"That is something we can't forget"
Stephen Harper on Canada-US relations — and on Stephen Harper
Start here. Near the end of an onstage interview at the Council of State Governments’ Midwestern Legislative Conference in Saskatoon on Monday, Stephen Harper was asked whether he had any advice he’d give his younger self. He came up with two answers, both surprising.
First, he reminded everyone that four years before he became prime minister, no realistic observer could have predicted he’d wind up there. This surprising career path had a side effect. “I really hadn't trained myself in some of the character attributes that are necessary for leadership,” he said.
“So when I became a national leader for the first time, it was a difficult adjustment that I was not psychologically prepared for…. If I'd known that was going to happen, I would have prepared myself better. It was a rough adjustment for a few years.”
Man, I’d like to read more about that. Fortunately Harper told the crowd he’s just finished a draft of his memoirs. A decade ago, after he lost the 2015 election, the word among his former colleagues was that he had no interest in such a project. I’m glad he changed his mind. People who change their minds are more interesting than people who never do.
The second piece of advice: When he was young, he said, “I was impatient. Not just idealistic, but impatient. And most importantly, not sufficiently understanding and forgiving of human frailty.”
This, he said, “is the real problem with idealists and, quote, zealots. It's not that it's wrong to have ideals. But what's wrong is to see yourself, and maybe your team, as totally kind of dedicated to ideals — and other people as somehow flawed because they are not the same way. I mean, we are people. We're complicated. Politics is complicated. Everybody has their own perspectives and their own interests. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't have ideals. But ideals can't just bulldoze over people. They have to understand that, you know, especially when you're talking about governing people, it's about governing in their interests and from their perspectives. And you've got to understand that it cannot be just about you and your ideals."
I don’t know about you, but I can’t hear or read that extraordinary passage without wondering whether Harper was delivering advice to some younger person besides his earlier self.
But tuck that away for now. Most of the interview was about Canada-US relations, and Harper was almost as introspective and frank on that topic.
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Unsurprisingly, the day’s main topic was trade. (Harper was fielding questions from Victor Thomas, the CEO of the Canada-India Business Council, whose spouse is Conservative MP Rachael Thomas.)
How’s free trade doing as an idea and a way of organizing the world, Thomas asked. Not always great, Harper said. The “most infamous” bad trade deal was China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization. So Donald Trump isn’t wrong when he says there are things that need fixing, Harper said.
He didn’t have many other bouquets to toss Trump’s way. “I actually think I'm a pretty good deal maker,” Harper said, “and the key to deal making is win-win. That's really the key to deal-making. When I hear people say that the idea of a deal is, they can get up on a podium and explain how the other guy lost, that's actually not how you make a deal. I always used to say, I never made a deal with anybody without, first of all, trying to understand him before I got to the bargaining table, what the other guy really wanted and needed.”
A long detour followed — these onstage interviews, by their nature, are chats more than grilling sessions — during which Harper lauded India’s virtues as a trading partner. “There aren't a lot of really, really good news stories in the world right now and one of them is India. India is one of the rare democratic countries these days that has — whether you like Modi or do not like Modi — a leader who's in a strong political position and moving his country forward in a very clear direction.”
But eventually Harper worked his way back to deals, and to the deal environment Donald Trump is building.
If somebody had said a year ago that Trump was coming back and he had concerns with USMCA, “I would have said a year ago, ‘This is a real opportunity for Canada to really deepen its economic and security partnership with the United States.’” But now it’s a year later, and Mark Carney’s government actually has asked for Harper’s thoughts lately, and “my advice was the opposite” of what it’d have been a year ago.
“My advice was, in the economy, we've got to kind of get something short-term worked out with the Trump administration. But this really is a wake-up call for this country to truly diversify its trade export markets.”
This isn’t just a matter of Carney vs. Trump, Harper said. “Canada has been, to use a business term… we have been grossly overweight the United States as a country. And there’s no reason for that. Just because we have that geographic proximity does not justify the degree of dependence that we have on a single market.”
