suddenly be thrust into the very center of the national political scene. And for the first time in a dozen years Canadians will find out what it's like without the Liberal Party in charge.

Harper, 46, a policy wonk, hockey-trivia buff and father of two, is one of the youngest PMs to occupy 24 Sussex Drive. He may also be one of the most forthright. "What's going to shock the nation is he means every word he says," says Jim Hawkes, a retired Calgary Tory M.P. who gave Harper his first job in politics, as a researcher in his Ottawa office. Although he will lead a slender, 124-member minority Conservative caucus in the 308-seat House of Commons, Harper seems resolved to fulfill the campaign pledges that brought the Conservatives to power. "Minority governments are never easy," Harper told reporters last week in his first press conference as Prime Minister-designate. But, he added, "Canadians want us to get to work on delivering change, and we will be ready to lead that change."

But what kind of change? It's a question that puzzles even Harper's supporters, who watched him transform himself from a crusader for limited government into a family-friendly mainstream politician. That shift was partly an expression of pragmatism in a nation that tends to shun extremes. But it also reflected a rare political trait: the ability to rise above the ideological-hothouse atmosphere of Reform Party politics in the west to become a leader capable of attracting support from skeptics. His core economic conservatism is unlikely to have changed as much as some suggest--Harper is not and never will be a Red Tory--but his stolid textbook campaign managed to attract a diverse group of voters, from rural Albertans to southern Ontarians to nationalist Quebeckers. If Harper proves he can govern as inclusively as he has campaigned, it may give him the makings of a new national Conservative coalition for the 21st century. Says Hawkes: "I think he could be Prime Minister for a long time."

Perhaps this is the dawn of a lengthy Harper era, but he faces a steep learning curve. Harper, who has never run a government agency, was in back-to-back meetings last week learning the ins and outs of managing a C$230 billion federal budget and the complex government machinery that goes with it. Characteristically, he reached out to the same senior coterie of professional Tory advisers that helped smooth out the kinks in his campaign. The five-person transition team, which has met every day in the fourth-floor office of the Langevin Block, where Canada's Prime Ministers have their office, is headed by Derek Burney, former chief of staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and a former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. The team's members, all volunteers, are arranging high-level briefings for the new PM with key organizations like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Before he takes office, Harper is also trying to absorb some lessons from recent history. Insiders say he has telephoned former Prime Minister Mulroney--whose government he once accused of "running the largest deficits in Canadian history"--for advice on the pitfalls of power. One model he surely hopes to avoid: the short-lived minority government of Joe Clark, who entered power with as little experience as Harper's Tories and spent months largely out of sight of the Canadian public while learning the tricks of governance--only to be turfed out by the resurgent Liberals under Pierre Trudeau.

Harper can probably count on a honeymoon while the opposition parties take his government's measure. But the grace period may well be brief. Harper will probably have little trouble winning passage of his clean-government accountability act, the first of five major campaign pledges--the others being a cut in the gst, guarantees on health-care waiting times, tougher measures on crime, and direct cash payments to families for child care. But in the back of his mind, no doubt, is the fact that minority Parliaments in Canada rarely last more than two years.

And there's little reason to expect much help from the Liberals. Outgoing Environment Minister Stéphane Dion says his party will cooperate, but only to a point. "I know Canadians don't want an election soon," Dion says. "At the same time, Mr. Harper needs to understand that we cannot stand up and vote for things we think are detrimental to Canada and Canadians." Tory veteran John Crosbie is advising Harper to expect the worst from the Grits. "You can never take your eyes off them," says Crosbie, a former M.P. from St. John's, Nfld., who served in the Mulroney and Clark administrations. "They will go for the government's gonads whenever they see the opportunity."

