In Search of Stephen Harper

It's been less than two weeks, but rumours are already flying concerning the whereabouts of the new Prime Minister. One has it that after moving into 24 Sussex, Stephen Harper stepped out the front door, saw his shadow, and ducked back inside to sleep off another six weeks of winter.

Another making the rounds suggests that he's running naked through the forest, with only a few size-twenty footprints and a single blurry picture for evidence. The possibility of alien abduction has been considered, though CSIS will neither confirm nor deny this, despite intense speculation Harper has spent the last week sailing in the Bermuda Triangle.

It's anyone's guess, but one thing is for certain: this is one elusive Prime Minister we've got here.

The man who stressed that the time had come for accountability in government has spent his first two weeks in office making like Howard Hughes, shunning the spotlight, leaving the media to twiddle its thumbs and think up new and exciting ways to skewer his fledgling government. This, of course, is understandable on a number of levels.

For one, no one in his right mind would want to jump in front of a media scrum, on a daily basis, and answer question after question with cameras clicking and half-a-dozen microphones rammed up his nose. Tom Cruise seems to like it, but then there are concerns about whether he even has a right mind, much less that he's in it.

Nor can it be surprising that one would become more than a little jaded dealing with reporters and columnists who are under pressure for a story, any story, and are more likely than not to be as unflattering as possible, regardless of the news of the day. It's rare to read a warm fuzzy piece full of nothing but compliments and affectionate literary hugs. People want dirt, and the media usually finds it, even if it has to dig through the proverbial governmental couch to get it.

Harper is notorious for his loathing of media, pundits, and anyone he considers beneath him on an intellectual level, which by all accounts is everyone. But when it comes to being Prime Minister, communication not only goes with the territory, but is a vital part of the job.

Someone ought to remind the wet-behind-the-ears Prime Minister that the media is the main mechanism that voters depend on to know what their government is doing (or not doing), and to keep the pressure on elected officials to do what they promised to do. Voters don't depend on Harper's communications director, William Stairs, nor Conservative strategist Tim Powers, nor a Ouija board, for that matter.

Accountability, in part, means facing the media, answering questions, and accounting for your actions, or so the theory goes. Now, this is not to suggest that we return to the hourly, hand- and arm-waving photo-ops that typified the image that remains of Paul Martin. As Powers has suggested, people want more substance than sizzle, an idea that's hard to take issue with, though "substance" is normally not a word that goes hand-in-hand with "vacuum."

If this had been any other time, with things running smoothly and no controversy in the air, Harper could be not only forgiven, but lauded for getting down to the business of government. But this was no ordinary couple of weeks. Campaign promises, only minutes into his new term of governance, were broken or seriously trodden on with little more than a dismissive aside about superficial criticism. Voters in Vancouver-Kingsway want a recall (not going to happen folks, but keep trying), while the accusation of hypocrisy by disgruntled new Conservatives and others must be causing nervous tics amongst the party brain trust.

Even when it comes to the substantial work that Harper is supposedly doing, we have to depend on outside sources, speculation, party press releases, and long-lens photos of handshakes and smiles outside 24 Sussex to figure it out.

It took a post-chat press conference by Jean Charest to let us know that Harper is already musing about backtracking on his daycare plan, at least to the point of compensating Quebec for the $807 million it stands to lose in previously promised daycare funding, opening the door to provincial panhandling by the other nine Premiers, and generating new questions about the feasibility of implementing the Conservative platform while balancing the budget.

We also hear that Harper now supports the Kyoto Accord, and is more than happy to discuss Charest's demands for a few hundred million more dollars to help Quebec deal with its emission issues.

So, is Charest's take on his and Harper's private meeting correct? Is Harper throwing billion dollar bills on the wall and seeing if they stick? Did they have dumplings or Tex-Mex for lunch? We don't know, nor can anyone grill Harper on what he's up to, be it on the ethical, fiscal, or policy front.

If this is his idea of transparency, let's hope he never decides to be "opaque."