The Road Years by Rick Mercer

Author:Rick Mercer [Mercer, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2023-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

11

Belinda Makes an Entrance

I had my first encounter with Belinda Stronach in mid-February of 2005. The show was brand new and so was she.

She was the newly elected member of Parliament for Newmarket, Ontario.

For an Opposition MP she was pretty darn famous. The year before she had run for the leadership of the newly minted Conservative Party of Canada. She might have lost to Stephen Harper, but she made a giant splash while doing it.

Everyone was surprised that, after losing, she kept her promise to run as an MP. Candidates for leadership always say they will run, win or lose, but they never do.

In our camp, we were even more surprised that she agreed to be on the show. Or, I should say, we were surprised that she got permission to be on the show. From the minute Stephen Harper became leader, it was very clear to us and to everyone in Ottawa that nothing could happen in that party without permission from the leader’s office.

A controlling leader was not new in Ottawa, but this was something else. The level of control being demanded by Harper’s office was pathological.

The reason was obvious. For close to a decade, Stephen Harper’s party—the Conservatives, and the Canadian Alliance and Reform Party before that—had been knocked off message almost daily by some obscure rogue MP or candidate. They had people who appeared to wake up every morning wondering what offside opinion they could float into the universe that would make the conservative world unravel.

To an observer of politics like me, it was great fun to watch. For a conservative like Stephen Harper, it must have been excruciatingly painful. He was all about discipline. In fact, he liked discipline so much, I’d bet money it was the number one word in his Google search history.

At first, MPs weren’t used to this level of control coming from the leader’s office. But when push came to shove, they surrendered to Harper’s will as fast as the French in the Second World War. The difference being, there was no resistance.

I once met a Conservative staffer who confided in me that very early in Harper’s mandate, he was pulled into the Opposition leader’s office and entrusted with a very special task. He was given a list of Conservative caucus members who had spoken to the media about random subjects over the previous few weeks. None of the interviews were problematic or controversial, but the new rule was simple: nobody talks to anyone, even local press, without permission from head office.

The first six MPs on the list had each done an interview where they were asked what jobs they held when they were students. It was all part of a story on a current “hire a student” campaign. Politicians love to be asked about their first job because it gives them an opportunity to wax nostalgic about how hard they worked waiting tables at the Calgary Stampede or spreading manure on an uncle’s farm.

But as great as the press coverage was, the Opposition leader’s office felt it was a slippery slope.

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