The Harper era's success may depend on Harper's ability to muster the passion and conviction to sell his vision of Canada's future to an electorate that gave him a mixed-message mandate. That's a tall order for an intensely private man who once hated even the thought of public life and who still lends himself to easy caricature. He allowed photographers to follow him as he walked his two children--Benjamin, 9, and Rachel, 7--to school near the opposition leader's house at Stornoway, only to attract titters from Canadian sophisticates at the pictures of him politely shaking his son's hand. Conservatives maintain the public will warm to Harper. "He's going to bring a different tone at the top, a tone of respect and a different kind of zeal and energy about the country," says former Alberta Treasurer Jim Dinning. For now, he has already telegraphed change in five big areas:

1. A Tilt To The Right
The Conservative victory was due in part to disenchantment with the Liberals. But under the deft hand of Tory tacticians, Harper morphed from the scary image drawn by his rivals before the June 2004 vote into a middle-of-the-road politician. And his party's minority status should ensure that he won't venture too far from the center of Canadian politics--at least for the life of the coming Parliament.

But the "center" has been redefined by Harper's win. The popularity of such Conservative campaign pledges as strengthening the military and reducing the gst from 7% to 5% suggests that the mainstream has already shifted rightward. As in other Western industrial powers, traditional support in Canada for government social spending is now tempered by worries about high taxes, devalued retirement portfolios and personal financial security--particularly in the bulging boomer generation whose oldest members are entering their 60s. Canada's center-left political parties have taken note of the trend: the Boxing Day shooting in Toronto left even the New Democrats scrambling to articulate a tough-on-crime policy. Jason Clemens, an economist at the conservative Fraser Institute, predicts that Harper will have little trouble passing his populist legislative agenda, which includes, among other things, the proposed sales-tax cuts and direct child-care payments of C$1,200 to families for each child under age 6. If, as expected, the polls turn up sustained postelection backing for such measures, Harper will "get wide support across the board, from all parties," Clemens says.

That doesn't mean Canada is moving in the same anti-Big Government direction as, say, the U.S. At least two-thirds of Canadian voters cast their votes for the left-tilting Liberals, N.D.P. or Bloc Quebecois. But according to Ottawa pollster Frank Graves of EKOS Research, Canadians are increasingly inclined to take a gourmet approach to politics--picking policies that suit their shifting tastes, regardless of ideology. "More and more people don't want a political label," says Graves. And if Harper can manage government well over the expected short life of the next Parliament, they may be ready to reward him with majority support for a made-in-Canada conservative vision.

2. Boring (But Clean)
The Federal Accountability Act is item No. 1 on the Tories' list of campaign priorities. The long-mooted set of initiatives, which includes stringent controls over lobbying and government appointments and stricter limits on campaign contributions, could be tabled fairly quickly in the new House of Commons, which may begin sitting in mid-March. Given the lingering anger over the sponsorship scandal, says former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, "I can't see anybody in that Parliament voting against that in principle." The bill's final form, though, will have to take into account the recommendations in Justice John Gomery's second report, due this week--a point reiterated by Harper at his first postelection press conference.

Indeed, as Harper huddled with his transition team on Parliament Hill to prepare to take power from the Liberals, the only griping that could be heard about the act concerned a Draconian restriction barring former ministers and other officials from lobbying the government for five years after leaving office. "Good luck hiring staff," muttered a lobbyist.

Achieving clean government will be a key to Harper's success. The initial test will come if and when Harper is confronted by scandal in his own government. "The first time a minister's hand is found in the cookie jar will be a moment of truth," says Ezra Levant, publisher of the Calgary-based Western Standard. "Harper will have to move quickly in order to demonstrate how unacceptable it is to him personally."

3. The Quebec Blues
For more than three decades, Canadians have been periodically distressed over the issue of Quebec sovereignty. Whenever the movement starts to gain momentum--as it has since the revelations about the sponsorship scandal began to surface two years ago--the country begins to slip into panic mode. A package of Conservative electoral pledges aimed at changing the face of federal-provincial relations may not end up having much effect on all this, but it certainly has caught Quebeckers' attention and helped the Tories win 10 seats in La Belle Province--far better than expected at the start of the campaign.