What’s true for trade is true for defence and security too. “My advice to the government is: yes, absolutely spend more on defense. We should have been doing it all along. But… let's make sure we spend a lot more on defense so that we can be independently responsible for our own land, seas, and skies, independent of the United States.”
It’s time for Canada to find ways to distance itself from the U.S., in other words. Still. And not just Canada. “This is the advice every allied capital is getting from everybody like me that they talk to.” It’s not a matter of preference and it won’t lead to an ideal outcome. “This direction will weaken the free world more than it will help it. And it will, I think, ultimately weaken the United States as well. So I think it's unfortunate. But that is the reality of the situation that we have to deal with.”
What situation? “Americans should understand: Canadians are a combination of just angry and bewildered by what is happening here,” with Trump’s tariff policy, Harper said. “That is very real, it is very deep, and it is across the country and it is across the political spectrum.”
With what effect? Canada needs to get its resources to market, Harper said, but not just to one export market. Not just to the United States. “Canada must be seized with with the necessity of making sure that we do not export only to you,” he told his largely American audience. “That's really critical for us going forward. We just cannot be in a position in the future where we can be threatened in this way and not have that leverage.”
Harper had begun his remarks by agreeing that China is causing a lot of chaos in global trade. “The Trump administration is completely right to deal with some of its trade challenges. But declaring a trade war on 200 other countries at the same time? Come on. Like, that's not how you move the ball forward longterm.”
I should emphasize for clarity that I wasn’t in the room. I watched the video at the end of the night from home, on CPAC. It reminded me why I always enjoyed covering Harper. He can be an easy guy to disagree with. His view of Modi’s India, in particular, skips a few complicating factors, to say the least. But the Harper on stage in Saskatoon wasn’t all that far from the Harper I used to enjoy chatting with when he was a 35-year-old rookie Reform MP and I was younger than that. He’s comfortable with surprise — with hearing surprising things, and with saying surprising things. He’s capable of introspection. He says real things and he prefers conversations to be about real things.
Liberals, to the extent they give him any thought at all, sometimes indulge fantasies of Harper as the moustache-twirling mastermind behind a succession of decoy puppet Conservative leaders, in Canada and overseas. Harper’s old opponents, in other words, sometimes talk about him the way Pierre Poilievre talks about the World Economic Forum.
Conservatives, especially the growing population of Conservatives to Harper’s right, are increasingly of the opinion that he blew his decade in power and has little to show for it. Perhaps they can compare notes after any of them has been in power for a decade.
I followed Harper more closely than most journalists for 20 years, and he still surprises me. One thing I used to think I knew about him was that he had real difficulty imagining that a U.S. Republican might be wrong about something, or that poor Steve Harper could have any standing to disagree with them. As recently as 2018, he wrote a book urging Canadians not to be too critical or dismissive of Donald Trump. But Trump II has broken Harper’s old instincts along with so much else.
Now Harper is preoccupied with what must be preserved, and what must be abandoned, in a world where the American President is disdainful of every alliance his country ever had. In a week that might yet end with a “deal” as farcical as the ones Japan and the EU swallowed, his counsel is worth hearing.
“This can't be forgotten, you know,” he said, “the reality now that we have not faced as a country in 100 years — of seeing the United States flex its muscles in a way that has nothing to do with values or ideals. That is something we can't forget. And we cannot make ourselves entirely dependent on that relationship.”
On a Liberal PM calling a Conservative predecessor for his thoughts on a file: I don't recall the circumstances, but I was told at the time that Justin Trudeau called Harper and Mulroney sometimes too. And I remember nearly Harper's entire PMO coming out to Eddie Goldenberg's book launch. Leaders sometimes permit themselves broader networks that they discourage further down the hierarchy.
Paul, I've always enjoyed your writing about Stephen Harper. While he's as close as there is to a political hero for me, when I read a lot of your work about him, I'd read a passage and ask myself, "Does Wells mean that as a positive, or a negative? And how would someone from a different perspective from me view it?"
Your willingness to try to understand him in depth, rather than kneejerk criticism, or fanboying, was always appreciated. This piece is a nice reminder.