By John Ivison - from the National Post
For Stephen Harper’s critics, who warned he would announce plans to re-introduce the death penalty and two-tier health care as soon as he won a majority, Tuesday’s press conference must have been a huge disappointment.
The Prime Minister is now secure in his post for the next four years or so and could have afforded the mask to slip on his hidden agenda, if there was one. Yet, he was the very essence of the strong, stable, national government he has promised every day for the last month.
On healthcare, he said he supports Canada’s system of universal public health care. He confirmed his election pledge to increase spending by 6% a year. “We do want to sit down as we renegotiate to look at how to ensure better and clearer results and outcomes,” he said. There was room for experimentation but he said his government would not question the fundamentals of the universal public system.
He was asked how he would convince those who voted for him that they’d made the right move. He answered that he intends to move forward in the same way he has proceeded in the last five years. “One of the things I’ve learned is that surprises are not generally well received by the public. We will move forward with what they are comfortable with,” he said. “In minority government you face a hanging every day. We will try to gain more trust in places where we won and where we didn’t win.”
In a pre-election interview, Mr. Harper told the National Post that with a majority government he would be more concerned with governing than with self-preservation. And how would he govern? My take is that he will do exactly what he’s been saying he has wanted to do for the past five years — Senate reform, abolish the gun registry, get tough on crime and shrink the size of government. As someone who knows him well put it: “The hidden agenda has been sitting on the order paper in the House of Commons for five years.”
As one of his biographers, William Johnson, has noted: “Unlike most politicians, he almost always means what he says because he has thought long and hard about an issue before he speaks. He is consistent in his thinking and speaking because he is a conviction politician.” Read more...
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