It was the election's biggest surprise, in part because the Tories had been all but moribund in Quebec since 1993. With the Liberal Party floundering in Quebec, Harper made repeated trips to the province throughout the campaign. The turning point for the Tories, though, came during a Dec. 19 trip to Quebec City, in which Harper expanded on his party's plans to address provincial demands that Ottawa turn over more federal tax revenues to the provinces, thereby addressing the so-called fiscal imbalance. Harper also talked about the need for future federal governments to respect provincial jurisdictions more assiduously in fields like health and education, and to give the provinces greater ability to represent themselves on the international stage in those areas.

But when Harper criticized the federal Liberals, saying their "outrageous spending power gave rise to domineering and paternalistic federalism," Tory organizers could practically hear voters marching their way. "Quebeckers started to look at us as an option from that point," says Jean-Pierre Blackburn, an M.P. in the Mulroney era. Blackburn--who could end up in a junior portfolio in a Harper Cabinet--began the campaign with 5% support and ended up winning his seat in the sovereigntist-leaning Jonquière-Alma riding with 52% of the vote. "It was Mission: Impossible," Blackburn says. Overall the Harper onslaught helped leave the Liberals with 21% of the vote provincewide, their worst showing since Confederation, according to pollster Jean-Marc Léger of Léger Marketing.

The Tory program for Quebec has caught many political rivals off guard. "I think a lot of sovereigntists are a bit dumbfounded by how these two issues [fiscal imbalance and a greater voice in international affairs] easily appealed to what they thought was a nationalist constituency," says Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies. But the Tory promise to offer more fiscal power to the provinces is of course not just a Quebec issue: it is being eyed by all the provinces. In the end, it could have the largest impact of any of the Conservative campaign planks--if Harper can implement some form of it in this minority Parliament or in a subsequent mandate. Sensing a winning issue in all regions of the country, Harper quietly turned the five priorities he touted during the campaign to six, with the addition of the pledge to give provinces more clout.

4. The West Is In
Oil-rich Alberta is already a major driver of Canada's economy. With the ascent of a western-based Prime Minister, the region may now play a far larger role in driving national politics. The Harper government will be power-packed with influential Albertans, many of them (like the Prime Minister-designate) graduates or acolytes of the University of Calgary's libertarian political-science department. Westerners have been dreaming of such access for decades. "We're moving from the kids' table of Confederation to sit with the adults," gloats Western Standard publisher Levant.

But don't expect cowboy boots and Bible Belt philosophies to suddenly dominate Ottawa's gray corridors. The Conservative win heralds the arrival on the national stage of sophisticated, western-incubated thinking on trade, energy and international affairs, expertise that until now has been largely invisible to eastern Canadians. Albertans believe "it's better to experiment than to plan your way to perfection," says Dinning, who is the front runner in the race to succeed Premier Ralph Klein. "The new Conservative government attitude is rooted in an Alberta attitude that if you need to get something done, you don't Royal Commission it--you just get on and do it."

Achieving power could generate a new sense of national responsibility. With the prime reason for western alienation gone, "western Canadians will have to reinvent themselves" as more active contributors to the national dialogue, says Roger Gibbins, head of the Canada West Foundation in Calgary. Gibbins, who points out that Alberta's C$9 billion-plus surplus is as large as the federal government's surplus, suggests that westerners will have to develop "thoughtful" ideas for sharing the revenues derived from their booming oil and gas reserves. "We are already working on new ideas, like a nationwide sustainable energy project," says Gibbins. Other west-based concepts that could get a national airing include the development of a new north-south transportation corridor, upgrading skill training for new immigrants and the elimination of barriers to interprovincial trade.

But Alberta does not represent the entire west. British Columbia pointedly elected five fewer Conservatives to Ottawa this month than it did in 2004, and its longstanding competition with Alberta may spell trouble for Harper's government. Even some Albertans wonder whether they may end up regretting their upturn in political fortune. Alberta commentator Ted Byfield fears that the province's fierce sense of self-reliance will be weakened under a Harper government that expects the province to subordinate its resources to the national interest and allows its wealth to "drain" away to other provinces with little in return--especially as it tries to reshape Confederation. Says Byfield: "We've had to contend with villainous easterners, but we may have to contend with a potentially villainous westerner now."

5. Border Thaw
Harper wasted no time last week in establishing his government's approach to Canada's most important trade partner and political ally--by sounding like a Liberal Party nationalist. He startled reporters at his first press conference by declaring he took exception to a remark made earlier in the week by U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins, who questioned Canada's claim to sovereignty over Arctic waters. "It is the Canadian people we get our mandate from, not the ambassador from the United States," Harper snapped, noting his government has "significant plans" for asserting its Arctic rights.

It was a shrewd way to send a message to Canadians, many of whom assumed a Harper government would move in lockstep with Washington. Nevertheless, the young Conservative leader's victory may indeed have "put a smile" on U.S. President George W. Bush's face--as Liberals jeered during the campaign--if only because Americans have been puzzled and piqued by the Chretien and Martin governments' anti-American rhetoric over the past four years. Even so, Bush was reportedly miffed at Harper for failing to throw his party's support behind the U.S.'s continental ballistic-missile-defense scheme (which the Liberals rejected last year). In the first and only meeting between the two, during the U.S. President's 2004 trip to Ottawa, Bush was said to have lectured Harper on the need for stronger continental defenses. But since then, Harper's pledge to reopen the missile-defense issue with a parliamentary debate, along with the Conservatives' defense-oriented, pro-U.S. platform, has encouraged Washington's belief that it may now have a more reliable ally in Ottawa.

Mark Souder, a Republican U.S. Congressman from Indiana and a member of the Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group, predicts the principal consequence of the Conservatives' ascent to power will be a new "tone of mutual respect" between the two capitals. Harper's Arctic admonition could rekindle the old doubts, but improvements in the U.S.-Canada relationship will probably come through a mutual recognition of the new "geopolitical realities" in an energy-hungry and security-conscious North America, says Professor John Thompson, who teaches Canadian studies at North Carolina's Duke University. And no one is better positioned to exploit those new realities than Harper, thanks to networks in place among western Canadian conservatives, Calgary oil barons and U.S. Republicans. As a result, some long-simmering trade quarrels, such as the one over softwood lumber, may be moved from the back burner to the front--especially as the Alberta oil sands and proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline strengthen Canada's position as a prime energy supplier to the U.S. The irony is that Harper will be able to build on foundations laid by departing Canadian ambassador to the U.S. (and prospective Liberal rival) Frank McKenna, whose blunt style and experience as an ex-politician have raised Ottawa's profile in Congress. "He's significantly improved our game down here," says a senior embassy staff member.

Harper's real challenge is to position Canada for the post-Bush era. If the Harper government lasts long enough, past the 2008 presidential elections, he may be able to secure broad national support for some of the initiatives begun tentatively by the Liberals, such as stronger continental security arrangements, strengthening the North American Free Trade Agreement and developing a North American partnership with the U.S. and Mexico. Canada West Foundation's Gibbins predicts that once Harper escapes the shadow of identification with Bush Administration neocons, "he can lead the way to a genuine improvement in the relationship."

Harper's foreign-affairs record will be judged on his ability to manage Canada's north-south relationship. But it was no coincidence that at his first postelection press conference, he noted that he had received congratulatory calls from Mexican President Vicente Fox, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard--as well as Bush. With plans to pump C$5.3 billion more into Canada's military over five years as well as add to foreign aid, Harper hopes to preside over a revival of Canada's modest role as a player in world affairs. For a leader who has rarely traveled beyond Canada's borders, that would be an impressive achievement.

• STEVEN FRANK & STEPHEN HANDELMAN